Finding Ada Lovelace Day

So! Today is the day to celebrate Women In Technology. I don't know if you are aware of the story, but basically...

“I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same.”

— Suw Charman-Anderson (contact)

details and history here:
http://findingada.com/blog/2009/01/05/ada-lovelace-day/

Now, I'm going to write a little blog in my usual place about Delia Derbyshire, but I thought that, as well as write a pissy little blog that no one ever reads - this would be a good topic for an ILX thread today.

1) If you are a woman. Describe your experiences of technology? define Technology how you like. You're on the internet, you must have *some* technological awareness. (Photography, amplified music - remember, these things involve technology, too.)

2) If you are a man that just wants to participate in the thread anyway, describe a woman that you know or admire, and their experiences in the field of technology.

For my dayjob (when I have a dayjob) I'm an MI Analyst. This involves a half and half mixture of maths and programming. My technological career stared by accident - I was working as a data entry operator, to support my musical career (ha!) when I discovered that with a little bit of basic scripting and a little bit of, erm, rummaging around in the database, I invented a little widget that made the process 10x faster. This was discovered by the bosses - half of them wanted to sack me, the other half, quite wisely, wanted to promote me. I got a job as a database programmer and never looked back. I have no formal training beyond the bits of Basic my dad taught me as a wee girl. My whole professional life has been spent with my elbows in the back end of a database and a manual on my knee.

I suppose it was inevitable, then, that my musical bent would also move towards the technological. It felt a bit strange to be working these hi-tech jobs during the day, and then being a musical luddite at night, playing the most primitive forms of music - garage rock and drone rock. Over the years, my musical horizons broadened. When shoegaze happened, I leapt on board with all the effects processors I could pile on. I started to learn more about the technology of music - I did a studio engineering course and a course in electronic music at art school - and, quite simply, because I was the only person I knew with a 4-track, often ended up producing demo tapes for local bands.

About five years ago, I finally made the leap to making electronic music. Again, completely self taught, haphazard, accidental, like the rest of my life. But it made sense.

Anyway, that's me. What about you?

Not wishing to highjack the thread Kate, but have you heard ‘Ada’ the techno artist? One of her tracks is even called ‘Lovelace’. Recommended.

My wife is soon to complete her PhD in educational technology, and is currently researching using embedded tehnology in clothing to help people who are recovering from a stroke so here’s to her!

Don't know the artist, but I will check her out. Seems an appropriate anthem for the day!

That's amazing, what your wife is researching.

So it's true. There are no women on ILX any more. :-(

Outside of the WC threads, there's not many no.

Well, it's in the Guardian, so I'm sure the usual haters will be along to rip this to pieces:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/mar/24/ada-lovelace-day

There are women but they're too busy shopping and doing the washing to post.

Clearly they're too busy UPDATING THEIR BLOGS today.

> I'm sure the usual haters will be along to rip this to pieces

/me waves

there is one (1) female (out of about 40) in the development shed here. which is terrible.

What's a development shed?

Not somewhere to meet women for sure.

Apparently not

Well, I'm afraid that I'm not very technological myself. I did once try to learn C++, but failed. Would probably be better at programming now I've completed a philosophy degree, but other things get in the way. Having said that, I do have a great fascination with the possibilities of technology, and try to keep up with knowledge of what's happening in a large number of fields, even if I can't actually pioneer it myself.

Myself and a couple of female friends did at one point start a robot club called Vladimir Robotnik's Knitting Circle (as a kind of piss-take of the 'stitch'n'bitch' scenes, which I can't stand... also, boys were more than welcome). But the other founder member, who was the only one who could actually do electronics, moved away shortly before I did, so we never got further than a refresher course in making a basic circuit.

I am going to try to train myself *properly* in the ways of synthesis at some point, seeing as I've been playing synths for over 11 years and am still clueless about almost everything except, uhhh, 'this makes a good noise'.

Also! In order not to go completely against the thrust of this thread, which is women who *are* technological, rather than me who is rubbish, I do think massive respect should be paid to Daphne Oram, who created some amazing sounds in the course of her career.

(all the developers here work in the one building, the admin staff in the other. they keep adding more desks and more people so we're feeling a bit like battery chickens. plus it's an old laundry building, open plan, looks a bit like a big shed)

"Radioactivity
Is in the air for you and me
Radioactivity
Discovered by Madame Curie"

and don't forget Maddalena Fagandini

all three interviewed here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060517133312/http://www.sonicartsnetwork.org/ARTICLES/ARTICLE2000JoHutton.html

I keep trying to think of more women who fit the bill, but my head is full of radical politics women, and no sciency women.

