It's International Women in Engineering Day. And some of the innovations we rely upon every day came from women engineers.
Happy International Women in Engineering Day! The day was started back in 2013 by the U.K.-based Women’s Engineering Society with the intention of giving women in engineering a public profile, given that they are underrepresented in the field.
If you’re reading this, you have innovations created by women to thank. Here are five facts about women in engineering.
1. Women have been in engineering for 175 years
British mathematician Ada Lovelace was one of the first female computer programmers. She worked with inventor Charles Babbage on his Analytical Engine. She produced the first published algorithm, which gave rise to modern computing. Quite a feat, considering this was back in 1843.
2. Your smartphone runs on technology designed by a woman
If you’re reading this on your smartphone, you can thank Sophie Wilson. Wilson, an English computer scientist, helped develop the Acorn Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) Machine (ARM) processor. This processor paved the way for modern smartphones.
3. Women have a stake in space exploration
A number of women have contributed to NASA missions. Miriam Mann was one of the first African-American “computers” hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), NASA’s predecessor, in 1943. Other women of color, including Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson, would later join. And during NASA’s Apollo mission, computer scientist Margaret Hamilton led the development of onboard flight software.
4. Women make up just 12-17% of engineers worldwide
Women are still underrepresented when it comes to engineering as a career. Although there is no authoritative account of the number of women in engineering fields globally, some statistics suggest the percentage of women engineers is 12% to 17% worldwide.
5. An American actress developed WiFi and GPS technology
Actress Hedy Lamarr invented a communication system intended to guide torpedoes to their targets during World War II. The system was invented to assist the U.S. Navy, but the Navy ultimately decided against using the technology. Even so, the system, which uses radio wave frequency hopping with both the transmitter and the receiver moving in tandem to new frequencies, was later used in the development of technologies like WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS.
