Broad Band
The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
Book Edition Details
Summary
In the dazzling realm of technology, women's voices often whisper behind the roar of innovation, yet their contributions are monumental. "Broad Band" by Claire L. Evans brings these luminaries into the spotlight, chronicling the audacious women who sculpted the digital world. From Ada Lovelace, the visionary behind the first algorithm, to Grace Hopper, the trailblazer of universal programming languages, each story unveils a revolutionary. Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler orchestrated the early internet, while Stacy Horn pioneered social networking from her modest New York apartment. These narratives are not mere footnotes in tech history; they are the heartbeats of progress. Evans weaves a rich tapestry of resilience and genius, inviting readers to celebrate the unyielding spirit of the women who dared to dream, code, and connect in an arena they helped redefine.
Introduction
In 1843, a brilliant mathematician named Ada Lovelace penned what would become the world's first computer program, yet her groundbreaking contribution remained buried in historical footnotes for over a century. This pattern of innovation followed by erasure would define the hidden story of women in computing, a story that challenges everything we think we know about how our digital world came to be. Behind every major breakthrough in computing history, from the earliest mechanical calculators to the social networks that define modern life, women were not merely present but instrumental. They were the human computers who calculated the trajectories that won World War II, the programmers who taught the first electronic brains to think, and the visionaries who imagined connected communities before most people had ever seen a computer. Their collaborative, human-centered approach to technology shaped the internet's fundamental architecture in ways we're only beginning to understand. This forgotten history reveals profound truths about innovation itself. While popular narratives celebrate individual genius and garage-born breakthroughs, the real story of computing is one of collective intelligence, patient collaboration, and the persistent belief that technology should serve human needs rather than replace human judgment. For anyone seeking to understand how our connected world truly came to be, these hidden architects offer essential insights into both the possibilities that emerge when diverse voices shape technology and the consequences when those voices are systematically excluded from the story of progress.
Human Computers to Programming Pioneers (1840s-1950s)
The digital revolution began not with silicon and circuits, but with pencils, paper, and the meticulous calculations of women working in coordinated teams. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, "computer" was a job title held predominantly by women who performed complex mathematical calculations by hand. At Harvard Observatory, teams of female astronomers catalogued stars and discovered fundamental principles that would guide space exploration. During World War II, hundreds of women served as human computers, calculating ballistic trajectories and aerodynamic equations that proved crucial to Allied victory. When the first electronic computers emerged in the 1940s, these same women made the natural transition from human calculation to machine programming. The six programmers of ENIAC, the world's first general-purpose electronic computer, were all women who didn't just operate the machine but invented the very concept of programming itself. Betty Holberton, Jean Jennings, and their colleagues created subroutines, developed debugging techniques, and wrote documentation practices that became the foundation of all software engineering. Grace Hopper pushed these innovations even further, developing the first compiler that translated human-readable instructions into machine code. Her revolutionary vision was that computers should be accessible to people beyond mathematicians and engineers, using English words rather than mathematical symbols. As she declared, programming languages should speak to humans, not just machines. This philosophy of accessibility and clear communication would prove essential as computing evolved from specialized military applications to tools that would eventually touch every aspect of human life. The collaborative culture these women established emphasized documentation, user-friendliness, and the belief that technology should enhance human capability rather than replace human judgment. They approached programming as a communicative discipline, creating systems that others could understand, modify, and improve. These foundational principles would echo throughout computing history, shaping the open, interconnected networks that would eventually span the globe.
Building Digital Infrastructure and Networks (1960s-1980s)
As computers began connecting to each other in the 1960s, women found themselves at the center of building the internet's foundational infrastructure. Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler ran the Network Information Center at Stanford Research Institute, serving as the internet's first directory service and traffic controller. Her team maintained the master list of every computer connected to ARPANET, assigned the first domain names, and created the protocols that allowed different networks to communicate seamlessly with each other. Feinler's work required both technical brilliance and diplomatic skill. She had to negotiate between competing institutions, establish naming conventions that would scale globally, and maintain order in a rapidly expanding network with no central authority. Her team created the WHOIS database still used today and established the familiar domain structure of .com, .edu, and .org that would organize online identity for generations. Without her systematic approach to network management, the internet's explosive growth would have collapsed under its own complexity. Meanwhile, computer scientist Radia Perlman solved fundamental routing problems that allowed networks to interconnect reliably. Her spanning-tree protocol prevented the network loops that could bring entire systems crashing down, creating self-healing networks that could scale globally. Her algorithms became invisible infrastructure, working behind the scenes to ensure that data could flow efficiently across increasingly complex network topologies. The collaborative culture that emerged around early networking reflected the values these women brought to the field. The internet's design philosophy emphasized redundancy, openness, and resilience over centralized control. Decisions were made through consensus-building processes that prioritized the network's collective benefit over individual institutional interests. This approach proved remarkably prescient, creating a foundation robust enough to support the global communications infrastructure that would reshape human civilization itself.
