Tag: Pioneers in Tech
Pioneers in Tech: Happy birthday to “Killer App” creator Dan Bricklin
Spreadsheet jockeys of the world, be sure to raise a glass this weekend to toast Dan Bricklin, born July 16, 1951, the co-creator of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program for personal computers.
Pioneers in Tech: Lynn Conway’s story
For this week’s Pioneers in Tech, Lynn Conway is in the spotlight. Lynn, a 2014 Computer History Museum fellow, belongs on any list of technology pioneers for her work alone. Working at Xerox PARC, she invented scalable design rules for VLSI...
Pioneers in Tech: Ajay Bhatt, co-inventor of USB technology
For this week’s Pioneers in Tech, we’re looking into the story of the USB. Like so many now-ubiquitous innovations, USB technology has a fascinating origin story you probably don’t know—and it might make you think twice about the “old” USB...
Pioneers in Tech: John Roach and the story of the TRS-80
In this week’s edition of Pioneers in Tech, we’re highlighting legendary business executive John Roach. On March 20, 83-year-old John Roach died in his beloved Fort Worth, Texas, where he was a titan of the community. His legacy goes far...
Pioneers in Tech: Annie Easley, “human computer” to diversity champion
As we transition from Black History Month to Women’s History Month, it’s hard to think of a more inspiring group of technology pioneers than the Black women who worked as “human computers” at NASA. Only a few of their stories...
Pioneers in Tech: Anita Borg, Champion of Women in STEM
In 1992, Mattel made a big mistake with one of its flagship products. Teen Talk Barbie featured a computer chip, with each doll programmed to say four of 270 phrases. One of the phrases was the ill-conceived “Math class is...
Pioneers in Tech: Evelyn Boyd Granville, Another Hidden Figure
Although not featured in the popular film, mathematician Evelyn Boyd Granville surely deserves acclaim alongside Katherine Johnson and the other “Hidden Figures” we’ve celebrated in previous installments of Pioneers in Tech. Granville was the second African American woman to earn...
Pioneers in Tech: Mary Golda Ross, Native American aerospace engineer
In 1958, the panel and host of the game show “What’s My Line?” didn’t know what to make of Mary Golda Ross. Through a series of yes or no questions, the panelists—which included the actor Jack Lemmon—deduced that Ross had...
Pioneers in Tech: Agnes Meyer Driscoll, World War Codebreaker
Cybersecurity is one of the most in-demand career fields today, with nearly 465,000 open jobs in the industry as of October 2021. These positions —cybersecurity analyst, penetration and vulnerability tester, etc.— have their roots in the work of Agnes Meyer...
Pioneers in Tech: Luis von Ahn turns everyone into a crowdsourcer
Depending on your point of view, a CAPTCHA or a reCAPTCHA is either an annoyance (who can read those fuzzy letters, anyway?) or a boon to security, preventing fake account creation, spam commenting, fraudulent transactions, and more. But did you...
