Technology Timeline

By MJH
  • The worlds first programmer

    The worlds first programmer
    Ada Lovelace was a English mathematician and writer. She wrote notes, published papers and studied Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine describing his machine as a computer with additional notes outlining software. With this she made an machine algorithm for a computer which existed only on paper. She realized that the computer would be able to carry out a sequence of mathematical sequences, for ex how to calculate Bernoulli numbers.
  • The Clarke Calculator

    The Clarke Calculator
    Edith Clarke was a pioneer in electrical engineering and with her use of math improved our understanding of power transmission. Her invention the Calculator (1921) was a graphical device that simplified the equations electrical engineers used to understand power lines. The device could solve line equations involving hyperbolic functions ten times faster than previous methods. Edith Clarke was the first female professor of electrical engineering in the US her calculator helped many engineers.
  • The base of modern wireless technology

    The base of modern wireless technology
    Hedy Lamarr was an actress and because she found it boring on the side she became an inventor. Her most notable inversion occurred during the second world war when she discovers that the guidance systems on american torpedoes were easily jammeble. This lead her to, together with George Antheil 1941, crated a system of frequently hopping signals that could not be jammed. This invention was a precursor to today's Wi-Fi, bluetooth and GPS.
  • Dorothy Johnson Vaughan

    Dorothy Johnson Vaughan
    Dorothy Johnson Vaughan was a mathmatichan and is well known for being a "human computer" at NACA (1943) and later learned the coding language FORTAN. She was the first African-american supervisor and one of few female supervisors at NASA, making her an icon and helping future engineers in the field. She learned the coding langouage due to NASA starting to use more electronic computers. This lead Vaughan to learn and teach the FORTAN programming to her coworkers (during the 1960's).
  • Gladys West

    Gladys West
    Gladys West was a mathmatican and her most notible accomplishment is her contribution to GPS technology with her calculations of the worlds surface. When employed at the military base Naval Support Facility Dahlgren (1956) she worked as a computer and calculated the orbits of satellites. She used this data to crate altimeter models of the Earth's shape (early 1960's). She continued with several more projects such as the Seasat radar altimetry project and programmed an IBM 7030 Stretch.
  • Grace Hopper, the Queen of software

    Grace Hopper, the Queen of software
    Grace Hopper was a US navy officer and computer pioneer. She is most known for her contributions to computer siance (such as computer programing, software development, and programming langouage). Hopper was involved in the invention of the first ever all electronic digital computer, called the UNICAC. Later on she helps co develop the COBOL, one of the earliest computer languages.
  • Adele Goldberg

    Adele Goldberg
    Goldberg is a computer scientist most notably known for helping develop the programming language SmallTalk-80 as well as concepts object-oriented programming when reaserching Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, in the 1970s. SmallTalk was used to create one of the first modern graphics user interfaces (GUIs), this included windows, icons, menus, and pointers (WIMP). The SmallTalk program is a big influence to several other object-oriented languages such as Java, Python and Ruby.
  • Radia Perlman

    Radia Perlman
    Radia Perlman was a mathematician and was one of the only females in her field being one of 50 female students of 1000 when studying at MIT. With her inversion of the Spanning Tree Protocol (or STP) she greatly helped create the internet and got the nickname "mother of the internet". She does not like this title however. She has also helped in other areas of network design and standardization, like link-state routine protocol and TRILL.