Web Revolution and Online Communities (1990s-2000s)
When the World Wide Web emerged in the early 1990s, women were among the first to recognize its potential for building communities and sharing stories that traditional media had ignored. While many technologists focused on the Web's commercial possibilities, pioneers like Stacy Horn saw it as a space for genuine human connection. Her bulletin board system, Echo, became one of the first online communities designed explicitly to welcome women, featuring frank discussions about everything from politics to personal relationships. Horn's approach to community building was revolutionary for its emphasis on real-world accountability and inclusive design. She implemented measures that required users to meet face-to-face regularly and created private spaces where women could discuss sensitive topics without harassment. Echo's success demonstrated that online communities could be more than technical forums, they could become genuine social spaces that enriched people's lives and challenged the isolation of modern urban existence. The rise of hypertext systems in this period showcased women's contributions to information architecture and user experience design. Researchers like Wendy Hall developed sophisticated linking systems that went far beyond the simple one-way links of the early Web. Her Microcosm system could automatically generate connections between related documents and maintain link databases that anticipated today's concerns about metadata and artificial intelligence. Though her more advanced approach was overshadowed by the Web's elegant simplicity, her ideas about semantic connections would prove prophetic. As the Web commercialized during the dot-com boom, women entrepreneurs built some of the era's most innovative media companies. Jaime Levy created the first interactive magazines on floppy disk, while others launched publications that were truly native to the Web rather than digital versions of print media. These pioneers understood that the Web's real power lay not in replicating traditional media but in creating entirely new forms of interactive, community-driven content that would establish the cultural foundations for the social web that followed.
Legacy and Future of Women in Technology
The late 1990s witnessed the emergence of cyberfeminism, a movement that explicitly claimed digital space as territory for women's voices and perspectives. Groups like VNS Matrix proclaimed women's natural connection to networked technologies, asserting that the internet's collaborative, decentralized structure aligned with traditionally feminine approaches to communication and community building. This wasn't merely artistic provocation but recognition that women had been central to computing's development from the beginning, even as their contributions were systematically erased from historical records. Cyberfeminists understood that technology design is never neutral. Every technical decision, from programming languages to user interface conventions, reflects the values and perspectives of its creators. By creating alternative platforms and claiming space online, they sought to ensure that women's approaches to technology, emphasizing collaboration and communication over competition and control, would remain part of the digital landscape as it matured and commercialized. The movement's influence extended into practical applications through companies like Purple Moon, which created computer games specifically designed for girls, recognizing that the male-dominated gaming industry was discouraging young women from developing technical skills. Though commercially unsuccessful, their research into how different groups interact with technology provided insights that continue to influence user experience design and accessibility standards today. As the internet evolved into the social media era, many principles these early pioneers championed became mainstream features of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The emphasis on community building, user-generated content, and collaborative creation that characterized women's early online spaces became the foundation of the modern web. Yet the commercialization of these spaces also introduced new tensions, as the values of connection and community often conflicted with advertising-driven business models that prioritized engagement over genuine human flourishing.
Summary
The hidden history of women in computing reveals a consistent pattern that challenges conventional narratives about technological progress. At every crucial juncture in our digital evolution, women were not just present but pioneering, introducing approaches that emphasized collaboration, communication, and community over pure technical performance. From Ada Lovelace's first algorithm to the cyberfeminist manifestos of the 1990s, their contributions shaped not only the technical architecture of our digital world but its cultural DNA, establishing principles of openness, accessibility, and human connection that remain central to our online experience. This history offers profound lessons for our current technological moment. As we grapple with issues of algorithmic bias, online harassment, and the concentration of power in a few large platforms, the alternative approaches pioneered by women in computing provide valuable models for more equitable and humane technologies. Their emphasis on inclusive design, community accountability, and user empowerment suggests pathways toward systems that prioritize human flourishing over pure efficiency, and communities that reflect collaborative rather than competitive values. Moving forward, we must actively work to prevent the erasure that has characterized so much of computing history. This means not only documenting women's contributions but creating structures that support diverse voices in technology development. The internet these hidden architects helped create gave us unprecedented power to connect, create, and organize across traditional boundaries. How we use that power, and whether we honor the collaborative, human-centered vision they championed, will determine whether technology becomes a force for liberation or merely another system of control and exclusion.
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By Claire L. Evans
