2022-07-09

计算机程序设计应该是个男性工作的领域，对吗？仅从目前的从业人数来看，男性程序员的人数超过女性从业人数，但曾经一度可不是这样的。

Here's a simple challenge: name a famous inventor. Perhaps Renaissance1 polymath Leonardo da Vinci springs to mind. Or the pioneer of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell. But you might be hard-pressed to name many female inventors, even though women are behind some of the most widely used technologies in the modern world.

For example, where would we be without the windscreen wiper? Back on a freezing winter's day in 1902, Mary Anderson was travelling by tram through New York city. Snow was falling, forcing the driver to stop repeatedly and get out to clear it. Each time the door opened, Mary suffered a gust2 of sub-zero air. She had a brainwave: why not make some kind of a rubber blade that could be operated from inside the vehicle? And that's exactly what she did.

Let's step in from freezing New York for our next invention. The dishwasher dates back even earlier to the 19th Century, and to the dinner parties thrown by a lady called Josephine Cochrane. As a frequent host, she wanted a machine that could wash dishes faster than people. Her response was to develop what was to become the first commercially successful dishwasher. Interestingly, innovation was in her blood: her grandfather had invented the steamboat.