[SIGCIS-Members] Question From The American Computer & Robotics Museum in Montana
Brian Berg
brianberg at gmail.com
Mon Apr 9 16:18:44 PDT 2018
I have pinged Nita Patel, the past Chair of IEEE Women in Engineering; you
might hear separately from her.
I have queries out to Lee Felsenstein re: the Homebrew Computer Club, and
to some Atari folks.
===
Here is a Sun engineer:
Joan Pendleton worked on SPARC and graphics chips.
Joan Pendleton | Professional Profile - LinkedIn
<https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwjhitfr6q3aAhUSSK0KHWIzBVoQFggpMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fjoan-pendleton-2a05a840&usg=AOvVaw047QvrfLvqFndmC8NRofKg>
===
I am in touch with nearly half of the Apple Macintosh team, and they gave
me these names so far:
Ann Nunciato designed hardware at Apple around 1985. This was in the era
of the Mac II design, the color Mac, the Jonathan, and also a Unix machine
that Apple was thinking of building. She married another Apple hardware
designer, and now has a different last name.
---
Colette Askeland did the logic board layout for both the Apple III and Mac.
http://drop-iii-inches.com/2014/10/27/episode-7-colette-askeland/
---
Mar Hershenson founded a chip design tools company in 1999, but is often
forgotten because she does analog design.
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Barcelona+Ushers+in+the+%
22dot.com%22+Era+of+EDA+Breakthrough+Analog+...-a059621254
She’s a Marie R. Pistilli Women in Electronic Design award winner.
---
Megan Smith first joined General Magic as part of the Hardware Team in
about 1990.
===
You could investigate other honorees of this award:
- *54th DAC, 2017 *- Janet Olson, Synopsys, Inc.
- *53rd DAC, 2016* - Soha Hassoun, Tufts University
- *52nd DAC, 2015* - Margaret Martonosi, Princeton University
- *51st DAC, 2014* - Diana Marculescu, Carnegie Mellon University
- *50th DAC, 2013* - Nanette Collins, Nanette V. Collins Marketing, and
Public Relations
- *49th DAC, 2012* - Dr. Belle W. Y. Wei, San Jose State University
- *48th DAC, 2011* - Limor Fix, Intel Corp.
- *47th DAC, 2010* - Mar Hershenson, Magma Design Automation, Inc.
- *46th DAC, 2009* - Telle Whitney, Anita Borg Institute
- *45th DAC, 2008* - Louise Trevillyan, IBM Research Center
- *44th DAC, 2007* - Jan Willis, Cadence
- *43rd DAC, 2006* - Ellen Yoffa, IBM
- *42nd DAC, 2005* - Kathryn Kranen, Jasper Design Automation, Inc.
- *41st DAC, 2004* - Mary Jane Irwin, Penn State Univ.
- *40th DAC, 2003* - Karen Bartleson, Synopsys, Inc.
- *39th DAC, 2002* - Ann Rincon, AMI Semiconductor
- *38th DAC, 2001* - Deidre Hanford, Synopsys, Inc.
- *37th DAC, 2000* - Penny Herscher, Previously Cadence
_________________________
Brian A. Berg / bberg at StanfordAlumni.org
Berg Software Design
14500 Big Basin Way, Suite F, Saratoga, CA 95070 USA
Voice: 408.741.5010 / Cell: 408.568.2505
Consulting: Flash Memory/USB/Storage/Patents
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<http://www.flashmemorysummit.com/>
IEEE Milestone
<http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Milestones:List_of_IEEE_Milestones>
Coordinator
for Region 6 <http://www.ieee-region6.org/>
IEEE SCV Section <http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r6/scv/> Past Chair / IEEE-CNSV
<http://www.californiaconsultants.org/> Board Director
IEEE Silicon Valley Tech History Committee
<http://www.siliconvalleyhistory.com/> Chair
On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 2:51 PM, Chuck House <housec1839 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Interesting question, George. I am hopeful that you get lots of useful
> input
>
>
>
> I am concerned that you could be 'too narrow' in the sense of saying "only
> PC hardware" That certainly could count the IBM PC designers, the Apple
> II and Mac designers, the KayPro and its ilk, the Osborne, and maybe even
> the Franklin and the Eagle, right?
>
>
>
> But it would not include the key chip for Apple, the Mostek 6502, or the
> tools including ion implantation from Applied Materials that helped the
> 6502 layout team, right? Is this what you hoped to elicit by adding
> "chips"?
>
>
>
> Almost all the chips were done at chip companies, except for HP, DEC, and
> IBM. Specifically, they weren't really done at the PC companies. And a PC
> included lots of firmware/software that was integral to the machine very
> often rather than on floppys or externally packaged. Never mind that the
> Mac was said to be 'saved' by Desktop Publishing, and the whole field by
> the killer Spreadsheet.
>
>
>
> My guess is that you exclude workstations, mini's, and desktops, not to
> mention handheld calculators, printers, disc drives, etc.—all of which to
> some of us were allied with, or part and parcel of, the PC revolution.
