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Humanities Section => History General Discussion => Topic started by: Baruch on July 20, 2019, 03:31:28 PM

Title: Women unnoticed in technical history ...
Post by: Baruch on July 20, 2019, 03:31:28 PM
I already knew about this one ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB5ieSGGDmk

This is a nice quick review.  She eventually worked with Babbage.  Babbage was he Victorian Alan Turing.

In the 1980s as an aerospace engineer, we all took a course on Ada, the new DoD computer language.
Title: Re: Women unnoticed in technical history ...
Post by: Baruch on July 20, 2019, 03:40:55 PM
This is the first time I heard of this one ... I am very enthusiastic about this lady ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsGrFYD5Nfs

Bertha Benz used her dowry to pay for the first three prototypes of her husband's invention, the gasoline automobile.  He had taken a few short test drives in their home town, but after two years he hadn't found any buyers for his patented invention.  Ms Benz wanted to go visit her parents 100 km away.  So without asking her husband, she and her two sons took off on a prototype to her parent's house.  She became the first regular car driver.  Her sons became the first regular car passengers.  There were no gas stations, so she had to improvise.  Cleaning solvent was procured along the way at apothecary shops.  The car broke down twice, and she became the first car mechanic using a hat pin and a garter.  Along the way she discovered that the wooden brakes were insufficient in practice.  So she went to a cobbler and got pieces of leather added to the wooden blocks, inventing the first brake linings.  Since they were going less than 10 mph ... it took them 12 hours to go 100 km.  Meanwhile her husband didn't know where they had gotten off too, until he got a telegram from the town his in-laws were in.  When she got back, she related how the 2 speed transmission was inadequate on hills.  That became the origin of having 3 gear transmissions.  In the US they are D or 3rd, 2nd and 1st.  So it was 1st gear that her husband added as a result of her adventure.  The publicity that came from this trip, created the buzz necessary for sales to take off for the first time.  Her marketing coup payed off and off and off ...