“After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.”*…
A Victorian-era mathematical genius, [Ada] Lovelace was the first to describe how computing machines could solve math problems, write new forms of music, and much more, if you gave them instructions in a language they could understand. Of course, over the ensuing 100-plus years, dudes have been lining up to push her out of the picture (more on that below).
Lovelace is hardly the only woman to be erased from the history of her own work…
From computer programming to nuclear fission to the paper bag machine, it’s time to stop erasing these women from their great works. Mother Jones restores eight female creators from their undeserved obscurity: “Ladies Last: 8 Inventions by Women That Dudes Got Credit For.“
* Ann Richards
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As we give credit where credit is due, we might recall that it was on this date in 1851, at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, that Sojourner Truth electrified the gathering with an extemporaneous talk that has come to known as the “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech.
Born (c. 1797) into slavery in New York, Belle Baumfree (as she was born) escaped with her daughter to freedom in 1826. She went to court to recover her son in 1828, and became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man. She gave herself the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 after she became convinced that God had called her to leave the city and go into the countryside “testifying the hope that was in her”– a hope that she expressed as a fervent abolitionist and champion of women’s rights.
In 2014, Truth was included in Smithsonian magazine’s list of the “100 Most Significant Americans of All Time.”
