In 1843, Ada Lovelace wrote the first paper on computer science, including the earliest complete computer program.
Reading about Ada Lovelace’s life, it really made me believe that she gained that craziness, poetic, creative power in her blood. As someone who knows very little about computer science, my limited knowledge can’t even process the fact that the interface everyone has access to—the interface I’m writing this blog with, the frame that’s supporting it behind the interface—is only functions and numbers.
When people still never associated imagination with science, logic, or mathematics, Ada Lovelace saw the essential, abstract foundation, and merged the boundary between them, then found a way to create a system that can process any information. In the author’s words, “What was certainly Lovelace’s original realization was to be the essential root of computer science: that by manipulating symbols according to rules, any kind of information, not only numbers, can be operated on by automatic processes. [The Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine.”
And her work is the foundational theory of everything humans can create with the digital world.
Decades later, in 1915, Lillian Gilbreth received the first Ph.D. in industrial psychology. She was the first woman inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
Empathy is the core quality of being a good designer nowadays. And user experience is seen as an important part of any service or product design. But back in the era Lillian Gilbreth lived in, the computer industry didn’t even exist yet. Workers were treated horribly, and female workers especially faced discrimination in society.
She had already conducted forward-looking research on user-centered design, and put so much empathy into the worker’s rights.
Lillian Gilbreth and Ada Lovelace showed what women can do when given a chance. The article recounts how Lillian Gilbreth was repeatedly shut out by society and academia due to her gender throughout her life. After enduring countless injustices and disappointments, she repeatedly seized new opportunities through her exceptional academic achievements. When people talk about computer science, people don’t talk about Ada Lovelace.
I cannot comprehend how many women throughout history were locked out of mainstream society by such rejections, confined to kitchens and nurseries for their entire lives.
Lillian Gilbreth and Ada Lovelace were both ahead of the time they lived in. Moreover, society at that time was not ready for their great achievements—much less ready to acknowledge that these monumental achievements were made by a woman. This inevitably leads me to question our present era: is it ready now?