background preloader

Anita Borg Institute

Anita Borg Institute

The ENIAC Story World Wide Web The world's first electronic digital computer was developed by Army Ordnance to compute World War II ballistic firing tables. By Martin H. Weik, 1961 Ordnance Ballistic Research Laboratories, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD "...With the advent of everyday use of elaborate calculations, speed has become paramount to such a high degree that there is no machine on the market today capable of satisfying the full demand of modern computational methods. As in many other first along the road of technological progress, the stimulus which initiated and sustained the effort that produced the ENIAC (electronic numerical integrator and computer)--the world's first electronic digital computer--was provided by the extraordinary demand of war to find the solution to a task of surpassing importance. Two decades of complete indifference toward military preparedness had witnessed its virtual elimination as a factor of any military consequence in the world. Mr. Up

Mothers of Technology: 10 Women Who Invented and Innovated in Tech Her impact on technology:Largely known as a screen star of the 1920s, Hedy Lamarr proved to be more than just a pretty face. She played a key role in the invention of spread-spectrum technology; specifically, by conceptualizing the idea of frequency hopping, which is a method of sending radio signals from different frequency channels. Lamarr and her co-inventor, George Antheil, developed the technology originally to help the Navy remotely control torpedoes. The two received a patent on their idea on August 11, 1942, according to the American Heritage of Invention & Technology. It was reborn, however, in the late 1950s when engineers at Sylvania Electronic Systems Division revived it, which led to the use of Lamarr’s frequency hopping concept in secure military communications. Where is she now? Her legacy lives on in the world of wireless technologies, and through the continued efforts of her son Anthony Loder. “She was such a creative person.

Carla Meninsky by Allison Bacharach on Prezi Who is the 'Mother of the Internet'? | HowStuffWorks A lot of different people have been called the "father of the Internet," including Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, who invented the Internet protocol suite known as TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). Never heard of those guys? Many people, unless they're really into the history of the Web, probably haven't. There is a woman who has been called the "mother of the Internet." In 1985, Perlman was working for Digital Equipment Corporation, which was trying to solve the problem of file sharing between computers. But Perlman has moved on – she's been working on a protocol to replace STP called TRILL (TRansparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) and improving data security on the Internet.

Women in Technology by Jennie Wood A quick look at the history of technology will reveal that women have been involved from the beginning. Starting with Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer, women have been innovators in technology for years. Here's a closer look at some of the most important women involved in the history and evolution of technology. Ada Lovelace Mathematician, Writer, Computer Programmer Born: December 10, 1815 Died: November 27, 1852 Born Augusta Ada Byron on December 10, 1815, the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabella Byron, Ada Lovelace was a writer and mathematician. Lord Byron separated from his wife and left England when Ada was just four months old. Grace Hopper Computer Scientist, U.S. Along with rising to the rank of Rear Admiral in the United States Navy, Grace Hopper was a computer scientist pioneer. The oldest of three children, Hopper was born in New York City. Hedy Lamarr Hedy Lamarr was an internationally known Austrian-American actor.

Technology Timeline Technology Timeline TimelineHistory Timelines of Events provide fast facts and information about famous events in history, such as those detailed in the Technology Timeline, precipitated a significant change in World history. This major historical event is arranged in the Technology Timeline by chronological, or date order, providing an actual sequence of this past event which was of significance to history. Many historical events, such as detailed in the Technology Timeline, occurred during times of crisis or evolution or change. Many of the famous World events as detailed in the Technology Timeline describe famous, critical and major incidents. Technology Timeline

IBM - Archives - Women in technology "If the bringing of women - half the human race - into the center of historical inquiry poses a formidable challenge to historical scholarship, it also offers sustaining energy and a source of strength." Gerder Lerner, 1982 At IBM women have been making contributions to the advancement of information technology for almost as long as the company has been in existence. Where many companies proudly date their affirmative action programs to the 1970s, IBM has been creating meaningful roles for female employees since the 1930s. This tradition was not the result of a happy accident. Soon IBM had so many women professionals in its ranks that the company formed a Women's Education Division. The tens of thousands of women who have been IBM employees since the 1930s have built upon that foundation, for women now comprise more than 30 percent of the total U.S. employee population. This rich IBM Heritage is showcased in the WIT Timeline. Not sure what plugboards or petaflops are?