Another musical inventor: Wendy Mae Chambers, of Car Horn Organ fame.

Eliane Radigue. Pauline Oliveros.

http://www.synthmuseum.com/magazine/magimgs/carpix04.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

all the programmers at bletchley park, the people setting up the machines for each run, were women

http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.9960

Yeah, my great-Aunt worked at Bletchley Park doing that!

http://www.newenglandfilm.com/files/images/big-lamarr.jpg

... ideas on Frequency-hopped Spread Spectrum formed the basis of modern spread-spectrum communication technology.

And the programming team for ENIAC in the 1940s were all women - the guys did the prestigious job of inventing the hardware, and then a group of six female maths graduates were drafted in from a larger group of women employed to draw up tables of ballistic trajectory calculations by hand to figure out how to get the computer to do them instead, piecing how it worked together without manuals or guides from the inscrutable scribbles of hardware logic diagrams, and then cranking thousands of calculations through every day, which at that time didn't involve typing but rerouting cables in giant modular patchbays.

Here's a link to a picture of Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli working on the pre-ENIAC Differential Analyzer, here's Jean Bartik working on ENIAC, and here are a couple of articles, and a slightly techier piece.

(Apologies for any inaccuracies in this post, as it's been a while since I read up on this stuff. I enjoyed this book, if anyone's interested in a fairly light and readable history of this sort of thing.)

i'm enjoying this thread & plan to read the guardian article on lovelace when i grab a moment - just wanted to pop in and second the recommendation of ada the techno artist.

and to jump off from that, to rep for other female electronic producers. in techno, it's noticeable that even though there are disproportionately fewer female producers, the ones who do have a profile tend to be pretty powerful bosswomen within the scene - ellen allien, mia (not that one), anja schneider and ada all own or co-own their own record labels (respectively: bpitch control, sub static, mobilee, areal), while cassy is a resident dj at probably the most important techno club on the planet. they all have really distinct personal sounds, too, which isn't that common in techno, though i don't know whether that's to do with them being women.

other female producers: ikonika in dubstep, cooly g in uk funky, missy elliott in hip-hop/r&b (she never got as much credit for her production work as timbaland, though i guess no one really knows who did what in their partnership).

Sonia Pottinger!

http://www.rounderstore.com/images/catalog/1166175842_0.JPG

great pictures of old computers

(i cut out a review of that book at the time after seeing it in the paper / hearing the radio program(?) and then did nothing about it. is now on my amazon wishlist 8) )

I wish I had the money to get a bus pass and be at the Science Museum today... Ada in front of the Difference Engine (apparently):

http://twitpic.com/2ek09

koogs: sadly the book is rather short on pictures, but I found the text interesting, though there may not be much which is new to you. I got mine cheap from a remainder bookshop last year, so you might be able to find one cheaper than Amazon if you're lucky.

When I studied computing at university there were 100 undergrads in my year, and 4 were female; out of those plus two I knew from other years, they all decided on leaving that computing was not for them. And that was before we even knew what commercial IT was like - from what friends tell me, it sounds like a circle of hell, really. Being obliged to work 60+ hour weeks on a 37-hour payslip because everyone else does and you won't last long if you don't? No thanks, really.

(Friends in those environments all have no female coworkers. I've worked two IT "academic support" jobs for a university, where you get flogged a little less, and there've been other women around in both.)

Being obliged to work 60+ hour weeks on a 37-hour payslip because everyone else does and you won't last long if you don't? No thanks, really.

I have worked at those places. And I have gone "I'M NOT DOING THAT!" and eventually someone goes "well, no-one has to", and things change....

I think that's been a big part of my problem, in my actual career - that I never have been able to work in those kinds of environments. I've always done so much better in places where I have been "the IT department" or "the MI department" all on mine own. I've actually turned around and walked out of those kind of programming shed sort of places.

But, erm anyway, I suddenly decided that, as much as I love Delia Derbyshire, actually, I really wanted to do my blog about Henrietta Leavitt.

I've always admired Jocelyn Bell for discovering pulsars, even if her (male) supervisor got the Nobel Prize for it. But that is science rather than technology.

This is neat. I never knew of Ada Lovelace (other than knowing that Lord Byron had an estranged daughter) or her contribution to tech, but this is probably the fifth reference I've seen to her today. Good job, internet and Kate.

