Mary Lee Berners-Lee has died | Hacker News Reader

Mary Lee Berners-Lee has died

theguardian.com

431 pointsm0nty46 comments

She lived a fascinating life.

As one of a small cohort of young men and women working in the “Tin Hut” at Ferranti’s Moston works, Berners-Lee was trained to write programs following a manual written by Alan Turing.

That feels almost on the order of She learned to kindle fire from instructiions given her by Prometheus.

Off topic: I got confused by the phrase kindle fire, until I remembered that it can also mean start a fire. Now the name of the tablet seems less arbitrary...

Starting a fire is the default meaning of the word.

Kindling as a noun is the twigs, leaves, moss or whatever used to start the fire.

Which is somewhat hilarious when you realize Amazon is telling you to burn books.

Doesn't sound bad when you take it figuratively. The fires that some texts kindled centuries ago are still burning.

On that note, I also realized the connotation of "Tinder": combustible material which ignites upon coming into contact with sparks. Sparks fly when people meet - that sort of thing. Very clever indeed.

I thought it had to do with matches

Also in Tinder gives you "matches" and the logo is a flame.

Can't start a fire without a spark

I was ROLFing reading this

Possibly refers to this manual: http://www.panix.com/~rst/turing.pdf

From Turing to Mary Lee Berners-Lee to Tim Berners-Lee -- it only took three generations from establishing the theory all computers stand upon and get to the World Wide Web. Fascinating.

The World Wide Web didn't depend on Turing's theories. Computing machinery went back to Babbage/Ada

Speaking of Ferranti and programming mothers : my mother talked about how she had been a programmer of a Ferranti Pegasus before I was born. She worked for an insurance company but talked about having to travel across town to an engineering company to use their machine because theirs hadn't been delivered yet. Based on her recollections they were coding in assembler. She moved on to pursue a career in economics and never coded again.

I found an article about the computer being delivered to the engineering company in 1960. The Pegasus was a mid-50's design (afaik unrelated to the Mk1) so I'm not sure if it was new or recycled from one of the initial customers.

https://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/mannerisms/memory-la...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferranti_Pegasus

It's funny as every country has their own computer founding myths with them in the center.

"[...] became the first in the world to be sold commercially: the Ferranti Mark I."

While Germany maintains that the first commercially sold general purpuse computer was a Zuse Z4.

Even the Wikipedia pages disagree in each language. I'm sure the French have their version of computer history.

Not quite sure that the Zuze counts other wise you could claim that colossus was "sold" to HMG by the GPO.

I seriously doubt that in 44 there would be any non governmental buyers for computers in Germany.

Not that I want to get into a fight[1] ;-) the Ferranti was sold in 02/1951, the UNIVAC I was sold 03/1951 and the Zuse Z4 was sold 09/1950.

Not sure the Colossus was a commercialy available computer everyone could buy in '44? The Z3 was "sold" in '43 to the GAC - but was not turing complete in '43.

[1] My personal believe is it's those geniuses not countries that did the invention, it's often a team effort, people are standing on the shoulders of giants and it's always difficult to define "first" plus at the same time irrelevant.

We should search the church chronicles. First is always the guy to swear the loudest.

Almost :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micral

That's a micro-computer.

Don't forget that the first electronic digital(though not programmable) computer was created at Iowa State University

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff%E2%80%93Berry_comput...

It's also important because Mauchly, the key engineer of ENIAC/Uwho worked on these, learned and discussed ABC design from Atanasoff himself, one time staying as a guest in Atanasoff's house (and without mentioning his work on computers).

As bulgarian, there is also the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Vincent_Atanasoff 's computer - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff%E2%80%93Berry_comput...

as we joke in Bulgaria, even Jesus was Bulgarian... Columbus too :)

Argentineans have similar sayings and attitudes. The one I find the most amusing is "God's omnipresent, but he serves his appointments in Buenos Aires."

We italians have Olivetti.

Egyptians would say Abacus is the first computer - which would be interesting because that's 2000 years old.

