1765 – Nicéphore Niépce, French inventor, invented photography, is born.
Nicéphore Niépce was a French inventor, now usually credited as the inventor of photography and a pioneer in that field. Niépce developed heliography, a technique he used to create the world’s oldest surviving product of a photographic process: a print made from a photoengraved printing plate in 1825. In 1826 or 1827, he used a primitive camera to produce the oldest surviving photograph of a real-world scene. Among Niépce’s other inventions was the Pyréolophore, the world’s first internal combustion engine, which he conceived, created, and developed with his older brother Claude.
1876 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the “telephone”.
In 1875, Bell developed an acoustic telegraph and drew up a patent application for it. Since he had agreed to share U.S. profits with his investors Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders, Bell requested that an associate in Ontario, George Brown, attempt to patent it in Britain, instructing his lawyers to apply for a patent in the U.S. only after they received word from Britain (Britain would issue patents only for discoveries not previously patented elsewhere).
Meanwhile, Elisha Gray was also experimenting with acoustic telegraphy and thought of a way to transmit speech using a water transmitter. On February 14, 1876, Gray filed a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office for a telephone design that used a water transmitter. That same morning, Bell’s lawyer filed Bell’s application with the patent office. There is considerable debate about who arrived first and Gray later challenged the primacy of Bell’s patent. Bell was in Boston on February 14 and did not arrive in Washington until February 26.
Bell’s patent 174,465, was issued to Bell on March 7, 1876, by the U.S. Patent Office. Bell’s patent covered “the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically … by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound”. Bell returned to Boston the same day and the next day resumed work, drawing in his notebook a diagram similar to that in Gray’s patent caveat.
1917 – Betty Holberton, American engineer and programmer, is born.
Frances Elizabeth “Betty” Holberton was one of the six original programmers of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer…
…During World War II while the men were fighting, the Army needed the women to compute ballistics trajectories. Holberton was hired by the Moore School of Engineering to work as a “computor”, and was soon chosen to be one of the six women to program the ENIAC. Classified as “subprofessionals”, Holberton, along with Kay McNulty, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jean Jennings, and Fran Bilas, programmed the ENIAC to perform calculations for ballistics trajectories electronically for the Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL), US Army. Their work on ENIAC earned each of them a place in the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame. In the beginning, because the ENIAC was classified, the women were only allowed to work with blueprints and wiring diagrams in order to program it. The ENIAC was unveiled on February 15, 1946, at the University of Pennsylvania.[ It had cost around $487,000, equivalent to $6,740,000 in 2016. During her time working on ENIAC she had many productive ideas that came to her overnight leading other programmers to jokingly state that she “solved more problems in her sleep than other people did awake.”
1922 – Olga Ladyzhenskaya, Russian mathematician and academic, is born.
Olga Aleksandrovna Ladyzhenskaya was a Soviet and Russian mathematician. She was known for her work on partial differential equations (especially Hilbert’s 19th problem) and fluid dynamics. She provided the first rigorous proofs of the convergence of a finite difference method for the Navier–Stokes equations. She was a student of Ivan Petrovsky. She was awarded the Lomonosov Gold Medal in 2002.
2013 – Limor “Ladyada” Fried speaking at UN -Fifty-seventh session of the Commission on the Status of Women
<3 Limor Fried! Plushy components, badges (dumpster diving!) get kids comf w tech @adafruit #csw57 #cswsf pic.twitter.com/J23nfI8xA6
— SF DOSW (@statusofwomensf) March 7, 2013
The fifty-seventh session of the Commission on the Status of Women will take place at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 4 to 15 March 2013.
The Commission on the Status of Women (hereafter referred to as “CSW” or “the Commission”) is a functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). It is the principal global policy-making body dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women. Every year, representatives of Member States gather at United Nations Headquarters in New York to evaluate progress on gender equality, identify challenges, set global standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment worldwide.
The Commission was established by ECOSOC resolution 11(II) of 21 June 1946 with the aim to prepare recommendations and reports to the Council on promoting women’s rights in political, economic, civil, social and educational fields. The Commission also makes recommendations to the Council on urgent problems requiring immediate attention in the field of women’s rights.
2014 – 10 inspirational women engineers and scientists, featuring Limor Fried
Limor “Ladyada” Fried, the superhero hardware hacker, started AdaFruit Industries in 2005. Since then, she’s seen scores of accolades. In 2009, the engineer with an MIT MS in electrical engineering and computer science, was awarded the Pioneer Award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for her participation in the open-source hardware and software community. Two years later, Fast Company named her one of the Most Influential Woman in technology. Also in 2011, Limor became the first female engineer to be featured on the cover of Wired magazine. And in 2013, she was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Entrepreneur Magazine.
Like Ladyada, the New York-headquarter company she founded is a proven success. It pulled in $4.5 million in 2011 revenue, employs more than 50 people, and recently moved into a new 12,000-sq-foot space from which it ships hundreds of packages a day. Yet, the company is still in its infancy. Bubbling with potential, it’s surely one to watch for future growth.
So you’d think someone with this much success would be ready to take a break, right? Nope. She also regularly offers up her time and knowledge through Adafruit’s Ask an Engineer live video and interactive chat. And just this last Tuesday, Limor participated in the #NPRWIT digital conversation where select game-changing tech leaders shared a day in their professional lives via tweets.
2014 – Team Adafruit is Going Bowling Tonight!
The Adafruit team is going bowling tonight! We hit some major company goals in the last year and will be celebrating tonight with a bowling party. Check out our fashionable shirts with Adabot bowling logo designed by Bruce Yan! Read more.
2015 – Makers, hackers, artists & engineers – Community @google + reaches 100,000 makers!
In 2015 our G+ community page hit 100,000 members – today we are at over 132,000!
