International Women’s Day is a time to celebrate the achievements of women across industries, and one area where their impact continues to grow is technology and gaming. vTime Games, like many in the industry, stands on the shoulders of these trailblazers who paved the way for innovation.

The Brilliant Minds of Modern Computing 

Women have played a pivotal role in technology since its earliest days with figures such as Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Hedy Lamar, and Radia Perlman.

Victorian Countess & Computer Programmer 

Ada Lovelace was a 19th-century mathematician and daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron. She is said to be the first computer programmer, despite living a century before the modern computer. As long ago as the 1840s, Lovelace envisioned machines that could manipulate symbols instead of just numbers while working with Charles Babbage, a mathematics professor at Cambridge University commonly recognised as the "Father of the Computer". These works are seen today as the first computer programme. Way ahead of her time, taking nearly a century for technology to catch up with her ideas, Babbage fittingly referred to her as the “Enchantress of Numbers”. 

The Amazing Grace

Nicknamed "Amazing Grace", Grace Hopper was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and Navy admiral. During World War II, Grace joined the U.S. Navy Reserves as a part of the Mark I computer programming staff. While working on the Mark II computer, a pesky moth got trapped inside the machine, Grace then remarked that they were “debugging the system” - a phrase still used today. Next, she joined the team developing the UNIVAC I, the second-ever commercial computer developed in the U.S. Grace developed a compiler to translate source code into computer language. In 1959 she worked on the committee that created the new computer language, COBOL. Grace believed that programming language should be close to English rather than machine code, which was the convention. 

Hollywood Star & Wi-Fi Innovator

The amazing actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr patented the technology behind Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. With the Second World War raging, Lamarr wanted to do something meaningful. She knew that the U.S. Navy controlled torpedoes using radio stations but the signals were easy to hack. So, Lamar developed a new kind of technology, which sent the same signal, but from multiple sources, making it impossible to jam. Credit for this invention wouldn’t come to her till much later in life, however, due to the stigma of her being a woman. Since then, her technology has changed all our lives. 

The Mother of the Internet

Radia Perlman is an American computer scientist best known for her pioneering work in network design. Often referred to as the “Mother of the Internet” due to her contributions to network protocols. In 1985 she developed the algorithm behind the Spanning-Tree Protocol (STP), which made Ethernet networks scalable and reliable. She loves to find the simplest way to explain things - stating something that’s really complicated is never going to work. Proving her point, her methods are still used for routing IP today. 

Celebrating Women in Tech and Gaming

This International Women’s Day, let’s celebrate the women who have shaped and continue to shape the worlds of technology and gaming. By supporting and uplifting women in these fields, we pave the way for a more inclusive and innovative future!

Who are some women in tech or gaming that inspire you? 

Share their stories and continue the conversation! Tag us, we would love to hear them @vtimegames.