There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time. ~Napoleon I, Maxims, 1815
1949 – Ward Cunningham, American computer programmer, developed the first wiki is born.
Howard G. “Ward” Cunningham is an American computer programmer from Highland, Indiana who developed the first wiki. A pioneer in both design patterns and extreme programming, he started programming the software WikiWikiWeb in 1994 and installed it on the website of his software consultancy, Cunningham & Cunningham (commonly known by its domain name, c2.com), on March 25, 1995, as an add-on to the Portland Pattern Repository.
1951 – Sally Ride, American physicist and astronaut, founded Sally Ride Science is born.
Sally Kristen Ride was an American physicist and astronaut. Born in Los Angeles, Ride joined NASA in 1978 and, at the age of 32, became the first American woman in space and still remains the youngest American astronaut to travel to space. After flying twice on the space shuttle Challenger, she left NASA in 1987. She worked for two years at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Arms Control, then the University of California, San Diego as a professor of physics, primarily researching non-linear optics and Thomson scattering. She served on the committees that investigated the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, the only person to participate on both.
1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 10 returns to Earth after a successful eight-day test of all the components needed for the forthcoming first manned moon landing.
Apollo 10 was the fourth manned mission in the United States Apollo space program. Launched on May 18, 1969, it was the F mission: a “dress rehearsal” for the first Moon landing, testing all of the components and procedures, just short of actually landing. The Lunar Module (LM) came to within 8.4 nautical miles (15.6 km) of the lunar surface, the point where the powered descent to the lunar surface would begin. Its success enabled the first landing to be attempted on Apollo 11 in July, 1969.
According to the 2002 Guinness World Records, Apollo 10 set the record for the highest speed attained by a manned vehicle at 39,897 km/h (11.08 km/s or 24,791 mph) during the return from the Moon on May 26, 1969.
Who are thought leaders? They’re actually change-makers.
They are people who provide, create, and harness technology to yield services and products that we didn’t even know we needed. They find innovative solutions to problems and often change the way we think about them. Denise Brosseau, head of Thought Leadership Lab, defines thought leaders as “the informed opinion leaders and the go-to people in their field of expertise.” Thought leaders “scale those ideas into sustainable change not just in one company, but in an industry, niche, or across an entire ecosystem.”
We wanted to feature five amazing female thought leaders who are changing the fabric of our culture with their ideas.
Limor Fried, Hardware Pioneer
Fried is a voice of authority in the male-dominated world of hardware engineering and has helped bring electronic hobbying to the masses. She is a pioneer of open source, which promotes universal access to a product’s design or blueprint and rights to distribute the design and any improvements universally. She founded Adafruit, a site for hobbyists to buy, design, and resell open source electronic kits. Fried was also the first woman to be featured on the cover of WIRED Magazine.