I wrote about her and some of her company’s work in this chapter called “The Baby and the Black Box”: marhicks.com/writing/Hick...
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Anne Moffatt's memoir, The IT Girl, details the story behind the photograph with the baby—where Moffatt, then Technical Lead at Shirley’s company, Freelance Programmers, programmed the black box flight recorder for the Concorde
aug 22, 2025, 4:00 pm • 406 98 • view
Thank you ! Most of computer science is done with paper 📄 + ✏️ ! I never saw a photograph of DEK in front of a computer either. Or Dijkstra, or Wirth. So many women played an important role in IT. Numerous articles can be found, notably on acm.org dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
aug 26, 2025, 12:06 pm • 0 0 • view
Slide rule!
aug 23, 2025, 8:25 pm • 3 0 • view
Oh, man, I hadn't noticed that! Of course!
aug 24, 2025, 11:05 am • 2 0 • view
The chairs and table are amazing too
aug 24, 2025, 10:23 pm • 1 0 • view
I… would like a print of that.
aug 23, 2025, 6:16 pm • 2 0 • view
Fantastic thread—thank you! (My late mother began programming in binary code on punch cards in the 1960s and ended her career being known as “the Legend” in her field of programming.)
aug 23, 2025, 10:03 pm • 38 2 • view
That’s so cool😍
aug 24, 2025, 1:00 am • 3 0 • view
My mother was programming on punch cards for a bank in the 60s and ended her career in the 60s underpaid and overlooked. Getting pregnant was used as 8 months notice to them.
aug 24, 2025, 10:22 pm • 17 2 • view
What a bummer😔 It really was—and often not even 8 mos. All the women I spoke to said they were expected to quit either upon marriage or, if pregnant, before “showing” (so about 6 months depending on the fashions at the time). Some actively hid their marriages and pregnancies to keep their jobs.
aug 24, 2025, 10:25 pm • 8 0 • view
My mom too, for an insurance company.
aug 24, 2025, 10:45 pm • 2 0 • view
Your Mom was amazing! I came up in programming before email or texting existed, but long after punch cards thank goodness!! Have you read Hidden Figures? The book is 100x better than the movie, one of my favorite books of all time!
aug 23, 2025, 10:10 pm • 4 0 • view
The movie was surprisingly enjoyable as well
aug 24, 2025, 12:37 pm • 1 0 • view
I loved it!! It was so good I just wished they'd have added more of the book, I so loved every bit of the writing, actng and directing!
aug 24, 2025, 2:08 pm • 1 0 • view
I haven’t. Thank you for the rec!
aug 23, 2025, 10:11 pm • 4 0 • view
Reminds me of the staged photos many career women of that era had to do with this kids to reassure the public its ok, she may be successful but she’s still a ‘good woman’ Men didn’t have to do the same photos
aug 23, 2025, 12:36 pm • 30 0 • view
I never thought about this
aug 24, 2025, 12:38 pm • 0 0 • view
Think about all the women who include in their ( short) bios, that in addition to being a nuclear physicist or senator, or some powerful or technical thing, they are also “ mom to Suzy and Tommy” or something like that. Pretty common in my experience.
aug 24, 2025, 1:26 pm • 5 0 • view
This is so great. It reminds me of the stories Eleanor Dodson used to tell of working for Dorothy Hodgkinson (Nobel Laureate) when she was a young scientist and mother. Having someone in power able to agree to bend rules/conventions to allow women in STEM to continue was/is so important.
aug 24, 2025, 11:46 am • 4 0 • view
I love that photo! Adorable 😊
aug 22, 2025, 4:04 pm • 7 0 • view
📌
aug 23, 2025, 9:58 pm • 0 0 • view
Maybe @bookmarks.bluecanary.dev is the service you’re looking for ?
aug 26, 2025, 12:07 pm • 0 0 • view
WFH !
aug 23, 2025, 1:09 pm • 5 0 • view
Sweet photo - I could imagine my mother and sister in a scene like this back in that day
aug 23, 2025, 12:24 pm • 2 0 • view
The cover of that is gorgeous!
aug 24, 2025, 12:41 pm • 1 0 • view
The baby and the black box. What a title!
aug 23, 2025, 11:47 am • 4 0 • view
She has a couple of great TED talks, too!
aug 22, 2025, 4:00 pm • 5 0 • view