{Evette, 22/9/24}

While trying to identify a suitable 1st post for this Forum topic I came across this article written by Dan McEvoy dated 27th June 2022 that was published on the "Cord" website.

"Three Transgender Women Who Changed Technology
Celebrating the contributions of Lynn Conway, Sophie Wilson and Mary Ann Horton to technology and transgender rights

The first piece in this series explored the contributions of Christopher Strachey and Peter Landin to the emergent field of computer programming. Here, we will celebrate the contribution of - and highlight the discrimination faced by - three transgender women who left their own marks on computing, in general through contributions to hardware that have been instrumental in the evolution of computing as we know it today.

Lynn Conway (1938-)
The late 1950s were a a pivotal period in transgender history, certainly in the Western world. A German-born, New-York-based doctor named Harry Benjamin had become the first medical professional to distinguish what he called “transsexualism” from what had, until then, been referred to as “transvestitism,” and had begun treating hundreds of people who did not identify with the gender they had been assigned at birth.

One such person was Lynn Conway, a promising computer engineer who had, in 1964, started working at IBM in a team building a new supercomputer. Sanders experienced gender dysphoria as a child, and an unsuccessful attempt at transitioning during the late 1950s had led to her dropping out of her studies at MIT. After a stint as an electronics Engineer, Conway resumed her studies at Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, graduating with an M.S.E.E. in 1962 before being headhunted by IBM.

Throughout this period, Conway had struggled to conform to social expectations and live as a man. She married and had two children during the period, but when she heard about Harry Benjamin’s work, she approached the doctor and, with his guidance, began a successful transition, with the full support of her close friends and colleagues at IBM.

That support, however, was not forthcoming from IBM’s senior management. The company’s CEO at the time, Thomas J Watson Jr., feared public backlash if it became known that Conway had transitioned, and she was fired from IBM in 1968. Worse still, the law at the time prevented her from accessing her children post-transition.

From here, Conway restarted her career in “stealth mode,” finding work first at Memorex, then at Xerox’s PARC research centre. Here, in 1973, Conway formed the LSI Systems group with Ben Sutherland. They developed ‘multiproject wafers’ (MPW) - which enabled multiple circuit designs to be incorporated into a single chip, facilitating mass production of computer chips.

Conway then went on to co-author Introduction to VLSI Systems with Ivan Sutherland and Carver Mead. Within a decade, the book was in use by 120 universities, and today has sold over 70,000 copies. VLSI design completely revolutionised microchip design and production, and still underpins the industry today.

In 2020, IBM apologised to Conway for her dismissal, as well as presenting her with the company’s rare and prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award, reflecting the scale of her influence on the world via technology. Conway married her husband Charlie in 1987, and much of her later life has been spent as a transgender activist, particularly fighting for employment protection rights for transgender people.

“I've never stopped being in kindergarten, never stopped playing, creating, messing around, being in awe of everybody around me… Part of my spirit is a childlike openness that has always allowed me to see things other people don't notice.” - Lynn Conway

Sophie Wilson (1957-)
In 1981, the BBC began searching for a technology company to help them build a simple computer as part of an educational project. Acorn Computers Ltd were determined to win the contract, and Sophie Wilson - a computer engineer who had joined the company three years before, after graduating from Selwyn College Cambridge with a degree with Mathematics and Computer Science - set about the task of building a prototype within a week.

Her design took three days, with a prototype being ready on the Thursday. This, however, was laden with bugs, and Wilson stayed up overnight debugging the software, watching Princess Diana’s wedding to Prince Charles on a portable television while she did so.

Acorn won the contract, and her design, the Acorn Proton, became the BBC Micro. She wrote a variant of the BASIC programming language for the computer which became BBC BASIC. Over the following decade, over a million BBC Micros were sold, and were used in thousands of schools.

Wilson later referred to the period as “a unique moment… when the public wanted to know how this stuff works and could be shown and taught how to program.”

However, her most enduring contribution to computing was yet to come. In 1983, she began work on one of the first reduced instruction set computer (RISC) processors, which became the Acorn RISC Machine. In November 1990, Acorn Computers entered into a joint venture with Apple and VLSI Technology (whose chips, and whose name, were explicitly based on Lynn Conway’s work), becoming Advanced RISC Machines Ltd, known throughout the world today as ARM (or Arm, or arm). Wilson’s design became the ARM1 processor, and as of 2012 was used in 95% of smartphones. As of 2020, there were reportedly four ARM processors for every person on earth.

