The Conversation

The lost role of women in the development of the computer industry is brought into focus by an internet pioneer and a computer historian. Radia Perlman is an American computer programmer often described as the 'Mother of the Internet' for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol, an algorithm which allowed early networks to cope with large amounts of data. She describes it as a 'simple hack' and it is still in use today. Tilly Blyth is Head of Collections and Principal Curator at the Science Museum. She specialises in the history of computing and is particularly interested in the lost role women played within that history. She has curated an exhibition on Ada Lovelace, a 19th century trailblazer of science. Image: (L) Tilly Blyth and (R) Radia Perlman Credit: (L) Science Museum Group Collection and (R) Andrew Tanenbaum