When you say technology, IT, and inventions, the first person you think of is probably a man. While this is justified, it doesn't mean that our long history has not known some of the female inventors who turned the world upside down. As we all celebrate International Women ’s Day on 3rd March 2020, we have decided to celebrate a number of fascinating women that we have enjoyed reading and learning about over the years.
Hedy Lamarr and Wireless Technology
Most of you probably know her as the famous 1930s and 1940s movie star, but that's not all Hedy did. She was actually one of the main inventors of spread-spectrum technology, which later played an important role in the development of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access). The technology was originally designed to assist the Navy remote control torpedoes, but this was used retrospectively (in the late 1950s) in secure military communications.
Read More: https://www.forbes.com/sites/shivaunefield/2018/02/28/hedy-lamarr-the-in...
Ada Lovelace - The World's First Computer Programmer
The only legitimate child of Lord Byron and Anne Isabella Milbanke, Augusta Ada King, was known as the "princess of the parallelogram" and it was she who translated a document by Luigi Menabrea about Charles Babbage's Analytical Machine in 1843. Although she was not only translated the text - she also added her own notes and that was actually an algorithm for a computer that, well, was yet to be invented. Because of this, Lovelace is sometimes seen by some as the world's first programmer.
Grace Hopper Popularizes the Terms “Bug” and “Debugging”
Admiral Hopper (yes, Admiral) was not only the first woman to graduate from Yale and obtain a master's degree in mathematics, but she was also the first to become an Admiral in the United States Navy. What kind of technology did she do? She developed the first computer compiler (1952) and COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language), in addition she developed the terms we use every day today - “bug” and “debugging”.
"From then on, when everything went wrong with a computer, we said there were bugs."
Marissa Mayer: The Master of Search
Before becoming CEO of Yahoo in 2012, Marissa spent 13 years at Google. There, she was in charge of some of the company's most successful products (Google Maps, Google Earth, Street View, Google News and Gmail). She was also Google's first female engineer and was appointed director of Yahoo at the time. She was one of only 20 female directors to run a Fortune 500 company (one of the 500 largest and richest U.S. companies). When she worked at Google, Mayer was the one who approved every Google Doodle we know today.
Radia Perlman Also Known As The Mother Of The Internet
Radia is not a big fan of her nickname, but it is true that she is responsible for making Ethernet as we know it. Perlman developed the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), which represents the basis for the operation of network bridges. This innovation had a huge impact on network switches - devices that connect other devices to a computer network. Perlman graduated from MIT and holds a Bachelors and Masters in Mathematics and a Masters in Computer Science.
Women have an equal contribution to make our daily life easier