Until 1984, the percentage of computer science graduates who were women was accelerating just as rapidly as in the fields of medicine or law. Then contrary to the continuing upward trend in medicine and law, the percentage of female graduates in computer science nosedived. Because Maine has a markedly worse gender gap than the national average, Gizmo Garden explored the following questions, and what we learned informs all of our projects:
Meet these Women Pioneers of Computer Science
Ada, Countess of Lovelace - Published first program for a mechanical computer.
Eniac Girls - First programmers of the pioneering ENIAC digital vacuum tube computer (via hardwiring).
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper - Invented first computer compiler, allowing programming in a modern computer language rather than 1's and 0's.
Dorothy Vaughan - First at NASA to figure out how to program IBM's transistor-based 7090 computer using punchcards.
Margaret Hamilton - Developed on-board flight control software for the Apollo lunar landing.