>
>
>
> For the specific question about women hardware designers at PC companies,
> I don’t know of any offhand. But I would definitely include Janelle
> Bedke, who was a software designer early at HP, then became the hardware
> and software project manager for the HP 2621 aimed at the TRS-80 and
> Osborne 1 niche, and then co-founded and became COO and then CEO for
> Software Publishing, the third or fourth largest PC software company in the
> world when IBM’s Charlie Chaplin ad urged the IBM Assistant Series (which
> was SPC’s PFS line). I think SPC was the 2nd IPO in Silicon Valley
> founded or co-founded by a woman—ASK Computer with Sandy Kurtzig was first,
> Sandy Lerner with Cisco was third. Janelle’s career began as a hardware
> microwave engineer at HP in the early 70’s
>
>
>
> If you include “chips” in general, not just for the PC, my top candidate
> would be Lynn Conway, for whom I penned an IEEE article a few years back.
> https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6393024/ Conway did yeoman work
> at XeroxPARC re VLSI circuit design, unheralded for a long time. She is
> one of our “Fellows” at the Computer History Museum.
>
>
>
> I would absolutely include Pat Castro of HP, who was the first female
> engineer at Fairchild Semi (who experienced plenty of anti-MeToo acts), and
> later ran HP's IC fab shop, processing Conway's VLSI work for Stanford and
> PARC. She has two key HP Journal articles in June 1981. Jim Gibbons at
> Stanford, and Lynn herself, are clear that without Pat's contribution,
> virtually none of the VLSI work that she and Carver Mead described would
> have been brought to fruition for several more years.
>
>
>
> If you admit PC software (and Bedke), I would also include Adele Goldberg,
> for her 'software' work on Smalltalk, and her encouragement of Alan Kay for
> the DynaBook. She probably wouldn't make your cut if it has to be
> hardware, but if it is to be PC-centric, her work led to the GUI's that the
> Mac employed famously. She in fact strongly opposed letting Jobs into
> PARC, convinced he’d do what he in fact did.
>
>
>
> Admittedly adjacent to your request, I thought it interesting to see how
> and where women show up in the HP designer 'archives' -- prior to and
> including PC development. And the answer is sadly LOW. The handheld
> calculator lines and the desktop computer lines had virtually no women
> designers cited; the minicomputer lines had some, mostly doing firmware or
> software. Peripherals? None. See http://www.hpl.hp.
> com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/hpjindex.html
>
>
>
> There were three women designers on the HP 21-MX series (HPJ October
> 1974), none explicitly hardware designers, but all with hardware 'chops':
> Bedke notably.
>
>
>
> The first by-lined and profiled HP woman engineer was Lynn Tillman, who
> did the microprogramming (then a hardware function in PROMs) for the HP-70
> and HP-22 handheld calculators. See Nov 75 HPJ
>
>
>
> The next issue, December 1975 has three articles citing women
> designers. The first article concerns hybrid chip development, done in
> part by Ruth Buss, Rose Stamps, and Gina Anderson. This work is adjacent
> to computer design per se, but the next two, one by Linda Averett and the
> other co-authored by Adele Gadol, are for HP's first real-time executive
> operating system work, RTE-II, then closely coupled to hardware design even
> though it was technically software. This was mostly for real-time control
> systems, think satellite space controllers, rather than CPUs for
> business. And a long way from PCs.
>
>
>
> Kathy Hahn was first bylined and profiled in HPJ March 1977. for her CS
> work on HPE and RTE-III, the HP 1000 Real-time Executive operating
> system. Next, she did the RTE-IV real-time operating system for the
> HP1000 family--this was THE hardware/software interface operating system
> for the world for the next decade. See October 1978 HPJ, which also cites
> Linda Averett and Sheila Kapoor. The key article in this issue though was
> by Julia Cates, who was the project leader and key designer of the F-series
> floating point chip.
>
>
>
> Another 'adjacent' was Carolyn Finch, for her role in designing miniature
> probes for IC testing--April 77 HPJ (this was 'mechanical eng'g' for an
> electrical parametric situation) when HP was 'big' in PC chips, shipping
> 75,000 16-bit micros before Intel sampled its first one.
>
>
>
> A number of women were listed for the ill-fated SOS-based HP300, mostly
> for RPG software and software functionality contributions. See HPJ June
> 1979, which includes Wendy Pelkus' article re RPG, Report Program
> Generator, for biz apps; and May Kovelick's article re the HP300 BASIC
> compiler.
>
>
>
> Izagma Alonso- Velez was the HP 64000 PASCAL compiler designer--again
> software, but dedicated to developing firmware tasks. See Oct 1980 HPJ
>
>
>
> Nancy Federman wrote several significant manufacturing tracking system
> components, viz. April 1981. This is in the era when Sandy Kurtzig
> founded ASK Computer doing similar things (Sandy's husband worked at HP).
