If anyone’s interested, Katie Hafner wrote an extremely readable book about this stuff called Where Wizards Stay Up Late. I’d recommend it both to fellow history-of-technology nerds and anyone with a passing interest in how email works.

As a side-note, has anyone here heard of an Indian mathematician named Panini? In the 5th Century BCE, he pioneered what would later (and by “later”, I mean 2500 years later) be known as computational linguistics. It’s awe-inspiring how prescient this guy was.

Ignotus: While you may have read “scholarly biographies” that claim she is overrated, your offering the opinions of unnamed sources adds little to the discourse. I also fail to see the pertinence of her parental models where her contributions to computer science are concerned. Discarding the latter point, which I’m quite beyond finding relevant, would you care to enumerate some cogent points as to why she is “overrated?”

I also think you are mistaken about the honors bestowed on Babbage serving only to quell supposed arguments between IBM and DOD scientists. Many examples of computational machines exist as far back as ancient Greece as seen in the Antikythera mechanism. Even if you choose to write off the speculation as to this ancient mechanism’s function other examples remain. There is Alan Turing and the Colossus which was instrumental during WWII to decode German ciphers, as well as ENIAC created in 1946.

I wonder if you’re not confusing the DOD claims to originate the computer with its quite valid claim to have invented the Internet (ARPANET, born in beautiful Los Angeles, California to be precise)?

You learn something new everyday. :D

I for one didn’t like her depiction in The Difference Engine — wasn’t she made out to be a bit of a tart?

But aye, anytime someone says women haven’t been present in Computer Science’s history, I kindly point out Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper.

RP