Sometimes a person's path can be predetermined. Tomorrow Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, turns 69, and we will tell you about his life in detail tomorrow. Great people sometimes overshadow their ancestors, and that has happened now: few know the parents of the person who created the WWW.

But how about the creation of one of the first programs for diagnosing hardware and software errors in the first commercial computer? The world's first female freelancer in 1955 with four children? A person who managed to achieve equal working conditions and equal pay for programmers in the mid-20th century? A woman who believes that the coolest thing in programming is machine code! This is all Tim's mother, Mary Lee Berners-Lee (Woods). Now let's get to know her better.

Mary Lee's Family and Education

Mary Lee was born into a family of teachers in 1924. Her mother stopped teaching after giving birth, while her father continued to work with children who were not academically successful. Mary attended one of the first schools that taught boys and girls together. Mary herself spoke curiously about her school: "It was not academically rigorous, but it focused on raising good citizens; there were no beatings with rods, detentions, or other disciplinary measures. Whereas at her brother's school, there was bullying, rod beatings, and other such things."

The future scientist began her career by following her parents' direct advice. Her parents had met at a women's rights advocacy meeting. These meetings discussed not only the political rights of women but also presented an alternative to marriage for a woman's life. This alternative was professional work and high qualifications. Thus, Mary Lee started her path to programming in a class with a strong emphasis on mathematics, which had only recently become available to girls. This was followed by university education, which coincided with World War II and led to her evacuation from Birmingham to the small town of Lydney. "Depressing, but beautiful," Mary described it. There, she continued her studies, living in the homes of ordinary citizens, not even in a dormitory, as there was none.

After returning to Birmingham, it turned out that the building where she studied had been bombed, and a wing of the building was destroyed. There was a shortage of teachers at the institute: all had gone to the front. In two years, Mary had five different math teachers, which significantly affected her education. At about 20 years old, only thanks to a scholarship was she able to go to Manchester and pursue engineering training at her own expense. The scholarship was 75 pounds a year, which Mary said was enough to live comfortably. For comparison, her colleagues (Jewish refugees) had only 22 pounds a year.

In 1944, Mary, as a talented graduate, was sent to an aviation research center, but she could not stay there. Her brother, a pilot, had recently died in the war. Mary returned closer to home; she was deeply affected by her brother's death and wanted to be closer to her family. Until 1947, she continued to study mathematics at the institute and became interested in astronomy, which led her to... Australia!

Australia, Astronomy, and Discrimination

All it took was to read an article in a scientific publication of an astronomical society, write to its director, a doctor from Canberra, who assessed the young mathematician's level of preparation and awarded Mary a scholarship to study at the Canberra Observatory. On an immigrant ship with a two-year contract, Mary set off to study astronomy. But becoming an astronomer was not in her fate.

Why? Sexism, gentlemen. She was given "a very interesting job" to classify stars by size and radius. A simple technical task that requires no creativity whatsoever. And it was given to Mary for one reason: the man who was doing this job simply lacked the patience to continue. But Mary found this out later, after she had left the job. She spent a total of three years in Australia, retaining memories of a beautiful vacation spot, horse riding, scenic views, and a completely uninteresting job.

An Amazing Path into Programming

After returning home, Mary first encountered a computer simply by finding an advertisement: "Mathematicians needed to work on a digital computer." She had no prior computer experience; she hadn't even seen one and only used a Brunsvigas mechanical calculator that worked with punch cards.

What does an IT professional do when they don't understand something? They hit the manuals. And that's exactly what Mary did; she went to the library to read up on what a computer was… and then she applied for the job!

Mary described her interview process like this: "I went to the interview; and since I knew something about computers, I could ask smart questions. That was supposed to increase my initial salary by a third." She landed a job at Ferranti, where she would work with the first commercial computer, the Ferranti Mark 1.

You might think Mary "went into IT" for the big money, but that wasn't quite the case. At that time, working for a computer company was not particularly profitable; local residents preferred nearby cotton mills. Ferranti in that area made radios, where girls monotonously soldered components on assembly lines. But Mary wasn't hired as a solderer; she was part of the programming team.

Moreover, the company had a simply fabulous training system. Mary recalled: "They showed us the basics, some basic things, and then – well, you figure it out yourself. You ask colleagues. You consult. You were given a task, and you just do it, it's very simple. Can't handle it – you're free." Interestingly, there were no gender differences in this field; both men and women received the same "introduction," only men were paid more. We'll talk about this a bit later.

