Today we celebrate the impressive contributions of British computer scientist and trans woman Sophie Wilson. So many of us in the Adafruit community and beyond have directly benefited from her work:
Sophie Wilson was born in Leeds, England, in 1957. She began studying computer science at the University of Cambridge in 1975. In 1977, she developed an automated cow-feeder during her first summer vacation. She next designed the Acorn System 1, an early 8-bit microcomputer for hobbyists, which was produced commercially by the British company Acorn Computers beginning in 1979.
Now working at Acorn, she and colleague Steve Furber took less than a week to design and implement the prototype of what became the BBC Microcomputer. Furber and Wilson refined their design over the same summer, with Wilson designing the operating system and writing the BBC basic interpreter.
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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, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, 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.
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