On February 29, 2024, CHM launches its first podcast, in collaboration with Audible and Treefort Media. Hosted by Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, Recoding History is an immersive look into the lives of some of computer history’s most ingenious and audacious women. In stories culled largely from CHM’s oral history interviews, audiences will hear the women recount their personal journeys in their own words.
Listen to the trailer.
The podcast is available to Audible subscribers here.
This ten-part series features 12 remarkable women. The host and contributing experts, including Kurt Beyer, Vint Cerf, Andy Cunningham, Shelly M. Jones, Mar Hicks, Clive Thompson, and our own CHM curators, help bring the women’s remarkable accomplishments to life and help us understand their significance in the longer arc of computing history.
In an era driven by technology, Recoding History spotlights lesser-known figures whose work continues to impact our daily lives—and reminds listeners that, to build a better future, innovation and inclusion must go hand-in-hand. These women’s contributions have changed the world—yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Here they are:
Jean Bartik, original ENIAC programmer.
Donna Dubinsky, long-time Silicon Valley tech executive.
Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler, who made key contributions to the early internet.
Evelyn Boyd Granville, the second Black woman in the US to earn a PhD in mathematics.
Margaret Hamilton, who helped put the men on the moon.
Joanna Hoffman, key player on the Apple Macintosh team.
Grace Hopper, computing pioneer and Navy admiral.
Stephanie “Steve” Shirley, founder of a progressive British company that offered unique opportunities in tech to women.
Sophie Wilson, early British computing entrepreneur.
Three women with different perspectives on artificial intelligence: AI expert Fei-Fei Li; MIT robotics scientist Cynthia Breazeal; and, Miriam Vogel, CEO of the nonprofit EqualAI.
CHM’s incomparable oral history collection and other video and audio materials provided in-depth material for our development partner, Treefort Media. This podcast series could not have been made if CHM had not captured the stories of these remarkable women and preserved them for the future.
Explore selected primary source materials from the Museum’s collections below to learn more about some of the women featured in Recoding History. Imagine the stories you would tell.
Jean Bartik, one of the earliest pioneering women in technology, talks about her memories of breaking into the then-new field of computer science and working on the ENIAC in the 1940s. This video appears in CHM’s Revolution exhibition.
An information scientist, Jake Feinler was the director of the Network Information Systems Center at the Stanford Research Institute from 1972 to 1989. The NIC kept track of every computer on the ARPAnet and later the internet and created “.com” and “.org.”
Jake is a volunteer at CHM and helped save the main ARC/NIC archives, a cornerstone of the Museum’s networking collection. See Jake’s oral history.
Mathematician and pioneering computer scientist Margaret Hamilton led the team that created the on-board flight software for NASA’s Apollo command and lunar modules that put astronauts on the moon in 1969.
See more oral history highlights.
After attending MIT in the 1970s, Joanna eventually found her way to Silicon Valley and Xerox PARC. She went on to become a key member of the Macintosh team at Apple. Access her three-part oral history here.
CHM’s prestigious Fellow Awards program honors distinguished technology pioneers—unsung heroes and legends—for their outstanding merit and significant contributions that have advanced computing, illuminated our world, and propelled humanity forward. A number of the women featured in Recoding History are CHM Fellows.
2018, Stephanie “Steve” Shirley
2017, Margaret Hamilton
2012, Sophie Wilson
2008, Jean Bartik
1987, Grace Hopper
Check out additional CHM resources on women in tech:
Math Whizzes and Computing Pros
Grace Hopper & the Invention of the Information Age, featuring Recoding History commentator Kurt Beyer
Programmed Inequality, featuring Recoding History commentator Mar Hicks
