10 Women Coders Who Built The Technology We Have Today

Women.

Women are the half of the species but most of them don’t even get half of the recognition they deserve. Same goes for women in coding who basically built the whole concept and got dropped off the pages of the history of technology conveniently and deserve to resurface again. You might be surprised to know that women actually gave up on computer science which was supposedly a feminine profession in those days and for a few decades the stats fell like dominos.

Here are a few of them who have given us the gift of technology.

1. Ada Lovelace, who created the first computer algorithms

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The daughter the prolific British poet Lord Byron, was instigated to study Mathematics as her mother opposed the concept of her daughter also becoming a poet like her father. But guess what? Her poetry became the equations of Mathematics and out of the study of her notes, it appears that she was the first one to conceptualise a working computer which would understand languages about a century before it actually did. She also is the first person to jot down computer algorithms.

 

2. Hedy Lamarr, who invented wireless communication systems

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Hedy Lamarr was more than just a beauty. This yesteryear actress was a talkative and brilliant woman who enjoyed studying with scientists and conversations with them. She is the first person along with George Antheil, a fellow inventor to come up with the wireless communication systems by inventing Spread System Technology in the time of World War II which proved extremely useful for the United states Of America.

 

3. Erna Schneider-Hoover, who invented CCTvs

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You might not know this, but this is the woman who came up with the idea of CCTV cameras (Computerised Television Switching Systems) that you see everywhere these days which have helped us get the crime rates exponentially down or at least get video proof of something wrong happening around us.

 

4. Jean Bartik, who was one of the women, who created the world’s first general computer

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During the World War II, these women were given the task of creating the first electronic general-purpose computers (ENIAC). Jean Jennings Bartik was one of them who explicitly let the world know that they were the creators and should have given the recognition they deserved for their work. They were the computer scientists who worked programmed the whole device and didn’t even get invited for the success party dinner.

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^The other women, the first programmers, on the project holding the parts of the computer.

 

5. Grace Hopper, who created the first programming language which recognised words

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This is the women you’d credit for the one the first programming language COBOL which used words instead of numbers. She went on to be a credited army personnel and is not just the heritage of the US but to the world of coding.

 

6. Margaret Hamilton, who wrote code for Apollo by hand

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She is the lone woman who worked on America’s virgin moon landing attempt and wrote code by hand for Apollo and created the world’s first software.

 

7. Barbara Liskov, who created the first object oriented programming language

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This woman wrote the world’s first object-oriented programming language, CLU and went on to write the extension of CLU for distributed programs named Argus. She is also credited with the generation of an object-oriented Database System named Thor.

 

8. Radia Perlman, who created Ethernet

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This woman is the creator of the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and innovating Ethernet that we seem to use every day. She is also known as the Mother of Internet.

 

9. Roberta Williams, who created the video game King’s Quest

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One of the pioneers in video gaming, she created one of the most loved video games of all time King’s Quest which is also one of the first video games created. She also found Sierra On-line, the reputed video game, and entertainment company.

 

10. Susan Kare, who created the interface of Apple’s first Mac

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Susan Kare is one of those people on the core team of Apple and is responsible for the development of the Apple interface for the Macintosh. After Apple, she continued designing for neXT, a design company whose clients were the giants like IBM and continued to leave her mark in every technological giant.

Remember and thank these women every time you open your laptop or check your phone.

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