Jean Sammet | National Center for Women & Information Technology Background Jean E. Sammet is a retired computer scientist and programmer who is best-known for her work on FORMAC, the first widely used general language and system for manipulating nonnumeric algebraic expressions. Sammet supervised the first scientific programming group for Sperry Gyroscope Co. (1955-1958). She worked at Sylvania Electric Products (1958-1961) in various positions and while there she served as a key member of the original COBOL committee. She joined IBM in 1961 to organize and manage the Boston Programming Center. During the 1970s and 1980s, she worked for IBM’s Federal Systems Division in various positions, emphasizing programming language issues including Ada. Sammet is the author of “PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES: History and Fundamentals,” which became a standard book on its topic, and was called an “instant computer classic” when published in 1969. Sammet has a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. from the University of Illinois, both in Mathematics.

Ada Lovelace: Founder of Scientific Computing Born: London, England, December 10, 1815 Died: London, England, November 27, 1852 Ada Byron was the daughter of a brief marriage between the Romantic poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabelle Milbanke, who separated from Byron just a month after Ada was born. Four months later, Byron left England forever. Ada never met her father (who died in Greece in 1823) and was raised by her mother, Lady Byron. Her life was an apotheosis of struggle between emotion and reason, subjectivism and objectivism, poetics and mathematics, ill health and bursts of energy. Lady Byron wished her daughter to be unlike her poetical father, and she saw to it that Ada received tutoring in mathematics and music, as disciplines to counter dangerous poetic tendencies. Lady Byron and Ada moved in an elite London society, one in which gentlemen not members of the clergy or occupied with politics or the affairs of a regiment were quite likely to spend their time and fortunes pursuing botany, geology, or astronomy.

The History of the ENIAC Computer Updated December 16, 2014. "...With the advent of everyday use of elaborate calculations, speed has become paramount to such a high degree that there is no machine on the market today capable of satisfying the full demand of modern computational methods." - from the ENIAC patent (U.S.#3,120,606) filed on June 26, 1947. The ENIAC I In 1946, John Mauchly and John Presper Eckert developed the ENIAC I (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator). The American military sponsored their research; the army needed a computer for calculating artillery-firing tables, the settings used for different weapons under varied conditions for target accuracy. The Ballistics Research Laboratory, or BRL, the branch of the military responsible for calculating the tables, heard about John Mauchly's research at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering. continue reading below our video Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% Partnership of John Mauchly & John Presper Eckert What Was Inside The ENIAC?

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Chpt. 1) Frederick Engels Socialism: Utopian and Scientific I [The Development of Utopian Socialism] Modern Socialism is, in its essence, the direct product of the recognition, on the one hand, of the class antagonisms existing in the society of today between proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage-workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing in production. The great men, who in France prepared men’s minds for the coming revolution, were themselves extreme revolutionists. We know today that this kingdom of reason was nothing more than the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie; that this eternal Right found its realization in bourgeois justice; that this equality reduced itself to bourgeois equality before the law; that bourgeois property was proclaimed as one of the essential rights of man; and that the government of reason, the Contrat Social of Rousseau, came into being, and only could come into being, as a democratic bourgeois republic. The answer was clear. Notes

Rediscovering Utopia | Betterhumans > Column "Without a vision the people perish."—Proverbs 29:18 The month in which Islamic terrorists inspired by a utopian vision of a pan-Islamic Sultanate blew up 50 Turks and Britons in Istanbul might seem a strange one in which to argue for the importance of the utopian dimension in politics. But decidedly pragmatic and nonutopian militants are also killing Iraqis and Americans in Baghdad as part of a well-financed resistance to American "liberation." People oppress and murder for lots of reasons, and only rarely because they are inspired by a utopian vision. More often, from medieval peasant revolts to Martin Luther King, utopian visions of a freer, more equal and more united future have helped people mobilize against the crushing pragmatic acceptance of day-to-day tyranny and exploitation. But is utopianism really so bad? Transhumanist visions Similarly, eco activist J.P. Levin and the rest are right, of course. Failure of libertopianism Realizing progress Imagining the options

Related: