‘Sputniks’, ‘Star Trek’ & ‘Open Government Data’- New Initiative to Promote Science & Engineering

As Outreach Officer at the renowned Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) I am coordinating an eclectic mix of science fiction, video gaming, open data hacker workshops, computer programming courses, science lab tours and the establishment of Ireland’s only computer museum designed to spark interest amongst the Irish school-going population towards careers in science and engineering.

DERI is an internationally acclaimed centre of web science research, with researchers from over 30 countries working on the next generation of the world wide web known as the Semantic Web.

Introducing Computer Programming Courses to Irish Schools

As part of this month’s National Engineers’ Week which commences on February 14^th we are organising a fascinating array of activities designed to capture the imagination of youth and to show them the benefits and challenges that careers in science and technology represent.

A key component of the schedule will be the introduction of computer programming courses to pupils in primary and primary schools across Galway city and county tutored by DERI’s young researchers.

We feel that this initiative if developed further will prove invaluable not to just the pupils involved but to the county as a whole because, though programming forms the basis of much of modern science and engineering, the subject is not taught within either the primary or post primary curricula. We are already providing an after-school pilot course at St. Mary’s College Galway city which has worked out extremely well with students from both the junior and senior cycle attending the classes.

University Science Lab Tours

But programming is only one element in the institute’s attempts to inspire and motivate a whole generation to consider careers in science and technology.

One-day second-level school tours of five of the university’s top research institutes will take place during National Engineers Week.

Ireland’s only Computer and Communications Museum

There will also be guided visits of Ireland’s only Computer and Communications Museum which was established at the institute during 2010 in partnership with the multi-sectoral eGalway group. This unique facility provides a fascinating insight into the development of communications from ancient hieroglyphics to today’s Internet with a particular emphasis on the development of the microcomputer and the involvement of youth as well as Irish people in communications innovation.

Vintage Computer Games: Pacman Returns!

The museum will be the location for a range of events and exhibitions including a vintage computer gaming night known as ‘Pacman Returns’ on February 16^th; exhibits and lectures on topics such as ‘Hidden Histories: Women in Technology’; on ‘Space Exploration from Sputnik to the Space Shuttle’ and how the science fiction of the 1960s television series Star Trek influenced the development of many of today’s electronic devices such as the mobile phone and the iPad. Of special significance to Galwegians will be a special commemorative exhibit on February 18^th to celebrate the 40th year anniversary by Digital Equipment Corporation, then the world’s second largest computer manufacturer, to open its first overseas manufacturing plant in Galway city.

Hackathon: Open Data Hack Day’

In conjunction with the community-based 091 Labs, DERI will host Galway’s first ‘Open Data Hack Day’ on February 19^th to raise public awareness about the benefits of Open Government Data that will allow increased engagement and participation by citizens in the democratic process as well as provide new opportunities to develop meaningful public service applications. This inaugural ‘Hackathon’ should be of interest to all those concerned about improving political governance and accountability in the country including local government officials, public representatives, concerned voters, community activists and social web-developers.”

Stamps: Celebrating Space Technology & Exploration

On display in the museum will be a large collection of hundreds of stamps from the late 1950s onwards that celebrate the history of space technology. The exploration of space inspired many of humanity’s greatest inventions and feats of modern engineering. These triumphs include communications satellites, telemetry, earth observation monitoring, weather forecasting, rockets, space stations, harnessing solar energy, heat insulation, fuel cells and water purification systems.

The historical stamps from many different countries cover themes associated with the space programmes of the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1950s-1980s period

There will also be a selection of 1960s comic and toys associated with the classic era of science fiction.

Barack Obama & the 'Sputnik' moment

Governments across the world are endeavouring to develop sustainable smart economies in order to guarantee futures for their citizens in a world experiencing climate change, recessions, depletion of natural resources and unprecedented population growth. Developing countries such as China and India are now investing heavily in teaching science and mathematics in order to move their economies away from being just low-cost producers of consumer goods to becoming hubs of innovation. In the USA, President Obama’s recent State of the Union speech concentrated on how the American people need to face up to their “Sputnik moment” by emulating a previous generation who responded to the Soviet Union’s success in space exploration, typified by the launch of ‘Sputnik’ the world’s first satellite, by prioritising science education and research thereby spawning inventions that would provide the jobs and new clean technologies needed to positively transform society and the global environment.