WIlson began transitioning in 1994. In 2009, she appeared in a cameo role as a pub landlady in the BBC’s one-off drama Micro Men, which told the story of the rise of the home computing and features Stefan Butler playing a younger, pre-transition Wilson. In her spare time, Wilson is a keen dramatist, and as well as acting manages costume and stage design for her local theatre group.

In 2020, Wison became a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society, having previously been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2013 and appointed CBE in 2019.

Mary Ann Horton (1955-)
In the late 1970s, researchers at various US universities began using a distributed means of communicating with one another via Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP), which gradually crystallised into a network called the usenet (users’ network). A Computer Science PhD student at Berkeley, Mary Ann (then “Mark”) Horton, became interested in the network, and set about building improvements into it in 1981. She developed a way of feeding mailing lists from ARPANET into usenet, and developed the earliest email attachment tool, uuencode.

After graduating, Horton started working at Bell Labs. She had been key contributor to Berkeley UNIX during her studies, and brought elements of this work into Bell labs, and continued to make significant improvements to UNIX systems. She developed terminfo, replacing termcap, and worked on bringing usenet and email connectivity into Bell Labs.

Berkeley UNIX became Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which now underpins many widespread operating systems, including macOS, iOS, Microsoft Windows, and the operating systems used in the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. It also directly influenced the development of Sun Microsystems, Cisco and Linux. Her work on usenet groups also now lives on as Google groups, and indeed (via uuencode and her early advocacy of internet domains) in the very fabric of the internet. In a 2020 interview, Horton described Usenet as “one of the first social media networks.”

However, Horton’s considerable influence on technology is, arguably, outshone by her contribution towards transgender workplace rights.

In 1997, Horton co-founded her employer Lucent’s LGBT employee group EQUAL! (Bell Labs became Lucent in 1996, which then became Alcatel-Lucent, before being absorbed into Nokia). No major company, at the time, included trans-inclusive language in its equal opportunities policy, but Horton lobbied for the company to include the wording "gender identity, characteristics, or expression” in its policy, leading to Lucent becoming the first major company to have a transgender-inclusive EO policy in 1997. Horton went on to support transgender-inclusive language in other companies including Apple, Xerox and Chase.

Horton went on to push for the inclusion of transgender health benefits in health insurance policies, and was a leading voice in the push for these to be included in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index in 2005. She continues to be an influential advocate for transgender workplace rights, particular in healthcare, to this day, as well as consulting on UNIX and internet-based technology.

“By this time I had a life as Mark and another life as Mary Ann, and I was allowed to come to work occasionally as Mary Ann. I was also an activist for trans rights in other places, and the other trans activists were all transsexuals who had transitioned long ago. They all said corporate America could not handle a part-time cross-dresser in the workplace, but I was already doing it!” - Mary Ann Horton.
Like Wilson, Mary Ann has also appeared on-screen. She featured as a business executive named Aurora, in a public service announcement broadcast for Stonewall Columbus in 2003. Having identified as a cross-dresser for most of her life (going alternately by Mark and Mary Ann), her transition had begun two years prior, in 2001, making her one of the first transgender actors to play a transgender role on TV. A week before her transition began, Mary Ann was awarded the Trailblazer Outie award for her contributions towards transgender workplace rights.

Revolutionary
If Alan Turing, Christopher Strachey and Peter Landin were among the early pioneers of computing, there is no doubt that Lynn Conway, Sophie Wilson and Mary Ann Horton are key figures in computing’s widespread commercial adoption. Conway completely revolutionised microchip design, Wilson conceived the ARM processors that now power the majority of the world’s smartphones, and Horton played a foundational role in the early development of UNIX-based systems and directly influenced the structure of the present-day internet itself.

All three women are, at time of writing, alive and active (professionally and politically) to varying degrees. The next and final article in the series, however, will turn to three LGBTQ+ women who are still at the most active stages of their careers, in positions of such influence that they are shaping not just the present, but also the future, of technology.

Dan McEvoy©, Content Writer Monday 27 June 2022"

Original article can be accessed online at: https://cord.co/techhub/working-culture/articles/three-transgender-women-who-changed-technology