Computer pioneer and mathematician Kathleen Booth in the 1950s, loading a program into the All Purpose Electronic (X) Computer, known as the 32-bit APE(X)C which she co-designed with her husband. She helped to design and build one of the world’s first operational computers and wrote two of the earliest books on computer design and programming; she was also credited with the invention of the first ‘assembly language.’ which did away with the tedious work of rewiring cables and changing switches when reprogramming computers like the ENIAC. On November 11, 1955 Kathleen Booth typed some French words into a computer: ‘C’est un exemple d’une traduction fait par la machine à calculer installée au laboratoire de Calcul de Birkbeck College, Londres.’ Out came the English equivalent: ‘This is an example of a translation made by the machine for calculation installed at the laboratory of computation of Birkbeck College, London.’ It was probably the first public demonstration of what today we call a translation app, and an early use of artificial intelligence to tackle the challenge of interpreting idiomatic nuances between languages. With husband Andrew Booth, together they developed the Booth multiplier, a highly complex algorithm that she once jokingly dismissed as an ‘arithmetical routine devised over egg and chips in the ABC tea shop in Southampton Row.’ Born Kathleen Britten in Worcestershire in 1922, she earned a math degree before working on aerodynamics at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, the Second World War opened up science-based jobs to women who had previously been limited to teaching.
