TITLE: The Inventor of Assembly Language
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: October 31, 2022  6:11 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:

 This weekend, I learned that Kathleen Booth, a British mathematician
 and computer scientist, invented assembly language.
<a href="https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/29/kathleen_booth_obit/">
   An October 29 obituary</a>
 reported that Booth died on September 29 at the age of 100.  By 1950,
 when she received her PhD in applied mathematics from the University
 of London, she had already collaborated on building at least two
 early digital computers.  But her contributions weren't limited to
 hardware:

<blockquote><em>
 As well as building the hardware for the first machines, she
 wrote all the software for the ARC2 and SEC machines, in the
 process inventing what she called "Contracted Notation" and
 would later be known as assembly language.
 <br/><br/>
 Her 1958
 <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-institute-of-actuaries/article/abs/programming-for-an-automatic-digital-calculator-by-k-h-v-booth-pp-245-london-butterworth-1958-42s/5AA3C7861A942432C6D657A6A22001F6">
    book</a>,
 <b>Programming for an Automatic Digital Calculator</b>, may
 have been the first one on programming written by a woman.
</em></blockquote>

 I love the phrase "Contracted Notation".

 Thanks to several people in my Twitter feed for sharing this link.
 Here's hoping that Twitter doesn't become uninhabitable, or that a
 viable alternative arises; otherwise, I'm going to miss out on a
 whole lotta learning.
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