Well, I only missed Ada Lovelace Day by a week, but I did have an icon of her since I started this lj account.
Actually, I was just running around grabbing neat icons, until I discovered I had already maxed out what a free account is allotted, but whatever.

Anyway, I had two picks for Ada Lovelace Day, neither of which I saw anywhere else through my peephole into the lj universe.

First are the thousands of women who worked at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works. Cicero borders Chicago on the southwest, and one of the L lines goes right past where the plant was. I remember the building. Big mother!

It was the workers at the Hawthorne Works whose behavior suggested to industrial psychologists that people work better if someone actually pays a little attention to them. “The Hawthorne effect”, “a form of reactivity” was deduced from data gathered in the late 1920s – in the 1950s. Those psych guys are really on the ball!
“Thus these experiments were among the first indications that any productivity model must factor in intangible attributes such as human behavior.”


My other personal honoree is the redoubtable Caroline Herschel (1750 - 1848).
Born in Hanover, a severe childhood illness stunted her growth to four foot three, so her mother prepared her for a life as a maid. When her brother William got a job as an organist in England, she went to live (and study) with him.
She followed her brother's interest in astronomy, giving up a career as a singer, and became his assistant in his lens-grinding and telescope business.
On August 1, 1786, she found her first comet, Comet Herschel (C/1786 P1) (of, eventually, eight).
At her brother's request, she indexed the two-volume star catalog of John Flamsteed, including errata and an additional 560 stars.

After William discovered Uranus and became Royal Astronomer, Caroline was put on the royal payroll as his assistant, with a pension of fifty pounds, the first time that a woman was recognized for a scientific position.

After William's marriage, she eventually returned to Hanover, to live with another brother, Dietrich. The catalog she produced of her and William's work led to her becoming the first woman enrolled in the Royal Astronomical Society. The Kings of Prussia and Denmark gave her medals.
No errors have ever been found in her catalog of twenty-five hundred nebulae.

After he died she went back to Germany and went on making observations and calculations; no errors have ever been found in her notes. She catalogued twenty-five hundred nebulae and discovered eight comets. She died at the age of ninety-seven.