Ireland & Galway Need to Utilise Natural & Human Resources To Secure a Sustainable Future

Ireland and particularly Galway possess critical traits and resources that could allow us to become an important dynamic player in providing key services and products in a fast changing world.

Our geographical location gifts us with an inexhaustible supply of renewable energies.

The country is second only to the famed ‘Silicon Valley’ as a global centre of Information Communication Technologies with seven of the top ten companies located here, many engaged in research and development. State funding through the Science Foundation of Ireland (SFI) has led to the establishment of internationally acclaimed third level centres of scientific excellence including biomedical and computing, many located in NUI Galway, which have acted as magnets in attracting in some of the best scientists on the planet. This combination of human and natural resources, and of indigenous and multi-national businesses gives Ireland the opportunity to invent the technologies of the future

The full programme of Engineers Week events at DERI can be viewed at www.engineersireland.ie

Women in Technology - A Hidden History

Below is an outline for an article & poster that I am producing assisted by my colleague Myriam Leggieri as part of my work as a university outreach officer on the 'Hidden History of Women in Technology' that will be used to provide Role Models for Irish post-primary female students.

Science & Technology, as with so much in societies past & present, was/is dominated by men with educational, religious & cultural barriers being established to deny women equal access.

In the 20^th century, women were denied entry to many professions, were only granted academic degrees at Oxford & Cambridge in the 1920s and secured the right to vote in Switzerland as late as 1971. In Ireland, there only 91 women at university in 1901, only 5% of married women had jobs outside the home in 1966 & only in 1973 was the ban on married women working in the Irish Public Service lifted.Even today in the Western world, there are few women involved in innovation, high level scientific research management, the corporate boardrooms or political governance.

Yet in the past some brave females still managed to overcome these obstacles to make significant contributions to advances in communications technology.

The Aristocrat - World’s First Computer Programmer

Augusta Ada King Countess of Lovelace, daughter of the British Romantic poet Lord Byron, is recognised as the world’s first computer programmer. In 1842 she wrote the first ever algorithm for processing numbers on Charles Bannage’s early mechanical general purpose computer or analytical engine who, so impressed by her mathematical skills, referred to her as ‘ The Enchantress of Numbers”. The computer language ADA was named after her.

24 March is commemorated as Ada Lovelace Day, a day to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science

The Hollywood Goddess - Military Inventor

Austrian-born Hedy Lamarr, née Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, one of the legendary stars of Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’, famed for her roles in such films as Algiers, Samson & Delilah and White Cargo, co-designed in 1941 a radio guided torpedo system based on ‘frequency hopping’ (changing) which became known as spectrum spread, a key element later used in the anti-jamming devices used by US military satellite communications systems and later still in digital mobile phone wireless technology.  

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The All-Female Programming team

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), launched in 1946, was probably the world’s first general-purpose electronic digital computer. Eniac’s key 6 member programming team were all women, including Kathleen (Kay) Rita McNulty who was born in the Donegal Gaeltacht Ireland in 1921. Her family later emigrated to the USA and she qualified with a Mathematics degree in 1942. In 1946 she married John Mauchly, the co-inventor of Eniac, and worked on the software design of his later computers including the BINIAC and UNIVAC.

Ladymarine - The Naval Commander & Mathematician

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (Mother of Cobol) is one of America’s most famous pioneers in computer science. In 1944, she was one of the first programmers of the Marvard Mark 1 electro-mechanical computer, and developed in 1952 the first compiler for a computer programmer language. She conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first modern programming languages. She is also credited with popularizing the term “debugging" for fixing computer glitches (motivated by an actual moth removed from the computer).

Lady Operator - World’s First Mini-Computer Operating System

Mary Allen Wilkes was a key member of the MIT Lincoln Center in Massachusetts from 1958-1963 where she was the designer of an operating system for the LINC, the world’s first minicomputer. In 1965, she used a LINC computer in her private house, which could be considered the world’s first ‘home’ computer.

The Macintosh Girl - 'Iconic' Trendsetter

Susan Kare was a member of the team that designed the pioneering Macintosh computer in the early 1980s, creating many of its user interface icons (Paint Bucket, Happy Macintosh) and fonts (New York & Geneva). She later designed icons for Microsoft Windows 3.0.

