Celebrating Women in Tech

Tomorrow (Saturday, March 8) is International Women’s Day. Agility CMS celebrates the bright brilliance and amazing accomplishments of women across all fields – including technology.

At the forefront or behind the scenes, women have been shaping tech for decades with fearlessness. They’ve looked at the seemingly impossible and said, “I think we can change that.”

And they did.

They’re pioneers. They’re leaders. They’re the past, present, and future of technology.

Blazing Trails Where None Existed

• It took Ada Lovelace’s imagination – in 1843! – that machines designed to perform simple calculations could do much more if given the proper instructions. Today, that concept is the foundation of modern computing and programming.
• It took Hedy Lamarr’s persistence in the 1940s – when she wasn’t starring in Hollywood films – to develop technology that enabled radio communications to hop from frequency to frequency, preventing enemy forces from jamming or intercepting radio-controlled torpedoes during World War II. That breakthrough set the foundation for today’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology.
• It took Grace Hopper’s vision in the 1950s to recognize that computers could be programmed using human-readable instructions rather than raw machine code using something called a compiler. Ever worked with COBOL, or read a computer instruction manual?  You can thank her as she developed both.
• It took Margaret Hamilton’s dedication in the 1960s to fulfill JFK’s goal of “…landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” She developed software as tall as her to help navigation systems prioritize critical tasks (something that directly prevented the moon landing from being aborted). She coined the term “software engineering.” She helped land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth.

The names are endless. They saw problems. They identified solutions. They changed the world.

Leading Today Into Tomorrow

• Ever bookmark a page on a web browser? Janet Walker worked on bookmarking features in the Symbolics Document Examiner, an 8,000 page document. This concept of saving and returning to pages later influenced bookmarks in web browsers.
• Enjoy playing your favorite arcade (do those still exist) video games at home? Brenda Laurel contributed to the transition of arcade games to home computers in the 1970s. Her work in game design and inclusivity – girls play video games too! – helped shape today’s gaming experiences.
• Like how your smartphone tells you whose calling before you answer? You can thank Shirley Ann Jackson, whose pioneering telecommunications research paved the way for technologies like caller ID and call waiting – which we can’t imagine living without.
• Tapping to open an app? Dragging and dropping? Pointing and clicking? The drop-down menu? Adele Goldberg and Diana Merry established the idea of using icons, menus, and windows to navigate and interact with computers, smartphones, and touchscreens. You may know it better as a Graphical User Interface.

From brilliant breakthroughs to everyday innovations, women in tech have shaped our daily lives. And the purpose of this blog is to recognize some of them.

Why Women in Tech Make a Difference

Agility CMS salutes all women in tech. They’re Developers and programmers. Engineers and builders. Visionaries and leaders.

Women bring fresh ideas and perspectives to tech. These ideas and perspectives foster collaboration and creativity. That collaboration and creativity develop technology to serve people all over the planet.

Finally, you can thank Radia Perlman for helping you read this on the web. She developed the Spanning Tree Protocol, which is instrumental in stabilizing Internet connections and boosting the reliability of Wi-Fi or wired connections.