When we talk about innovations in technologies, we usually imagine men doing this: Steve Jobs bla bla bla
Women seem to be far from tech world. But what if we tell you that whenever you reach a call center, connect to WiFi in a local coffee shop or simply serf in the Internet — it’s all thanks to a woman?
On this day, we want to tell you about great women and their inventions.
Erna Schneider Hoover
Erna invented the stored program control system: the computer automatically adjusts the speed of receiving a call - this helps to avoid overloading the lines.
The principles of her invention are still used in telecommunications equipment.
Karen Spark Jones
She developed technologies that allowed users to interact with a computer using ordinary words rather than through equations and code. This breakthrough was of great importance for the further development of search engines.
Radia Joy Perlman — Mother of the Internet
Radia was a software developer, network engineer. She invented the spanning tree protocol (STP), which became fundamental to the operation of network bridges.
As a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Perlman took part in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program at MIT's AI Lab. She developed a children's version of the LOGO robotics language, called TORTIS.
Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesle
Hedwig, also known as Hedy Lamarr, is an Austrian and, later on, American film actress and inventor.
In Hollywood, the actress played in more than 55 films. And no one could ever imagine that at the peak of her film career, the girl would suddenly become an inventor, having neither a scientific nor a technical education.
Her patents became the basis for such technologies as WiFi, Bluetooth and CDMA.
Sophie Wilson
In the early 1980s, Wilson expanded the Acorn Atom home computer's BASIC programming language into an improved version for the Acorn Proton. In less than a week, Wilson developed the system, including the board and components and software. This microcomputer contributed to the contract between Acorn and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
Black Girls CODE
Black Girls CODE was founded by Kimberly Bryant in 2011 to improve the pipeline of Black girls in tech, like her daughter Kai, who was then a middle school student.
The organization offers programs in computer programming, coding, and website, robot, and mobile app development to equip African American youth with the skills to work in some of the 1.4 million computer jobs.
ENIAC Girls
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) is the first general-purpose electronic digital computer that was created as part of a secret US Army project during World War II.
The male engineers hired a group of six women called the "ENIAC Girls" to assist with ENIAC programming. There were no books or tutorials back then. Six girls learned the program without any languages or tools, but when they finished, they made the machine calculate ballistic trajectories in a matter of seconds.
While working in Tesla, Mira got interested in AI. In 2016, she became vice president of products and engineering at Leap Motion, which was working on an augmented reality system designed to replace keyboard and mouse hand gestures.
Now she manages a team of over 300 engineers who build ChatGPT and other AI solutions.