[SIGCIS-Members] Question From The American Computer & Robotics Museum in Montana \\ Sydney-Anne Holt
D. Schmudde
d at schmud.de
Sun Apr 22 10:53:54 PDT 2018
George,
Sydney-Anne Holt was a layout designer of the 6502. She can be seen here
holding a white 650x:
http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/magazines/misc/mos_605x_team_eetimes_august_1975.pdf.
Considering the significance of the 6502 to early personal computing
hardware, she seems to fit the request. I'm a little late to the
submission because I tried to source some contact information but was
unable. You might have better luck.
/Schmudde
On 04/12/2018 04:39 PM, members-request at lists.sigcis.org wrote:
> Send Members mailing list submissions to
> members at lists.sigcis.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> members-request at lists.sigcis.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> members-owner at lists.sigcis.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Members digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: Question From The American Computer & Robotics Museum in
> Montana (Brian Berg)
> 2. Re: Question From The American Computer & Robotics Museum in
> Montana (GK)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2018 16:51:17 -0700
> From: Brian Berg <brianberg at gmail.com>
> To: SIGCIS Listserver <members at sigcis.org>
> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Question From The American Computer &
> Robotics Museum in Montana
> Message-ID:
> <CAE33aVA1LrwseoRL510zsvimg3XNuR2XKDFptoCC0LQCF58-FQ at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Sophie Wilson <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson> certainly
> should be included. An associate found her in *Digital Design and Computer
> Architecture, ARM edition
> <https://textbooks.elsevier.com/web/product_details.aspx?isbn=9780128000564>*,
> by Harris and Harris.
>
>
> With Steve Furber, she was co-designer of the ARM series processors from
> ARM 1 through ARM7 (starting in 1983), and her earlier work experience at
> Acorn starting in 1981 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson#Career>
> makes excellent reading as well. She currently works at Broadcom.
> _________________________
> 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
> visit the Storage Cornucopia: www.bswd.com
> FMS Technical Chair: 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 1:22 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 would count the IBM PC designers, the Apple II and Mac
>> designers, the KayPro and its ilk, the Osborne, and maybe even the Eagle,
>> right?
>>
>> But it would not include the key chip for Apple, the Mostek 6502, or the
>> tools including ion implantation at Applied Materials that helped the 6502
>> layout team, right? And it would doubtless exclude workstations, mini's,
>> and desktops, not to mention handheld calculators, printers, disc drives,
>> etc. 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 Publsihing, and the whole field by
>> the killer Spreadsheet.
>>
>> My key candidate would be Lynn Conway, for whom I penned the attached IEEE
>> article a few years back. She did yeoman work at XeroxPARC re VLSI
>> circuit design, unheralded for a long time. But 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.
>>
>> 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. Beatriz Infante
>> and Diane Bracken were noted as key contributors to this effort also.
>> Beatriz later was SVP at Oracle, and CEO at Aspect Communications. 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.
>>
>> But these seemingly are not what you asked.
>>
>> So my approach, admittedly adjacent to your request, was 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. I list below what I found in a cursory search this
>> morning. 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':
>> Janelle Bedke for dynamic mapping functions (later she led product design,
>> hardware and software, for the HP 2621 Intelligent Terminal; and then
>> co-founder, COO and CEO for Software Publishing); Darlene Harrell (21-MX
>> test jigs); and Rose Carson, packaging. Bedke describes the HP2621 as the
>> HP competitor to the TRS-80 and the Osborne in 1979 in her recent Computer
>> History Museum oral interview.
>>
>> 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.
>> She was in process of completing her EE Masters, and went on to design much
>> hardware for HP computing. Her key role next was 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. Chuck Geber in a
>> succeeding article cites Julia's key talents as well.
>>
>> 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 I. 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.
>>
>> 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 to become 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 --
>> 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
>>
>> *************
>>
>> So, TO YOUR QUESTION
>>
>> Should any of these be featured in your exhibit as I interpret what you
>> seek?
>>
>> I'd broaden the list slightly, to include Bedke (SPC was the third largest
>> PC SW firm by 1984, with the top-selling IBM PC SW besides spreadsheets),
>> Conway, Castro, and Goldberg
>>
>> 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
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email
>> discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the
>> member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The
>> list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/
>> and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/
>> listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion
>> list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member
>> posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list
>> archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and
>> you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/
>> listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
>>
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20180411/a16cb41d/attachment-0001.html>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2018 13:29:30 -0600
> From: GK <director at compustory.com>
> To: members at lists.sigcis.org
> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Question From The American Computer &
> Robotics Museum in Montana
> Message-ID: <3BF99BD3-2E1D-4D59-8FB1-F757B2C76159 at compustory.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Hello.
>
> I thank all of you who responded to date with suggestions to my inquiry below!
>
> With much gratitude.
>
> Sincerely,
> George
>
> George Keremedjiev
> Director
> American Computer & Robotics Museum
> Bozeman, MT
> www.compustory.com
>
>> On Apr 9, 2018, at 8:44 AM, George Keremedjiev <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
>>
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20180412/e472b921/attachment-0001.html>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Subject: Digest Footer
>
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of Members Digest, Vol 38, Issue 10
> ***************************************
>
--
w: http://schmud.de
e: d at schmud.de
t: @dschmudde
More information about the Members
mailing list