“I always remember having this fight with a random dude who claimed that ‘straight white men’ were the only true innovators. His prime example for this was the computer… the computer… THE COMPUTER!!! THE COM-PU-TER!!!
Alan Turing - Gay man and ‘father of computing’ Wren operating Bombe - The code cracking computers of the 2nd world war were entirely run by women Katherine Johnson - African American NASA mathematician and ‘Human computer’ Ada Lovelace - arguably the 1st computer programmer”
- Sacha Coward
Also Margaret Hamilton - NASA computer scientist who put the first man on the moon - an as-yet-unmatched feet of software engineering, here pictured beside the full source of that computer programme. #myhero
Grace Hopper - the woman that coined the term “bug”
- @robinlayfield
Grace Hopper did more than coin the term “bug”. She invented the first program linker in the early 1950s, for the UNIVAC I. A program linker translates instructions from one language to another (for example, numerical codes that represent instructions translated to machine code that computers can read), which is the very foundation of how computer’s operate independently. she also pulled a steve rogers and tried to enlist in the military a bunch of times and was denied. then, an exception was made for her when she joined the navy reserves, and she ended up serving for over 40 years (half of which was active duty). she retired from the navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. she was born in NYC in 1906. Grace Hopper was a fucking badass.
also computing was typically a job for women (many of whom were black women that made incredible contributions) back in the day, so it’s absolutely fucking wild that straight white men think they are the foundation of computer innovation. men PUSHED women out and took the credit.
Reblogging to do what the failed education system never did.
Reblogging to do
what the failed education
system never did.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
Adding Wendy Carlos to the list! Trans icon and pioneer of synthesized music!!
Also, just about every computerized device outside of desktops is running ARM chips now. Your phone, your keyboard, your car, your watch. Basically everything.
And ARM was primarily designed by Sophie Wilson, a trans woman.
Also gotta throw on Lynn Conway, whose work brought about VSLI [Very Large Scale Integration] in chip design in the early 80s. Basically all modern microelectronics depends on Conway’s work, which got logic gates on a single chip up from thousands to millions.
BTW all of this was after IBM fired her in 68 for disclosing she wanted to transition. They apologized in 2020.
Not computer related, but I recently learned about Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, the astronomer who discovered that stars like the Sun are made of mostly hydrogen and helium, and their composition is not similar to Earth’s. This contradicted the scientific viewpoint at the time, and her work was rejected for a long time, despite being thorough and methodical.
