A Shaker community in
Massachusetts had a woman named Tabitha Babbitt who worked
as a weaver. She would regularly witness the men cutting the wood
with a pit saw (a two-handled saw that needed two individuals to
operate). Although the saw needed to be pulled in two directions to
cut the wood, there was only cutting going on when the saw was being
pulled in a forward direction making the backward motion useless. In
1810 Babbitt developed her own draft of a saw that was circular in
shape and would eventually be commonly used in saw mills. She
attached the blade to her own spinning wheel in order to make every
movement count toward cutting results.
Admiral Grace Murray Hopper joined the military during 1943
and was stationed at Harvard University where she was employed using
IBM’s Harvard Mark I computer, which was the first large-scale
computer in the US. She was the third individual programming the
machine and she wrote a handbook of operations that led the way for
many that would follow her. During the 1950s, the Admiral came out
with the compiler, which converted English instructions into a
computer code. This meant that computer code could be developed by
programmers with less errors and complications. Hopper then created
the Flow-Matic, which was utilized to program the UNIVAC I and II
computers. Hopper had also been overseeing the advancements of
Common Business-Oriented Language or (COBOL), which was one of the
very first computer languages. She went on to obtain various awards
for her work and even had a US warship named after her. Heard her
speak one time and she used a length of wire 11.8 inches long as a
prop. She described how light traveled that distance in one
nanosecond.