There may be no topic high-profile women in the Valley tire of more than the question of why there aren’t more high-profile women in the Valley. I’ve written about it for nearly every publication for which I’ve worked. No matter who I talk to, the upshot always seems the same: Most people wish there were more women CEOs in the Valley, the few that do exist hate talking about the topic because they’d rather just be recognized as good CEOs or founders, and people tend to blame the problem on a lack of women in science and math and the lack of a work-life balance when starting a company.
I don’t mean to sound insensitive. There are definitely times my life has been harder as a woman just writing about this scene. But wake me when there’s something new to say.
Still want to obsess about it? Then you should start by reading the new book “Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age,” by Kurt W. Beyer. (Chance to win a free one below!) Hopper was the third programmer on the world’s first computer and lived her life presaging the future. She broke down three gender barriers as a woman in the 1940s: Ivy League academia, the Navy and the business world. You want badass? Hopper was the first woman to get a doctorate degree in mathematics from Yale. In a business that describes an easy UI as something “even your grandmother could understand” Hopper got most of her notoriety looking the part of a central-casting little old lady, knitting needles and all.
You may have seen this older Hopper on 60 Minutes or Late Night with David Letterman, but Beyer tells the story of Hopper’s younger years—demons, challenges, triumphs and all. The book was a painstaking seven-year project for Beyer, who was stunned when he moved to Silicon Valley in the late 1990s and so few people knew of Hopper’s contributions to the tech world. (There’s more from Beyer in the clip below from Press:Here.)
At the taping, I twisted his arm to give us 10 free copies of the book to give away to readers. Leave the name of your favorite unsung tech hero in the comments (male or female) and we’ll pick the ten most heartfelt or original for a free book.
Woz!
Steve Wozniak is my hero. He dances too!
My favorite unsung hero will always be as Jerry Yang..
I mean, Yahoo at 1994 was like the all time God of search-engines.. Well too bad CAROL LOSER BARTZ is now selling yahoo like pizza-slices
I second this! :”)
my favorite unsung tech hero is Richard Stallman, He initiated the free software movement and made possible everything that relies on free software.
Unsung hero? Stallman got plenty of press and a half-million dollar genius grant. I think he’s plenty sung.
Maybe even, too sung, as indicated by the truely awful filk song he wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Song
And also the winner of the Grace Hopper Award. He definitely is not unsung!
It’s tough being a woman…no doubt. I love it when we can take a look back at history to see the major challenges that many men/women went through. Make us appreciate what we have today so much more.
Thanks for sharing!
FYI – favorite unsung tech hero:
Doug Engelbart (inventor of the mouse)
“Engelbart is an early Internet pioneer. In 1969, ARPANET’s first transmission was between nodes at Leonard Kleinrock’s lab at UCLA and Engelbart’s lab at Stanford. A philosopher, scientist and inventor, he’ll always be known as the father of the mouse, which he patented in 1970. He never received any royalties however. His patent expired in 1987, before the personal computer revolution. Today, at 83, he heads the Bootstrap Institute.” (Source: PC World)
I thought the father of THE mouse was… Walt Disney
Yes! We tried to get him to do an interview & featured story, but alas, he’s not doing so well and was unable. I was bummed. I, too, think he’s great and underrated.
I would love to get the Hopper book. Two of my favorite anecdotes about her – she’s reputed to have coined the phrase “it is better to seek forgiveness than ask permission” (often good advice); and to have created an analog clock that ran backwards, with appropriately altered numbers on the dial. Same information, but made that way to encourage people to think outside the box.
I don’t have somebody new to add, hence adding to the original post. I also recommend Douglas Engelbart. See this link (http://www.sri.com/engelbart-event.html) for something about the man, including a transcribed video from 1968 (!!!!!) with Engelbart demoing technology that he created that foreshadowed the entire modern computer age, including GUI’s, mice, and word processing.
Html5 video please?
Sorry – you’ll have to use something other than your pre-release iPad to view it.
The technology industry requires much of those involved in developing it into the future. It is not within the abilities of most women to excel in such an environment. Better they should concentrate on raising the next generation of bright, male engineers. This is a job of which they can be proud as every male engineer owes his mother a great debt.
That’s a horible thing to say and it’s exactly this attitude that keeps women away. You should be ashamed. And if I’m not mistaken, men can also raise children.
Yes, women can’t excel because we are dumbshits. It doesn’t have anything to do with opportunity or oppression.
Yet you still want us to raise your male engineers? I wouldn’t want an idiot raising my kid.
Women should stick to cooking, cleaning, being men’s sex objects and labor slaves. They need to know their place, right Khalil?
What year is it again???
