Did You Know a Woman Really Landed Us on the Moon? March 10, 2017 14:58
Guess what, we're still talking about more amazing women this week! While woefully underrepresented in the industry, psssst... also guess what? Women code. And code well! And have been doing so for a long time!
(Shown above: Margaret Hamilton with the code that she wrote for Apollo 11)
On July 20, 1969 the Apollo 11 astronauts succeeded in their goal, landing with near-flawless precision. Shortly after, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took humanity's first historic steps on another world. And if you aren't aware, Margaret Hamilton is the engineer who got us there. She took humanity to the Moon.
If that’s not enough, she is also credited with coining the term “software engineering.” - Read the full interview with Margaret Hamilton on Futurism.com.
Yes. A woman coder took us to the moon! How cool is that??!
Because we love all things having to do with space and to commemorate her epic awesomeness, we've printed an excerpt of her Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (AGC) source code used to program the NASA Command and Lunar Modules. This code was recently made public on Github. We hope this helps to raise awareness of all the women working in science, past and present.
Know of other ceiling-smashing women in science? Let us know if there's others we should feature!
We had a lot of fun making this important piece of history into ties and bows. Next up, we hope to have this on a scarf too, very soon. Want a t-shirt? I bet we can be convinced!