1. Happy Ada Day! Two Truths and a Lie Celebrating
Women Pioneers in Computer Science
2nd Tuesday in October
Two Truths and a Lie

2. What’s the Lie? Raised by grandmother after abandonment by parents
Loved watching fish and constructed fins to help herself swim
Vice was gambling on horse races

3. LIE Raised by grandmother after abandonment by parents
Loved watching fish and constructed fins to help herself swim
Vice was gambling on horse races
LIE

4. Countess Ada of Lovelace (1815-1852)
Loved watching birds and as a child tried to engineer wings so she could fly.
Born Lady Ada, daughter of poet Lord Byron
Created the first computer algorithm

5. The US Navy destroyer named after her was built in Bath, ME
Grew up playing hide-and-seek at a lake in New Hampshire
Raised moths for silk & used it in needlepoint
What’s the Lie?

6. LIE The US Navy destroyer named after her was built in Bath, ME
Grew up playing hide-and-seek at a lake in New Hampshire
Raised moths for silk & used it in needlepoint
LIE

7. Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (1906-1992)
Did enjoy needlepoint, but moth connection is an apocryphal story: her discovery of a moth in a computer relay, hence term “debugging.”
Invented the first compiler

8. What’s the Lie? Learned to code in college
Loved working crossword puzzles
Raised six children

9. LIE Learned to code in college Loved working crossword puzzles
Raised six children
LIE

10. Dorothy Vaughan ( )
When first computer arrived at NASA and nobody knew how to use it, she taught herself to code, then calculated orbital trajectories
NASA’s 1st African American manager, shown played by Octavia Spencer in “Hidden Figures”

11. What’s the Lie? Got her job by a coin toss
Wrote an 11,000- page cookbook
Learned to code for meteorology researchers

12. LIE Got her job by a coin toss Wrote an 11,000- page cookbook
Learned to code for meteorology researchers
LIE

13. Margaret Hamilton (1936-)
Wrote 11,000 pages of control code for the Apollo command capsule and lunar lander
Received Presidential Medal of Freedom

14. What’s the Lie? Has six cell phones
Got hooked on engineering by creating a device to get a balloon down from the ceiling
Started a business out of her dorm room

15. LIE
Has six cell phones
Got hooked on engineering by creating a device to get a balloon down from the ceiling
Started a business out of her dorm room

16. Limor Fried (c )
Founded DIY electronics company having revenues of about $50 million/yr
Named the company Adafruit, in a hat-tip to…

17. Lady Ada
Happy Ada Day!