For more on the British computer industry and why it was a failure despite being world-leading in the mid-1940s, see Marie Hicks' "Programmed Inequality". It's part of the venerable MIT Computer History series.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality

Its probably as much to do with the British class system and the fact that the civil service was run by amateur chaps who knew chaps in the same club who had done classics at Oxbridge.

And now that the war was over all those gurls and those greasy engineers should go back to where they had come from.

Its also similar to the way in the last few months of the war career officers (proper chaps again) who had had a desk job where parachuted in to command positions to benefit thee post-war career

I love this post, partly because of what you're saying, but also partly because of how excellently you captured the attitude using "proper chaps". I know nothing of the British Class system or the topic of which you speak but it brought a huge smile to my face.

I'm not sure there's any particular evidence that the computer industry failed in the UK due to class issues, actually.

How amazing is it that Tim Berners-Lee mother was one of the first programmers and one of the first freelance programmers. Amazing.

I mean... it is not at all unusual for two people who are outstanding in a particular field to be related to each other.

Yes, just like Marie Curie and Pierre Curie

This is obviously a sad day for her family, but Insimply never knew any of this before now, and I am amazed.

Now as one of many, many freelance software consultants, discovering that she was probably the world's first, makes me a trifle teary eyed, and wonder if we have just found our own patron saint.

Is there a charity she supported?

Is it a sad day for a family when a 93-year-old dies?

yes, it is.

Wasn’t for mine, and she was 75, not 93.

>His modified teleprinter code turned letters and symbols on a keyboard into patterns of five hole-positions on punched paper tape that the computer could read directly.

In case anyone is confused as to what this means: I think it must have been written by someone who had no understanding of the content and as a result doesn't make sense.

Turing didn't modify the 5-channel teleprinter code at all : it had existed in some form since 1888[2] and 5-channel teleprinters were a "thing" in common usage at the time for telegraph messages, that were just re-purposed for use with computers. What he did was to define the machine's instruction set such that it could (with difficulty) be input directly on a teleprinter. It was of course _that_ encoding that he invented. The programmer would therefore type what looks like modem noise into a teleprinter, punching tape as they typed. The tape could then be loaded onto the Mk1 for execution.

Here's the manual they refer to in the article (with an amusing hand-edit by Turning removing the references to Ferranti and changing the machine's name from their MkI to his MkII):

[1] http://www.alanturing.net/programmers_handbook/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code

I remember reading "The Innovators" by Walter Isaacson, and the story of Sir TimBL and how he invented the WWW. At one point, TimBL says that Data Structures aren't efficient, and today's kids just superficially know the upper layers of the software stack, and don't know what really goes on at the transistor level. He also says that the limits of computing are only limited by your imagination.

Now I realize it actually runs in the family.

I had not realized what an awesome mother Tim Berners-Lee had this whole time!

Mary Lee Berners-Lee has ascended to Valhalla.

She worked on "bus-bunching". That's still an unsolved problem today, if my experiences on public transport are any indication.

While not meaning to take away from the focus of the article and not in any way intending to disrespect Ms. Berners-Lee, I just wanted to point out this solicitation at the end of the article by the Guardian:

>Since you’re here …

>… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can..

I'm a bit heartbroken to read this mainly because I feel this isn't really sustainable in the long run. While, at the same time, I don't have a silver bullet to offer. (I did make a donation though)

I read a while ago that it's actually going well for them. Couldn't find the article I read then but here's another: http://www.digitaljournal.com/business/guardian-newspaper-av...

The key point to note there is reader revenues surpassed ad revenues in 2016.

In case you're not aware, the Guardian is funded by the Scott Trust (https://www.theguardian.com/the-scott-trust), with the idea of ensuring the Guardian would "remain free of commercial pressures". From the site:

>The Scott Trust was originally created in 1936 to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian free from commercial or political interference.

Just in case there's any ambiguity - and it doesn't take away from the obituary - she died in November.

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