Untold Stories: Women in Computer Science

If your image of a programmer is a man, there's a good reason: It's true. Recently, many big tech companies revealed how many female employees worked in programming and technical jobs, and it wasn't great. Google had some of the highest rates, with only 17 percent of its technical staff identifying as female.

It wasn't always this way! Decades ago, it was women who pioneered computer programming — but too often, that's a part of history that even the smartest people don't know.

Ada Lovelace

At the age of 17, she developed plans for a machine that she believed would be able to do complex mathematical calculations. When she published her ideas, Lovelace expressed a vision for his machine that, " can do anything that can be noted logically, like words, pictures and music, not just numbers." Although her "machine" was never built, Lovelace's notes were read by people building the first computer a century later.

Need to know more about her contributions to modern computing? Check out her Wiki page