The blog post about Dora at the Women in Tech and Science Ireland tells how she was the founder of the information services industry in the 1920s. Dora quickly learned that most businessmen and government department managers lacked the vision and mathematical skills to understand how to make full use of the new mechanical calculators and tabulators. She was a mathematician and an entrepreneur and saw the potential for providing services rather than hardware.
I have been contacted by the National Museum of Computing who wanted to hear all about Dora’s role in the computing industry. They are particularly interested in her WW2 history as the museum is adjacent to Bletchley Park and the story of BTM’s struggles to supply the bombe machines and their operators is not well known. We also discussed Dora’s role as a female pioneer in a male dominated world. I have been invited to give a talk about her in June 2021 and this will appear on the NaMoC events page in due course.
This week I’m meeting with colleagues from the British Society for the History of Mathematics to discuss what we are going to present at their online People, Places, Practices Conference in July. The general topic is ‘women in computing’ but we need to be a bit more specific! More news on this when I have further details to share.
I have a short piece in an anthology of Scottish writing coming out this summer. There are 23 Scottish women writers featured altogether, each inspired by the sensual writing of Nan Shepherd. My piece is about my journey to reach Dora’s remote home on the shore of Loch Morar. The anthology is called Lucent and it will be published by 8D Press as a high quality limited edition, a collector’s item!
