International Women's Day: historical women in tech
In honor of International Women's Day but also because I just got back from a pretty inspirational Lesbians Who Tech yearly summit in San Francisco (and I will have an upcoming recap post about it so stay tuned!) I wanted to highlight some historical figures in technology that have inspired me.
It actually began this morning with a repost by a friend of mine by a woman who did some really early electronic music. Now the combination of art and tech is really really my fav so I was enthralled by this video of Laurie Spiegel.
She describes it thusly:
This 1977 tape is one of the earliest examples of purely digital realtime audio synthesis. It manages to achieve an analog synth sounding quality, but it is entirely digital synthesis and signal processing.
The interactive software I wrote and am playing in this video recycles my keyboard input into an accompaniment to my continued playing, which is why I called it a "concerto generator". I use part of one of the keyboards for control data entry, and the small switches upper right to access pre-entered numerical patterns. The sliders are mainly pre-Yamaha FM synthesis parameter controls, for the number of harmonics and amplitude and frequency of the FM modulator and carrier that constituted each musical voice.
There are a ton more women in tech but here are some that particularly inspire me:
Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson
Made famous by the Oscar nominated film Hidden Figures these three black women were a huge part of making NASA a success. This Essence article has some more facts you might want to know about them.
Margaret Hamilton
Hamilton basically invented the modern concept of software and her code got people on the moon. This image of her standing next to her Apollo mission code that's as tall as her is iconic and one of my favorite. Read more about her in Wired.
Ada Lovelace
Known as the first computer programmer, a hundred years before there were computers, Ada Lovelace was the privileged daughter of Lord Byron and a talented mathematician. The New Yorker calls her the "first tech visionary" and I don't disagree. She now even has a cyptocurrency named after her and I have to confess I bought a little of it, mostly because it was named for her.
Who are some of your women in STEM inspirations?
