This page has loads of inaccuracies and misrepresentations. Ada Lovelace did not invent the algorithm, and while she did write about the potential of computers, neither her work nor Charles Babbage's really had much impact on the development of computers. Hedy Lamarr did not even invent frequency-hopping spread-spectrum wireless transmission: she merely (co-)invented a mechanical system for it that afaik never saw any use. (Nowadays we use software-defined radios.) Grace Hopper can be said to have invented the high-level ("English-like") language – and many other contributions besides! –, but she didn't invent compilers.
The first accurate entry seems to be Marie van Brittan Brown's home security system (coinvention), which I didn't know about. Go figure.
Evelyn Berezin's Data Secretary word processor may have been the first dedicated (fixed-function) word processor, but it was not the first computer word processor: Expensive Typewriter for the PDP-1 predates it.
(I'm not going through all of these, but you get the point.)
> But there was one lady at the time in that brainstorming meeting. She graduated from Nara Women's College. She was a software engineering researcher. What she claimed, which was refused by other engineers, was that after a single chip we should think of the fractional numbers. Because at the time the hand-held calculator had four parts: ROM, ROM, RAM, shift registers (S-R), and CPU. What she suggested is to divide the one chip into four parts and connect them to each other, with buffers to bypass. That's a very good idea, Mr. Sasaki said. However, at the time it was criticized by the majority of the members. When they concluded that brainstorming meeting, Sasaki made his judgment based on the majority. He has now admitted that that was a mistake.
> He says that although he gave the idea for the division chip to Busicom, he first tried to persuade Sharp Corporation and Rockwell Corporation. Otherwise, it's no good for business morale. He asked Rockwell to make the four-division chip. However, at that time Rockwell had a big success with the p-type devices, especially the PBS4 or PP54. Whenever you have a success, of course you don't want to change your production line, so Rockwell did not want to get into producing the four-division chip. This is the reason why he gave the idea to Busicom. Busicom's Mr. Kojima had no background in p-type MOS and things like that so it was easier to get them into n-type MOS. That's the beginning of microprocessing. Mr. Sasaki said he respected Bob Noyce because Bob Noyce talked about his success in the development of the microprocessor. Whenever he talked about it, he said he developed it. He never said he invented it. Mr. Sasaki himself also cannot say he invented the microprocessor idea because that was the idea of the lady.
> Do you remember the lady's name?
> He forgot.
This is, perhaps, the story we should be telling about women in computing. Rather than inventing dubious "firsts", we should acknowledge the historical – and ongoing – discrimination that continues to rob (or almost-rob) us of women's contributions, and usually serves to rob them of credit even if we do get to use their work.
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Edit: Really, I have no idea where this list came from. They missed so many obvious choices, like Margaret Hamilton, who literally invented software engineering. (Then again, the impact of this is largely historical: software engineering was influential for a time, but never really took off. Nowadays, we do software development: https://xkcd.com/2021/)
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 28.0 ms ] threadOh no, that old myth again...
The first accurate entry seems to be Marie van Brittan Brown's home security system (coinvention), which I didn't know about. Go figure.
Evelyn Berezin's Data Secretary word processor may have been the first dedicated (fixed-function) word processor, but it was not the first computer word processor: Expensive Typewriter for the PDP-1 predates it.
(I'm not going through all of these, but you get the point.)
And I'm surprised the Intel microprocessor isn't on here. From https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Tadashi_Sasaki:
> But there was one lady at the time in that brainstorming meeting. She graduated from Nara Women's College. She was a software engineering researcher. What she claimed, which was refused by other engineers, was that after a single chip we should think of the fractional numbers. Because at the time the hand-held calculator had four parts: ROM, ROM, RAM, shift registers (S-R), and CPU. What she suggested is to divide the one chip into four parts and connect them to each other, with buffers to bypass. That's a very good idea, Mr. Sasaki said. However, at the time it was criticized by the majority of the members. When they concluded that brainstorming meeting, Sasaki made his judgment based on the majority. He has now admitted that that was a mistake.
> He says that although he gave the idea for the division chip to Busicom, he first tried to persuade Sharp Corporation and Rockwell Corporation. Otherwise, it's no good for business morale. He asked Rockwell to make the four-division chip. However, at that time Rockwell had a big success with the p-type devices, especially the PBS4 or PP54. Whenever you have a success, of course you don't want to change your production line, so Rockwell did not want to get into producing the four-division chip. This is the reason why he gave the idea to Busicom. Busicom's Mr. Kojima had no background in p-type MOS and things like that so it was easier to get them into n-type MOS. That's the beginning of microprocessing. Mr. Sasaki said he respected Bob Noyce because Bob Noyce talked about his success in the development of the microprocessor. Whenever he talked about it, he said he developed it. He never said he invented it. Mr. Sasaki himself also cannot say he invented the microprocessor idea because that was the idea of the lady.
> Do you remember the lady's name?
> He forgot.
This is, perhaps, the story we should be telling about women in computing. Rather than inventing dubious "firsts", we should acknowledge the historical – and ongoing – discrimination that continues to rob (or almost-rob) us of women's contributions, and usually serves to rob them of credit even if we do get to use their work.
---
Edit: Really, I have no idea where this list came from. They missed so many obvious choices, like Margaret Hamilton, who literally invented software engineering. (Then again, the impact of this is largely historical: software engineering was influential for a time, but never really took off. Nowadays, we do software development: https://xkcd.com/2021/)