There's a list of blogs involved in this here. Loads of interesting stuff.

Suzanne Ciani plays the Buchla Electric music box:

http://www.sevwave.com/ciani/movies/buchla.mov

Phew! I've managed to get it in, just an hour and a half under the deadline. Yay, procrasturbation.

I should have written about Henrietta Leavitt. There are 5 blogs about Derbyshire. But hey, she's freaking cool and I loved her more for doing research on her, and finding out the story behind the incredible music.

Ha ha, the other posts are great, much better than mine. I had forgotten she invented a synthesier called "The WOBBULATOR."

That's so great.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/63/Elsie_macgill_graduation.jpg

Elsie "Queen Of The Hurricanes" MacGill. First woman in Canada to get a degree in electrical engineering and the first female aircraft designer anywhere. She designed trainer airplanes in 1930s and was the chief designer at CC&F when they got the contract to build Hawker Hurricanes for the RAF. CC&F ended up building one out of every ten Hurricane and MacGill herself redesigned the plane for cold weather operations. After WWII, she went on to work for the ICAO and eventually became the first woman ever to chair a UN committee. She also did all this after she was crippled by polio.

There was a comic book published about her too:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4e/Queen_of_the_Hurricanes.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_MacGill

I think it's a mega shame that Elsie MacGill didn't make an appearance anywhere in my Canadian grade school education. Maybe it was just the schools I attended or the provincial curriculum but it took until university for me to learn about her, and I was disappointed that it had taken so long.

My own technological skills are uninspiring, unless being good at video games counts, so my contribution to thread will be Valentina Tereshkova. She wasn't really technical either, came from a poor family and all, but nonetheless was the first woman put in space. She later went on to earn a doctorate in engineering.

HELLO it's Ada Lovelace Day again!

Please celebrate your local Woman In Technology most mightily - and write a blog if you please.

it was international womens' day less than a month ago. c'mon ladies, stop hogging all the limelight... 8)

last year:
> there is one (1) female (out of about 40) in the development shed here. which is terrible.

0 this year. she left to visit india, never came back.

i worked in a place where the IT person was female

it was ok, could have been better

> I've always admired Jocelyn Bell for discovering pulsars, even if her (male) supervisor got the Nobel Prize for it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/25/astronomy-revolution

I remain the only female in the IT department here, but meh, whatchagonnadoo?

I wonder if all the nurses who operate the whizzygig laser treatments and the like think of themselves as being "in technology" in any way.

I wanted to write about my Scientist Granny for my blog. But in trying to google her, I discovered there is actually a memorial to my Scientist Grandfather around the corner from where I work.

(had a look at the website and middle clicked a bunch of the names to read up on later. only to find that the page was just giving me the same list again in my newly opened tabs. = poor. if you click on the main list it gets replaced with the sublist of blogs for that name. but this list is a lot smaller so you have to scroll back to the top. and from there there's no way of getting back to the main list...)

The site is experiencing a lot of trouble due to traffic! I'm trying to upload my blog onto it, but I can't even get into it! It's been up and down all day - think they just didn't expect the response and the traffic load that they are getting!

Which is a good sign in one way, even if frustrating.

Oh, this was today? I vaguely meant to get some thoughts together on a related subject, but no time.

i thought the whole of the new series of Beautiful Minds on bbc4 was about female scientists, but it appears not to be. first one was about Jocelyn Bell and the aforementioned pulsars.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s0ggv

http://gizmodo.com/5520528/zooey-deschanel-to-hopefully-play-computer-programmer-ada-lovelace

"We talk much of imagination. We talk of the imagination of poets, the imagination of artists etc. I am inclined to think that in general we don't know exactly what we are talking about. Imagination is that which penetrates into the unseen worlds around us, the worlds of science. It is that which feels and discovers what ~is~, the real which we see not, which exists not for our senses. Those who have learned to walk on the threshhold of unknown worlds may then with the fair white wings of imagination hope to soar further into the unexplored world amidst which we live."

Happy Ada Day. :)

Oh, this was today?
― falling while carrying an owl (a passing spacecadet), Wednesday, 24 March 2010 16:18 (1 year ago)

and again!

(wonder why they changed the day)

not sure, though i did read the founder saying she "didn't take lightly" the decision to change it.

Google Doodle today:

https://www.google.com/logos/2012/ada_lovelaces_197th_birthday-991005-hp.jpg