Where have the women of tech history gone?
summary
Chronicles Ada Lovelace as the origin of programming with early loop and function ideas, Hedy Lamarr patenting frequency hopping (FHSS) in 1942 now underlying Wi‑Fi/Bluetooth, the Harvard “computers” like Annie Jump Cannon classifying 5,000 stars per month, and the six ENIAC operators who assembled, wired and debugged the machine rather than just “pressed switches.” Grace Hopper authors a 521-page manual, builds the A-0 compiler, and pushes for a universal language that becomes COBOL; Karen Sparck Jones publishes TF‑IDF in 1964. Charts show a sharp drop in women CS majors after the 1981 PC era.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Introduction and personal story
- 3:15Women in early computing
- 8:13Harvard computers and astronomy
- 10:24Women as early coders
- 13:20ENIAC and its female programmers
- 16:32Hedy Lamarr’s tech legacy
- 18:23Decline of women in CS
- 21:20Impact of personal computers
- 24:10Women in AI and NLP
- 26:42Women in cybersecurity
- 28:46Conclusion and call to action
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