Ada Lovelace — The countess of computing; and the untold stories behind pioneers of the modern computer #CSci3921w

Hello World! Throughout the many centuries behind the development of modern day computers, many voices were integral contributions to the field, such as Ada Lovelace. Unfortunately many voices of marginalized origin were ignored at the time, and have only started being told recently.

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

The history of modern computing dates all the way back to the 1600’s, when John Napier proposed the logarithm, leading to the creation of the slide rule, which could be thought of as an early analog computer*. Such analog computers provided ways of quickly preforming complex calculations, however analog computers can only be built with one purpose, and it wasn’t until our protagonist, Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage joined forces to work on the “Difference Engine” in the 1800’s that programmable computers, like the ones we use today, were invented.

printf("
The contributions of Ada Lovelace were centered around programming\n
many even consider her to be the first programmer, thanks to her creation\n
of an algorithm to compute bernouli's numbers using the difference machine.\n
However, lacking financial support, in a desperate attempt to gather funds,\n
Ada went into thousands of dollars of debt betting on horse races,\n
and the difference machine was not created in her lifetime,\n
so she never got to test her algorithm in practice.\n
");

(* source: https://interestingengineering.com/culture/a-brief-history-of-computing-and-the-web-from-17th-century-computers-to-todays-digital-empires)

Not long after the time of Ada Lovelace and the “Difference Engine,” an African American Inventor by the name of Granville T. Woods, invented the induction telegraph, a technology which allowed communication by voice over long distances via telegraph lines, which was integral to the development of the telephone, and eventually the internet. However Wood’s patent of the invention was purchased by Alexander Graham Bell who received most of the credit for the telephone, after legal action was taken against Woods in an attempt to take his patent forcefully.

Skipping forward a couple decades to the 1940’s, the Ballistic Research Laboratory in Pennsylvania required intelligent mathematicians to program their new “Electronic calculator,” and selected six women: Kathleen McNulty, Frances Bilas, Betty Jean Jennings, Ruth Lichterman, Elizabeth Snyder, and Marlyn Wescoff as operators for the machine. These operators programmed the machine to preform nuclear fusion calculations, which the physicists behind project Manhattan relied upon. Despite the amount of work put in and success these women had achieved, their stories were for the most part, ignored, and their work was even considered “subprofessional” by many in the field.

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There were many non-traditional historical voices that contributed to the field of computing which were ignored or looked over due to their status as people of marginalized genders or races. Today we can take a second look at the history books, and give the credit for these developments to those who deserve it.