> Maybe more significantly, Loretta Winston authored an article in the same
> issue about "Customizing Software for computers" that was both prescient
> and exemplary for being the first black female to be published at HP (and
> maybe in the industry).
>
>
>
> For HP chip design, a big part was the Electron Beam Lithography program,
> which along with Bell Labs was the leading chip definition system of the
> era. Nancy Kendzierski was one of the two software designers for the
> project columnator; several other women contributed to the software for the
> multiple exposure runs. See May 1981 HPJ. This issue is the month before
> the big June 1981 issue re HP Chip designs which featured Castro.
>
>
>
> Karen Meinert was the key main memory designer for HP's biggest mini, the
> HP3000 64. Full-on hardware! Story in HPJ, March 1982
>
>
>
> Kathy Qwinn, at HP Fort Collins, is the first woman cited from HP's
> desktop computer divisions. She led the BASIC compiler development, for
> what at the time was by far the leading desktop computer system in the
> world in unit placements and revenue; story in May 1982 HPJ. See the
> history of these lines in http://www.hp9825.com
>
>
>
> Susan Okada led the plasma etching system for the dry lithography work at
> HP Labs that resulted in many microchip developments. HPJ Aug 1982
>
>
>
> In the Sept 1983 HPJ issue, four women are included in HP's first low-cost
> color terminals, the HP 2700 family. Sharon Mead was the project
> manager, along with Catherin Potter and two others; Diane Rodriquez and
> Barbara Stanley wrote the PaintBrush app.
>
>
>
> And in December 1983, Janet Accentura co-teamed to lead the Ultrasound
> Imaging system, with Radhu Basu assisting (later a key Indian developer in
> the Valley).
>
>
>
> Leslie Neft (the A-700( and Marlu Allen (the A-900) were two key hardware
> designers for HP's low-cost 'mini's--the HP 1000 Series A--described by
> program manager Nancy Schoendorf and others in Feb 1984 HPJ. Sara
> Dickinson, not profiled, was a key hardware designer as well. Elizabeth
> Clark co-wrote the RTE operating system.
>
>
>
> The August 1984 HPJ issue described HP's ill-fated Touchscreen 150 PC,
> with Carol Mills as product manager (later to be a key industry exec);
> Susan Carrie and Trish Brown on hardware; Becky Smith on firmware; and the
> aforementioned Sharon Mead with Sherry Murphy and Barbara Packard as
> project managers.
>
>
>
> Laura Cory, Nancy Schoendorf, Gail Hamilton, Janelle Bedke, Carol Mills
> are a few designers from HP who went on to significant contributions
> elsewhere.
>
>
>
> Cory worked in DSD as a designer, then marketing director, then division
> manager.
>
> Later, she became a key exec elsewhere http://bigpicture.
> net/article/cory-named-president-sun-chemicals-digital-unit
>
>
>
> Schoendorf also worked at DSD, then CSY, as an HP-UX operating systems
> designer, then moved to Software Publishing with Bedke, then to SUN, and
> then to the VC world. http://mdv.com/nancy-schoendorf/
>
>
>
> Hamilton-- Gail Hamilton managed the development of the 64310 Analyzer and
> earlier contributed to the development of the 8085 and 6502 personality
> modules for the 1611A. These were key tools for the PC designers of the
> day, since the 8085 and 6502 were the mainstay chips for PCs. She later
> was VP for Compaq, Symantec, and on the Arrow Board. See HPJ June 1984,
> and https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.
> asp?personId=506168&privcapId=313734 The significance of the HP64310
> was that it was the tool that established RISC architecture performance
> vastly outstripped CISC, and now is the mainstay of all PC chips.
>
>
>
> *************
>
>
>
> So, TO YOUR QUESTION
>
> Should any of these be featured in your exhibit as I interpret what you
> seek?
>
>
>
> Bedke, Conway, Castro, Goldberg, and Hamilton
>
>
>
> The rest are names in arcana, hardly significant enough for your
> question. I wish there were many more.
>
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Chuck House
>
> InnovaScapes Institute
>
> CHM Trustee
>
> ACM History Committee Chair
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 4/9/18, 7:44 AM, "Members on behalf of George Keremedjiev" <
> members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org on behalf of director at compustory.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> Hello to all. My first posting.
>
>
>
> Our museum is opening on June 1st a major exhibit on women in
> computing.
>
>
>
> Question:
>
> Does anyone know of any personal computer hardware women engineers in
> the 1975-1985 era (+/-) who we should consider including in the exhibit?
> For example, women members of the Homebrew Club and/or employees at, for
> example - Apple, HP, Atari, Commodore, Tandy, Intel, TI, IBM, Xerox, etc. -
> who were hardware engineers and involved in the design of computer hardware
> components including microchips.
>
>
>
> The key term is hardware.
>
>
>
> Thank you in advance for your consideration and possible help with the
> above!
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> George
>
>
>
> George Keremedjiev
>
> Director
>
> American Computer & Robotics Museum
>
> Bozeman, MT
>
> www.compustory.com
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
>
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>
>
>
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