No, let’s really listen to what Khalil is saying. Because he’s right. We really should distribute roles according to biological disposition. How about we put the ones with the higher synapse connection count and advanced social abilities in charge of managing companies, communities and countries. After all, they’re the ones best equipped by nature to see the big picture. And the ones with the higher muscle count, lets put them in charge of the physically exhausting jobs of executing construction plans and maintaining supply lines. After all, they’re the ones with the best abilities to excel in such an environment.
Hm, I think it was not in Khalil’s abilities to understand his own argument.
Here’s a female perspective on the subject: How about we start moving into the future by giving each job to the most qualified human based on personal performance.
Are you fucking kidding me?!
Ada Lovelace is clearly the creator of rudimentary programming as we know it, yet no few know of her either. In fact, if I recall correctly, many of the early programmers were women.
Barbara Liskov – the first woman to get a phd in computer science
Thanks for bringing this up! I always feel for those who have accomplished so much but never really gotten that acknowledgement and recognition.
My favorite unsung hero would be Vic Hayes, founder of WiFi. It was not impossible living with wired connections but guess what, wireless has got us going places. I can’t imagine sitting in a Starbucks looking for an ethernet port. And now the wireless technology has been taken to the next level with wireless charging. Mindblowing stuff and all of it starts with that one first step!
Thanks to the many other unsung heroes who are and will be listed in comments here, we may not know a lot of you but you definitely have changed out lives.
I’ve always been thankful to Matt Mullenweg for WordPress. Partially it’s because he was 19 when he started, and showed the same passion and creativity that we all feel, especially at that age. Like a lot of us, he saw a way he could improve on something else that was already out there, and collaborated to make it available for everyone to use.
Automattic is a great company because it manages to be profitable, while providing an essential open source tool for all of us to use. Best of all, WordPress has given all of us control over our blogging – encouraging creativity, community and citizen journalism in our generation.
Seriously good work dude. I’ve been using WordPress since 2003. I can’t say how much it’s helped me.
Nikola Tesla doesn’t get enough recognition for his genius – it seems like you mostly see his neuroses on display, rather than his accomplishments. He invented radio, and the electric motor…but you hear about his thing for pigeons and hair.
My kids’ favorite unsung tech hero started working in the field on RCA 301’s in 1965 and who today, at age 70, is still slinging code doing web applications using Perl. He survived polio as a kid and has had to wear hearing aids for the past 20 years due to hereditary nerve deafness.
He used to look dashing in his dark brown beard, now when he looks in the mirror, he sees a gray beard and very little hair. He says he doesn’t recognize the old man staring back at him in the mirror.
But, he definitely knows who Grace Hopper was. And he’d really appreciate the book and would share it with his kids if he won.
That unsung hero of 45 years in the computer biz is none other that ME, the one and only DC “Tex” Stultz.
I say give one to this guy.
Anyone who can toot their own horn and get away with it like this guy deserves a free beer. Or book, if he’s not thirsty.
Winner!
I agree it gets tiresome hearing the same old violin, I also think we women are our own worst critics, making the path more difficult than we need to.
We are better served taking the high road and accepting that each of us, male and female alike, have our own struggles. One doesn’t take away from the other.
My favorite is actually Ms. Hooper. Glad to see her getting some attention. Ironically, the book is not available on the Kindle. I would gladly crack open a paper copy, though.
Ms. Hooper? Is that the daughter of Mr. Hooper from Sesame Street?
My favorite unsung tech hero is still Grace Hopper. I had an opportunity to interview her in 1983, after she’d given a talk at a word processing conference in Toronto. Two things stand out in my memory:
1. She brought with her a few hundred pieces of wire, each about 18-inches long. She gave each attendee one of these “nanoseconds”, explaining that this was how far a signal traveled in one second.
2. I gave her a ride to the airport. She was in uniform, perfectly crisp with really, really shiny shoes. And she swore like a f*&^@#n sailor all the way, railing about how docile her audience had been!
I submit that Ken Thompson influenced a lot of what true hackers use today. He was involved in the development of Unix in which Linux has its roots, but also the Thompson shell, which predates the Bourne Shell (and I use bash today still!). He also wrote the “ed” text editor which provided the underpinnings for vi, and I’m a Vim user today, still! I just found out he helped come up with UTF-8 character encoding, and that’s pretty impressive also, given that that’s used quite often in Java and XML (to name 2 places). I find that things I use daily were rooted in things that Ken Thompson created. For that, I owe him thanks!
David
So, I’d love a copy of this book. I love reading about people who were so influential in what we consider the early days of computer history.
Sabeer Bhatia – Founder of the world’s first free email service, Hotmail.
