The Women Who Helped Build the Internet
The women who helped build the internet
Lydia Wozniak
+ other creative things
Software Engineer
Why?
But, who?
Packet Switching: Donald Davies
ARPANET: Robert Taylor, Lawrence Roberts
TCP/IP: Robert E. Khan, Vint Cerf
WWW: Tim Berners-Lee
Elizabeth 'Jake' Feinler
FORTRAN
C AREA OF A TRIANGLE - HERON'S FORMULA
C INPUT - CARD READER UNIT 5, INTEGER INPUT, ONE BLANK CARD FOR END-OF-DATA
C OUTPUT - LINE PRINTER UNIT 6, REAL OUTPUT
C INPUT ERROR DISPAY ERROR MESSAGE ON OUTPUT
501 FORMAT(3I5)
601 FORMAT(4H A= ,I5,5H B= ,I5,5H C= ,I5,8H AREA= ,F10.2,
$13H SQUARE UNITS)
602 FORMAT(10HNORMAL END)
603 FORMAT(23HINPUT ERROR, ZERO VALUE)
INTEGER A,B,C
10 READ(5,501) A,B,C
IF(A.EQ.0 .AND. B.EQ.0 .AND. C.EQ.0) GO TO 50
IF(A.EQ.0 .OR. B.EQ.0 .OR. C.EQ.0) GO TO 90
S = (A + B + C) / 2.0
AREA = SQRT( S * (S - A) * (S - B) * (S - C) )
WRITE(6,601) A,B,C,AREA
GO TO 10
50 WRITE(6,602)
STOP
90 WRITE(6,603)
STOP
END
ARPANET, 1969
Dot Com
.com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .org, .net
Top Level Domain Names
Patricia Wilcox (previously Crowther)
New York Times, 1972
Mrs. Patricia Crowther of Arlington, Mass., a 29‐year‐old computer programer who is the mother of two daughters, told in an interview of being soaked to the skin, caked with mud “like chocolate frosting” and almost exhausted when the party inched through Hanson's Lost River and into the Mammoth Cave complex last Sept. 9.
"The Tight Spot"
The critical juncture leading to the passages connecting Mammoth Cave and the Flint Ridge Cave System
PDP-1 Mainframe
Teletype Terminal
1972
Colossal Cave
Text Based Adventure Game
Dr Radia Perlman
Spanning-Tree Protocol, 1984
Algorhyme
I think that I shall never see
a graph more lovely than a tree.
A tree whose crucial property
is loop-free connectivity.
A tree that must be sure to span
so packet can reach every LAN.
First, the root must be selected.
By ID, it is elected.
Least-cost paths from root are traced.
In the tree, these paths are placed.
A mesh is made by folks like me,
then bridges find a spanning tree.
Still in use today...
Why?
Professor Dame Wendy Hall DBE FRS FREng MAE FIET
Microcosm
Cern's WWW
First Website
Link Rot
"across major social media platforms 30% of shared links are totally dead within two years"
Web Science Research Initiative
More women in computing history?
Role Models are Important!
“One of the best ways to elevate your character is to emulate worthy role models.” — Epictetus
Thank you!
Slides: Twitter @LydiaMoo
Dame Vera Stephanie 'Steve' Shirley
Freelance Programmers Ltd, opened its doors in 1962, they hired remote women workers to carry out software engineering.
Margaret Hamilton
Director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo space program. The Apollo code ->
Katie Bouman
Led the creation of a new algorithm to produce the first-ever image of a black hole
Role Models are Important!
“One of the best ways to elevate your character is to emulate worthy role models.” — Epictetus
Useful Links
Thank you
twitter @LydiaMoo for slides
The Women Who Helped Build the Internet
By Lydia
The Women Who Helped Build the Internet
Throughout the 20th century women held a lot of technological responsibility but, often are not credited for their contributions. This is an alternative history of the internet and shares the stories of women who helped create it.
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