8 women who changed digital history
Digital technology is omnipresent in all aspects of our lives. Despite this, too few women opt for careers in this sector: only 30% of employed women in this field compared to 46.8% in other sectors (source: SCORAN). The difference is even greater for the most technical profiles. Under-represented, women may have difficulty making a place for themselves or being able to undertake a business in a very male-dominated environment.
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Digital technology is omnipresent in all aspects of our lives. Despite this, too few women opt for careers in this sector: only 30% of employed women in this field compared to 46.8% in other sectors (source: SCORAN). The difference is even greater for the most technical profiles. Under-represented, women may have difficulty making a place for themselves or being able to undertake a business in a very male-dominated environment.

Grace Hopper, Hedy Lamarr, Roberta Williams... do not these names mean anything to you? Yet, without them, there would be no Wi-Fi, no computer program, and certainly no "man" on the moon. But who are these talented women inventors and how did they contribute to our modern technologies?

Ada Lovelace (1815 – 1852)

Grace Hopper (1906 – 1992)

Hedy Lamarr (1914 – 2000)

Austrian actress, film producer and inventor, Hedy Lamarr became a Hollywood star upon her arrival in the United States in 1937.

She left her mark on the scientific history of telecommunications by inventing in 1941, with the composer George Antheil, the "Lamarr technique", a system designed to protect communications between ships and their torpedoes. Controled by radio, they were often intercepted by the enemy during submarine attacks. Inspired by the perforated paper strips used in mechanical pianos, Hedy Lamarr and Georges Antheil developed the first frequency-hopping spread spectrum. This technique distributes the transmission of signals over several channels in a random manner and thus guarantees their undetectability.

They filed a patent in 1941 but it was not until 1962, with the Cuban crisis, that the American army saw a use for it. Their transmission principle was then studied and improved. Their invention became public domain and was the delight of transmission device designers in the 1980s. It is used today for satellites and mobile telephony, in wireless technologies such as GPS or Wi-Fi.

Katherine Johnson (1918 –2020)

A mathematician and physicist, Katherine Johnson joined NASA in 1953 where she performed complex calculations for her superiors by hand. In 1960, she co-authored a report with Ted Skopinski in which they wrote the equations that describe the trajectory of an orbital space flight. This was the first time a woman was credited as the author of a research report.

In 1961, Katherine Johnson made trajectory calculations for the Freedom 7 mission and allowed the first American to travel in space, Alan Shepard. In 1962, for the first American mission to send a man into orbit around the Earth (Mercury-Atlas 6), she checked by hand the computerized trajectory calculations at the request of John Glenn, who knew her reputation.

In 1969, during the Apollo 11 mission, Katherine Johnson helped to specify the space meeting trajectories between the command module and the lunar module when the latter returned from the Moon's surface.

Born to African descent parents, Katherine Johnson has made a place for herself in a white male environment. Decorated numerous times, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, America's highest civilian honor, and gave her name to the Katherine Johnson Computer Research Center inaugurated by NASA in 2016 (Langley, Virginia).

Alice Recoque (1929-2021)

Graduated from the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielle de Paris (ESPCI), Alice Recoque participated in the development of the CAB 500 desktop computer (automatic binary calculator), a magnetic drum-based solid-state machine that is more intuitive to use thanks to its keyboard. In 1970, she also participated in the creation, as project manager, of the MITRA 15 mini-computer for industrial management. The latter will be used for the French Internet project "Cyclades", the control of robots and security systems in nuclear power plants as well as in the use of missiles and ships..

In 1978, Alice Recoque took part in the meeting that founded the French Data Protection authority ("Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés"). She expressed her concerns and the need to put in place a safeguard against "the increased surveillance power of companies and states".

In 1985, within the Bull Group, she initiated and led research on artificial intelligence. During this research, conducted with public research organisations such as Inria, she contributed to the development of a programming language called Prolog, used today in artificial intelligence, particularly in natural language processing.

Stephanie Shirley (1933 - )

At the age of five, Vera Buchthal and her family fled to England from Nazi Germany. She changed her name to Stephanie Brook when she became a British citizen at the age of 18, but it was with the name 'Steve' that she would go down in computer history.

She began her career at Dollis Hill Post Office, where she became interested in computers and obtained her degree in mathematics by attending night school.

In 1962, she created the company Freelance Programmers, which aimed to design computer software. She worked from home and as the company grew, she decided to recruit a team of mainly women. She favoured a human resources policy that facilitated the family life of her female employees, notably by introducing flexible working hours and teleworking. From 1975, the Sex Discrimination Act made it illegal to hire on the basis of gender: she was therefore forced to hire men.

It is a success: in total, 8,500 people will be employed by this company, which is responsible for programming the Concorde black boxes and contributing to the development of software standards and major control protocols.

In the 1970s, Stephanie Shirley transferred the management of her company and sold it in 1991 upon her retirement. In 1996, the group was listed on the stock exchange and was later valued at 3 billion dollars. Stephanie Shirley was named to the Science Council's list of the UK's 'Top 100 Practising Scientists' in January 2014.

Margaret Hamilton (1936 - )

A mathematician with a passion for computers, Margaret Hamilton joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1960 to develop computer programs for weather forecasting, before becoming director of the software engineering department where she developed aircraft detection programs.

In 1963, she became head of the team developing the on-board software used by the Apollo and then Skylab missions at NASA. This gave her solid experience of software design at a time when computer project management and design methods were in their early days.

The programs developed under her supervision played a crucial role during the Apollo 11 mission, preventing the landing of the lunar module from being aborted .Three minutes before it reached the Moon's surface, repeated computer alarms were triggered, signaling a saturation of the onboard computer. Thanks to the architecture of the operating system, which prioritised programs, the computer was nevertheless able to carry out its main mission of landing the module on the Moon.

Further developments in computing were made possible by Margaret Hamilton, whose invention, together with her colleagues at MIT, of the basic concepts of computer programming and code led to the creation of the world's first laptop computer. In 1986, she also conceived a new programming language, USL (Universal Systems Language), designed for complex software and systems.

Roberta Williams (1953 - )

While American Roberta Williams was pregnant with her first child, her husband introduced her to the game Colossal Cave Adventure, designed as a treasure hunt. She enjoyed the game but soon grew tired of it. Indeed, computer adventure games were originally purely text-based: a paragraph described the character's location and instructions had to be written on the keyboard to progress through the riddle. Aware that this system was off-putting to the uninitiated, Roberta Williams decided to change it. She is known as the pioneer of interactive storytelling, thanks to the idea of game experiences revolutionised by a graphic universe that makes the riddles and plots more attractive.

In 1980, she designed the game Mystery House, adding graphic illustrations for the first time. The player is locked in a house with several rooms and seven characters who start dying one by one, in the manner of an Agatha Christie novel or the board game Cluedo. The player has to quickly find the murderer by means of clues, if he does not want to be the next victim.

A new step was taken in 1984 when she designed King's Quest I which, thanks to the improved capabilities of computers, allowed the player to see his character move around in a virtual universe.

In 1995, graphic immersion took a new turn with the horrific adventure game Phantasmagoria, where the characters were made from real actors filmed on a blue background and then mixed with 3D scenery.

Photo credits of the visuals that enabled the CNIL to produce these portraits: Ada Lovelace: Antoine Claudet; Hedy Lamarr: Wikimedia Commons/Doctormacro; Grace Hopper: Wikimedia Commons; Katherine Johnson: NASA; Stephanie Shirley: Lynn Hart/CC; Margaret Hamilton: Daphne Weld Nichols/CC; Alice Recoque: Magazine 0.1 Informatique; Roberta Williams: Sierra On Line