“It was commercially launched on July 4, 1996, American Independence Day, smbolizing “freedom” from ISP-based e-mail and the ability to access a user’s inbox from anywhere in the world.” – Wikipedia
Absolutely not true.
Free Email was available through universities, BBSes, FidoNet, and other freenets far before Hotmail came around.
I’ve admired her ever since I learned COBOL back in the 80s. An amazing lady, to have accomplished such a feat during that era.
Then again, you don’t have to BE in tech to DO tech. In 1941, actress Hedy Lamarr invented spread spectrum communications, the technology upon which today’s cell phones rely.
right on!
and you know what she said when she was finally recognized for her contribution?
“it’s about time!”
+1 for Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil.
Their 1942 spread spectrum technology was the bedrock for many secure comms systems used through out the cold war and Vietnam eras and into modern times with CDMA and it’s derivatives including WiFi.
Ward Christensen – inventor of the first bulletin board system
Edith Clarke (1838 – 1959)
She was the first woman employed as an electrical engineer in the United States, as well as the country’s first female professor of electrical engineering.
“There is no demand for women engineers, as such, as there are for women doctors; but there’s always a demand for anyone who can do a good piece of work.”
being a woman is tough enough. i’m only 23, so i have yet to see much of this ceo toughness thing, but with all the jeers and despise i have gotten through college as a few of the CS girls, it’s still not as worse as period cramps. that and being called fat (no, i’m not fat, i’m just not stickthin). being in CS did not immune me/us to general hardship that all girls faced.
hero: marie curie.
dont know if it counts as unsung. but she really inspired me. even if it’s the sheer phrase that both she and her husband are scientists.
So, we all know about Gates, Ballmer, Brin and Page, but these guys changed our lives forever…
Inventor of Email: Raymond S. Tomlinson
In 1971, while working for BBN, Tomlinson developed a program that allowed messages to be sent between users on different computers, according to the foundation’s website. He chose the sign @ to separate local from global e-mails.
Inventor of the Mobile Phone: Dr. Martin Cooper
Dr Martin Cooper, a former general manager for the systems division at Motorola, is considered the inventor of the first portable handset and the first person to make a call on a portable cell phone in April 1973. The first call he made was to his rival, Joel Engel, Bell Labs head of research.
Only Man to take 3 companies to a Billion dollars and bring the Web to us all: Jim Clark
Jim Clark was Stanford Professor and founder of Silicon Graphics which gave rise to 2D computing. He later teamed with mark Andreesen and founded Netscape, which gave us all the Web we know and love. Following Netscape, Clark founded Healtheon which later was acquired and became WebMD. If that’s not enough he founded the first club for the super wealthy; myCFO.com was later acquired.
Can’t wait to get the book
Thanks,
Jaafer
Rosalind Franklin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin
“just writing about this scene.” Damn right. Keep that in mind and you’ll be fine. Do not try talk to us as if you actually are part of it, unless you jump into the water and invest in a startup or work for one.
Um, isn’t TechCrunch a startup?
It was long time ago, it isn’t now. well secured in its ability to pay market or above market salaries, predictable revenue, etc.
Sarah – you are my hero of Tech. Your articles are always of such huge interest and adventure and I was ever so pleased when you started your tenure at TechCrunch, after reading your book.
I look forward to your next book – and I hope it gets the praise it should deserve.
Carry on writing Sarah – we love ya!
Claude Shannon, the father of fathers of everything IT.
Doug Engelbart is a good second along with Vannevar Bush.
My favorite unsung hero is my High School computer teacher Mr. Macomber. Back in the 80’s he sat a bunch of us in front of old mac computers, explained what a floppy drive was and taught us about possibilities. It didn’t matter if we were boys or girls, it just mattered that we to the time to explore and think big. He is the reason I went into technology and chose the education sector as my home. If I can pass on to one student what he passed to me I will consider my life a success!
“Unsung?” I have to go with Bob Taylor. ARPANET->XEROX PARC->DEC SRC
It’s definitely inspiring to hear about women in technology/engineering. There are so few, and I think that we have a duty to provide awareness to the young girls (and boys) who just haven’t been exposed to some of the great careers within math and science or believe that those careers are unattainable. I’m in the Aerospace industry (helicopter flight test), and it’s definitely a small pool of women here, so I’m always participating in career days and mentoring programs so kids know that yes a female can be an engineer…and a d@mn good one at that. No unsung hero to submit, just wanted to comment…and stepping off my soapbox now ;o)
Penny from Inspector Gadget. I’m pretty sure she didn’t just buy that notebook off the shelf somewhere in the late 80’s or early 90’s. Plus she always used it to save the day and never got any credit.
Halarious! Penny saved us all, she gets my vote!