WOMEN WITH TECHNOLOGY

The foundations of technology are based on programming and electronics. Many people think that both these fields are male-dominated, or women had started emerging as experts only in the present. But looks can be deceiving. The early contributions of women are so significant that advancement in these fields wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

ROMANCING COMPUTERS

Many of us have heard about the programming language Ada. It is one of the structured and elegant computer languages which has been popularly used for many years. But what most of us aren’t aware is that this language was named after the person who laid the foundations of programming, by the name of Ada Lovelace. And yes, Ada Lovelace was a woman. Ada Lovelace wrote an algorithm for Charles Babbage’s computer, which was effectively the first computer program.

MATHEMATICS

One of the fastest human calculators is an Indian called Shakuntala Devi. Her feats which included multiplying two thirteen digit numbers and reporting the answer in a mere 28 seconds and providing the thirteenth root of 201. Such amazing arithmetic athletics won her a place in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1982. She was also the pioneering Indian author who wrote on the topic of homosexuality and suggested that its acceptance rather than intolerance would be beneficial for the society.

SPACE PROGRAMMING

Neil Armstrong and his crew from Apollo 11 were the first ones on the Moon, with Neil Armstrong performing the first walk on the Moon. But do we actually know the technicians who made that possible? The development of the entire on-board flight software was supervised by Margaret Heafield Hamilton from Indiana USA. The spacecraft took the astronauts back and forth from the Moon, the first and only crew to have accomplished such a feat.

Truly, these achievements just goes on to prove the essential fact over and over again:  apart from learning to implement technologies, women have also proved their roles in being pioneers over their male counterparts in various fields.