A (Not So) Dusty Job

Mary Lee's task was to program in machine code. She dealt with solving systems of equations. There were numerous tasks, all executed for aviation: calculations of stresses along the wings and a series of similar complex and repetitive computations. Most importantly, there were a vast number of calculations.

The code was written in a thirty-two character system. This required memorizing a table correlating the 32-digit numeral base, their numerical equivalents, and their binary system equivalents.

Instructions were entered into the computer using punch tapes, and the processing results were also outputted on them. The program was formed using five-character alphanumeric values, which were punched in binary code on the tapes.

A separate issue was created by the operational memory. It was implemented through Williams-Kilburn tubes and accommodated a twenty-bit word. A second word could not fit in the memory and was transferred to secondary storage, the magnetic drum. Any program setup caused significant difficulties, including because there was only one machine, and usage time was severely limited. At that time, there was a joke related to IBM: the manager had a poster saying "THINK!", and at the Ferranti company, the workers also had a poster: "Think, but not here!"

One of the significant tasks assigned to Mary was the attempt to create one of the first diagnostic programs. This program had to be executed with incredible memory economy. Launching two programs simultaneously was physically impossible; computers simply couldn't do it. Therefore, a test program was run first and then it, as the lead, would launch the program to be tested.

Relations between engineers and programmers at the company were quite tense. Again, it all came down to the fact that only one person could use the computer. Naturally, the time with the machine was strictly divided, and people even slept next to the computer. Mary recounted that they brought folding beds and slept directly in the hall, waiting for their turn to work. You were woken up, slammed a coffee, and off to work!

Programmers constantly conflicted with engineers; the entire tube (operational memory) could end up filled with ones, and the machine would not continue working. There were two almost equivalent reasons for this: either the programmer messed up, or the machine broke down again. The eternal debate: who is to blame and what to do…

Who should fight discrimination?

When the Mark 1* computer appeared, reliability increased significantly, and the company began to sell computers, primarily in the aviation industry. Mary developed a program for inverting a 40x40 matrix and was supposed to go to Italy to demonstrate the program's operation, but she couldn't because she was already pregnant by then, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Shortly before the company's significant growth, even before meeting her future husband, Mary led a real uprising! Inside the company, she began to fight for women's rights and successfully won. During her work, it turned out that men were paid more. At that time, discussing earnings was considered utterly indecent. After it became known that there was a disparity in salaries, Mary directly approached the company's management. It was easier for her to do this because she was renting an apartment with the assistant to the personnel manager, giving her direct access to the management.

The uprising was successful. In 1951-1952, when the events described took place, Ferranti established equal salaries for young employees regardless of their gender. As their skills grew and they advanced in their careers, they received equal pay raises for doing the same work.

However, there was another episode related to the war. When Ferranti built a new computer for the university, university staff mainly operated it, and the company reserved the time from midnight to eight in the morning. Influenced by a specific male character (who remained unnamed), the HR department made a brilliant decision: not to allow women to work from midnight to 8 AM. There had to be another uprising to remove this "care."

Love, family, work, and freelancing

In 1952, Mary met her future husband, and they were introduced three times, but at first, these were fleeting work encounters, and only when they were introduced for the third time at a festive dinner did they realize they had met before. Mary recalled a funny story when she worked all night on the computer, and her future husband called her, but Mary heard everything he said despite the very loud teletypes nearby. Later there was a ceremonial dinner where they were "introduced," a whirlwind romance, a wedding in 1954, and the birth of Tim Berners-Lee in 1955.

With the birth of a child (and later three more), working at the company became difficult, and Mary invented... remote programming, freelancing, if you will. She could write a program for a specific task at home and then test it in its final form. And she actively received such orders.

Mary was quite well-known in her time in a very small community of programmers; moreover, her husband, Conway, remained at work and could help with clients. At that time, there were few women programmers, and for them to also work from home was a unique situation.

Mary recalled that she really wanted to go to work, she loved her job, but she never doubted that she had made the right choice and became the mother of four children. She later recalled that family happiness and children literally break careers. Later, F International was created – a British company founded by another female programmer, Stephanie Shirley. This company worked specifically with female programmer freelancers. It was the first such company, and its political influence, in a broad sense, was no less significant than its economic one. The firm actively drew press attention to the problem of working women programmers. The story of this company truly deserves its own text.