The Ladybell - Inventor of Computerised Phone System

Erna Hoover created a computerized telephone switching system whilst working at Bell Laboratories New Jersey. She designed the stored programme control that monitored incoming calls, prioritized incoming phone traffic and eliminated overloading problems which had previously led to switchboards freezing up.

The Language Lady - First Popular Programming Language

Jean E. Sammet graduated with an MA in Mathematics in 1949. In 1961, she became manager of IBM’s Programming Center in Boston and oversaw the development of FORMAC (FORmula MAnipulation Compiler), the first widely used general language and the first to manipulate symbolic algebraic expressions.

'Star Trek' Communications Officer- A Real Role Model for Women & African Americans

The fictional character, Lieutenant Nyoto Uhura who was Chief Communications Officer on the USS Enterprise in the science fiction series Star Trek that originally appeared in 1966. Though not a real character, nevertheless her appearance in this very popular television series during the 1960s broke important sexual and racial barriers, showing women of the future as proficient in engineering with positions of responsibility and command involving high technology. Uhura became an important Role Model for Black Afro-American women in particular.

For instance the well known American actress Whoopi Goldberg, who appeared in the later series Star Trek the Next Generation, stated that Uhura was a role model for her when she was a young telling her family, "I just saw a black woman on television, and she ain't no maid!"

Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura, was used by NASA in a campaign to encourage African Americans to join the service. Dr Mae Jemison. the first black American to fly aboard the Space Shuttle. said that Star Trek was a major influence in her decision to join NASA.

The name 'Uhura' comes from the Swahili word 'Uhuru' meaning 'Freedom'.

Ireland’s Only Computer Museum Exhibition Opens in NUI Galway

I finally got my wish! I coordinated the opening of what is probably Ireland’s only historical exhibition, dedicated to the development of communications and computer technologies, at the National University of Ireland Galway. The museum is appropriately located at my workplace -the on-campus Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), which is the world’s largest Institute researching the next generation of the World Wide Web.The exhibition represents a collaboration between NUI Galway and the multi-sectoral ‘eGalway’ group of the Galway City Development Board. Under the chairpersonship of Dr. Chris Coughlan of Hewlett-Packard, representatives of GMIT, NUIG, Galway City Council, state agencies and the local business sector collected an intriguing array of vintage computers, telephones, microprocessors, data storage devices and other memorabilia that collectively illustrate how improvements in communications have dramatically impacted on society throughout the centuries.

This unique science heritage facility, which will be open for one month, tells the fascinating story of key moments in the history of communications. Yet it is designed to be more than just a tribute to the past and a collection of historical artefacts. For it has a central tenet of inspiring today’s youth to consider careers as scientists and engineers by highlighting the importance of ‘innovation’ to human progress and the crucial but oftentimes overlooked contributions of young people and of Ireland to advances in global communications technologies.

For instance, the invention of ‘Radio’ had a very strong Irish input. It was also avidly embraced by young people worldwide and spawned the birth of ‘Teenage Culture’ during the Jazz Age. This association has only increased over the decades leading to today’s digital world where many of the significant inventions in modern technology, from the personal computers to Google, Facebook and YouTube, have been created by innovators in the late teens to late twenties age bracket.

Chris Coughlan says, “a key aspect are the exhibits on IT companies that established significant manufacturing and research operations in Ireland and worked with the Irish third-level educational sector such as Verbatim in Limerick and Apple in Cork. Being based in Galway, we have of course given a special prominence to the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) who became in 1971 one of the first such multi-national entity to establish an export manufacturing operation in this country and in many ways heralded a major shift in Irish economic development. From its Galway plant, DEC provided a range of mini-computers and software that became the backbone of many industrial and engineering plants across Europe. Its presence here acted as a catalyst for numerous other US high-tech and business companies to follow suit by establishing their primary European operations in Ireland.”

There are also exhibits on the development of the portable computer, the printer and the microprocessor. Equipment on display include DEC Vax, Digital Rainbow, Apple 11, Apple Macintosh, IBM PC, Commodore 64, Vic-20, BBC and the Sinclair ZX81

There is one section of the museum though that should be very popular with all those that consider themselves ‘Young at Heart’, namely the computers that allow users to play the legendary video games of the late 1970s, including ‘Pacman’, ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Asteroids’!