3 ms·

I knew of Lovelace and Hopper but not the others by name. I do wonder to what extent this is a socioeconomic class thing.

• jacalata 12y ago
  What do you mean?
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
• kps 12y ago
  Before that time, ‘computing’ was considered largely ‘women's work’, along with other clerical tasks like filing and word processing. I'm fond of this photo of a room full of computers, taken sometime between between 1909 and 1932: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/90710989/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/90710989/
  • pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    The "computers" being the people, the machines are computing machines - or more likely here, merely calculating machines. At least that's the early usage in the UK.
• calibraxis 12y ago
  Interesting point! There's one tentative idea that in the 1960-70's, people had the fear that compilers would deskill programming. So you want to protect the profession's wages somehow, like other professionals do. (http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-open-source-identity-crisis http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-open-source-identity-...) Regardless of details, it's obviously useful to make your job seem so arcane that only gifted people can do it. Exploiting cultural prejudices, you'd better have white males (maybe "honorary whites"); otherwise it might seem like anyone can do it. For good measure, they should probably be cismale; after all, Turing was basically killed by the government for transgressing gender roles. (That is, his life made unlivable.)