However, working at this company was not quite suitable for Berners-Lee; Mary had her clients, for example, the London Transport Authority approached her. Mary's task was to reduce delays in public transport. A group of specialists calculated which conditions could create bus traffic jams, and Mary translated this into a working program. There were many jobs, for example, launching weather balloons in a military town, where extreme care with rounding was necessary. Meanwhile, a computer revolution was taking place. Initially, to perform the task, Mary had to learn Mercury, then Algol, and much later Fortran, after returning to permanent work. No laurels allowed her to fall behind the progress.

Mary worked "from home," if you can call it that, until her youngest, the fourth child in the family, turned 8 years old. If you consider the rate of development of information technologies and remember that Mary's children were not born simultaneously, she missed an incredible term for the programming field – 16 years (!!). Returning to the constantly changing field was almost fantastical. But a passionate person can achieve a lot.

Returning to Work and a New Status

After a long break, Mary returned to work, not in IT, but at a school. Specifically, she went to an all-girls grammar school. It was a serious challenge for Mary Lee. She recalled, "I discovered I was teaching math to a fourteen-year-old who didn’t know how to add numbers up to ten, and I didn't know how to teach him that in the 40 minutes available." Moreover, Mary was a very slow reader and her overall work style could be described as 'slow'. She didn't teach for long, realizing it was not her calling despite her extensive knowledge of mathematics. However, Mary did not 'take someone else's job,' as modern readers might assume. She later mentioned, "One reason I agreed to work was the total lack of alternatives at the school. It was better me than no one." Mary often consulted with her husband and her eldest son Tim, who by that time was receiving advanced training in mathematics, which Mary Lee herself was not familiar with.

Then she returned to programming, learning to use Fortran. Mary began working at a company specializing in PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique), a method used to assess and analyze projects that are employed in managing large complex projects and optimizing these systems.

During her work, Mary noted a surprising fact: the youth programmed much faster than she did, and no one wrote instructions or manuals. Her colleagues simply did not know how, so Mary took it upon herself to do so.

She later joked, "Now I know why all the instructions are so bad." Mary personally experienced the complexity of writing them. Just gathering a volume of information and comments was utterly insufficient. After she did all the work to make the instructions clear and accessible... the program itself would change! Programs change damn fast. And writing instructions required a serious analysis of what is "obvious" and what everyone should "understand". What deserves a lot of time? After working for several years, Mary realized she could no longer keep up with the pace and simply retired in 1987 at the age of 62, along with her husband who turned 65.

Mary went into retirement not only exhausted from work and chasing modern technologies but also due to health conditions. Constant stress had begun to affect her hearing, and she chose to preserve it over remaining in the workforce. Her hearing problems ceased after she retired. In an interview, Mary recalled that retirement was pleasant. She could peacefully do household chores, rely on people for help, and live stress-free. Moreover, Mary always received support in her work from her husband and family. She would later recall that it was her family that helped her return to programming.

What is the most important thing in life?

Mary rarely gave interviews, and when she did, she was mostly asked about her eldest son, Tim Berners-Lee, and the internet. Yet, even though Mary herself jokingly calls herself the "grandmother of the internet," she does not exalt her eldest son's achievements.

Talking about her children, she cheerfully notes that she directed almost all of them towards working with computers: "Pete and Helen are also involved in information technology. The whole family—father, mother, three children—are engaged in information technologies, only the youngest, Mike, rebelled and didn't follow in his father's footsteps!" The youngest son also went into science; he is one of the leading researchers on the carbon footprint issue. Currently (2020s), Mike, along with Tim, is studying the impact of ICT on climate.

Asked "What do you find most enjoyable about working with computers?" Mary answered: "Programming in machine code; I've never had so much fun with any other job. It's really enjoyable, there were so many opportunities, even though it took an immense amount of time. It's neat and, literally, beautiful." It’s quite possible that both youth and good company influenced such beliefs. However, these appeared in her children. From their very childhood, Mary maximally encouraged her children's inclination to discover new things and innovate, allowing them to stay engaged and keep up with modern technologies throughout their lives. Sometimes she scolded herself for having missed progress in her time, tried to catch up, and could not fully manage. Age takes its toll, and learning becomes harder…

Mary Lee Woods will leave this world in the sixty-third year of a happy marriage, at the age of ninety-three, having lived a bright and fulfilling life, and most importantly, a happy one by her own words. Mary was, in a sense, an idealist, and so was her husband, about whom it's worth telling separately. Together, these two people, mathematicians and programmers, who went from the earliest programs to the modern widespread computerization, raised four children. Unfortunately, we remember them primarily because their eldest, Timothy Berners-Lee, created the internet (which he actually did not create) and gave us the opportunity to get to know his wonderful mother, albeit posthumously.