Re: The Innovators

On 2015-03-01 17:02, Jed Donnelley wrote:
> cap-talk,
>
> I just finished reading "The Innovators" by Walter Isaacson:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/dp/147670869X/
>
> You might know the author from his biographies of Albert Einstein and/or
> Steve Jobbs.  I really enjoyed this book and recommend it, particularly
> for anybody with any interest in technology, especially computer and
> communication technologies.
>
> Much of the book focuses on teams that complimented each other.  Just to
> share one anecdote that surprised me - all the earliest programmers were
> women.  It seems this "tradition" started because all the early
> "calculators" were women - seemingly a low prestige profession.
>
> The first pairing was Charles Babbage and ada Lovelace.  Babbage
> invented the "difference engine" which was built and put to use, but he
> then went on to invent an "analytical engine" that was really the first
> programmable computer design.  It was Ada Lovelace who realized how to
> program that computer.  The notes she left made this clear, e.g.:
>
> http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html


https://web.archive.org/web/20060828131648/http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1999/03/16feature2.html
"All of the programs cited in her notes," he writes, "had been prepared 
by Babbage from three to seven years earlier."