Dona Bailey was working as a computer programmer at General Motors when she heard the Pretenders song “Space Invader” and fell in love with it. The year was 1980. She had no clue about video games.
A friend heard her say that she liked the song, and he got really excited. He told her there was a “Space Invaders” game at a bar nearby. They went to lunch so she could see what that song was about.
“He gave me a quarter and I lost all my lives before I could even figure out what I was supposed to do on the screen,” she says. “But I got really intrigued.”
That’s how she came to join Atari, the company that cemented the video game industry in the 1970s and early 1980s with “Pong,” and thanks in part to Bailey, “Centipede.” Though she stayed only two years, Bailey left her mark as one of the rare female programmers at Atari.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
