
Mary Lee Berners-Lee has died - m0nty
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/23/mary-lee-berners-lee-obituary
======
andrewl
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._

~~~
8_hours_ago
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...

~~~
bhasi
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.

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

~~~
darepublic
Can't start a fire without a spark

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ComputerInv
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.

~~~
malkia
As bulgarian, there is also the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Vincent_Atanasoff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Vincent_Atanasoff)
's computer -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff%E2%80%93Berry_comput...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff%E2%80%93Berry_computer)

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

~~~
estebank
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."

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bklaasen
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](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality)

~~~
walshemj
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

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

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unreal37
How amazing is it that Tim Berners-Lee mother was one of the first programmers
and one of the first freelance programmers. Amazing.

~~~
ggg9990
I mean... it is not at all unusual for two people who are outstanding in a
particular field to be related to each other.

~~~
godelmachine
Yes, just like Marie Curie and Pierre Curie

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lifeisstillgood
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?

~~~
ggg9990
Is it a sad day for a family when a 93-year-old dies?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
yes, it is.

~~~
ggg9990
Wasn’t for mine, and she was 75, not 93.

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dboreham
>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/](http://www.alanturing.net/programmers_handbook/)

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

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godelmachine
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.

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

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

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DaniFong
Mary Lee Berners-Lee has _ascended_ to Valhalla.

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j0e1
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)

~~~
hazeii
In case you're not aware, the Guardian is funded by the Scott Trust
([https://www.theguardian.com/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.

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

