Selfish History

There are many ways to approach historical study and explain how we got here. If you have a few general history books on your shelf, I’m willing to bet that at least one of them claims to offer you a new or exciting perspective on the human story. (This is a very safe bet given no bookshelf is now complete without an obligatory copy of Sapiens.)

It’s symptomatic of our intrinsic need to identify and apply pattern to what would otherwise leave human history as an unpredictable ball of chaos, erratically rolling now for many thousands of years. The thing is, you can look back at history (ie: everything) and pretty much see what you want to see (ie: anything).

Perhaps human history can be explained through natural factors such as climate change, or our reliance upon and love for the Earth’s natural resources. Maybe it is more biological in nature, and evolution is the driving force.

Contrarily, it can be argued that religion is the weaver of our timeline. Or Karl Marx (you could probably guess) argues that the formation – and subsequent organisation – of society into distinct social classes is the battery powering historical change. 

A contemporary of Marx, a man called Thomas Carlyle, also came up with his own idea, and many historians of the 19th century were proponents of his ‘Great Man Theory’. Thomas here traced the baton of human development as passed from great leader to great leader. These leaders, or heroes, are therefore the decisive force as they fashion history with their own hands. 

Says Thomas: The History of the world is but the Biography of great men. All that we have experienced, and are experiencing, is in this way the legacy of a select few exceptional and extraordinary men. 

Suffice to say the theory in its original form has now fallen largely out of favour, not least for being so deliciously reductionist. It wasn’t without criticism in its day either, as Marx dismissed ideas that change is governed by a select few as ‘ high-sounding dramas of princes and states’. (Great Man Theory is fundamentally at-odds with Marx, who famously located the power for change as in the hands of the masses.)

It is also often pointed out that the theory frames these ‘great men’ as in a vacuum, entirely ignoring contextual factors (social, political, natural ect) and the millions of people, both men and women, who are chalked up to being bystanders. This fits nicely into our points made in the introduction to this series regarding lumping the masses into these overarching and impersonal legacies. 

But before you dismiss Carlyle as another Alexander or Napoleon fanboy (god help us if he lived to see Churchill’s tenure) there remains plenty to unpack, especially on our theme of legacy. 

The most obvious exclusion from the Great Man Theory is, well, women. Even if we do accept that, generally speaking, history’s biggest movers and shakers have been men- there is clear reasoning for this.

Women simply haven’t been afforded the societal and cultural conditions with which to become great leaders. Often when they did achieve great things, the pervasion of discrimination in history ensures no lasting recognition or legacy was left (history has until very recently been written solely by the white man’s pen).

It has led to the unfortunate case that women are disproportiantely excluded from historical record, and we still leave the achievements and legacy of many today underappreciated. 

This has been met by a recent push to champion female history and engage everyone (regardless of personal characteristics) in recognising we are not just living in the long-casted shadow of so-called great men. 

Here are three individuals who left an undervalued mark. Some of these legacies we benefit from greatly today (and all are worth reading about further than I have been able to cover). In Selfish History style, we will also reflect on how this can inform our considerations and views when it comes to our own legacy.

Ada Lovelace: the Mother of Computers 

It is fair to say that computers are a big deal. I’m using one to write this, and most of us spend most of our time on one. Computers now come in all shapes and sizes and so, when we aren’t on our large ones, we use our mobile devices; over half the global population now owns one of those. 

You would think that anyone who had a hand in pioneering the base concept of this technology- that underpins modern human life- would therefore be appropriately lauded. Ada Lovelace is testament to that not being necessarily the case. 

Ada’s mother supported her interest, and materialising talent, in mathematics perhaps as a means to steer her from her curiosity towards her father, none other than the poet Lord Byron. (The adoration wasn’t mutual as he jumped ship to Greece when Ada was a baby and then died when she was eight.)

Ada’s sedulous study landed her in conversation with leading scientists of the day and, in her late-teens, gave rise to a working relationship with one Charles Babbage. Charles, to Ada’s particular regard, was working on a design he called the Analytical Engine.

Without going into too much detail, the designs for the Analytical Engine present a device mirroring much of the basic functionality of modern computers. Charles’s vision, though never built, was in-part able to perform complex arithmetic while storing recent outputs in its ‘memory’. Nice one. 

The Analytical Engine earned Charles ample renown, and in 1843 Ada was tasked with translating a transcript made from one of Charles’s lectures from French back to English. Over the course of completing her task, Ada attatched extensive notes of her own- which turned out to be very significant. 

Within these notes, Ada had correctly identified that the Analytical Engine was capable of computational power beyond that which is numerical in nature. Besides numbers, Ada noted, the Engine could act on any set of logical symbols such as letters or musical notes.

She also provided what many deem the first example of an algorithm, or program. This makes her the world’s first computer programmer, despite the fact the modern computer was still over 100 years away.

In essence, when we accuse the computer-savvy in our lives of talking ‘a different language’ or ‘programmer gobbledygook’, the first words of said language were pencilled by Ada.

Ada died of cancer at 36, and neither she nor Charles lived to see the impact of the work. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that Ada’s ‘notes’ earned her the recognition she deserved in life. 

While much has been argued as to if Lovelace really was the main driver of her notes, as well as the validity of her ‘first programmer’ title, it is beyond the point as she produced pioneering work regardless. She has become a symbolic figure for the contributions (both historic and current) of women to STEM study. You can celebrate this work every year on the second Tuesday of October: Ada Lovelace day.

While Ada’s well-deserved recognition is growing, her legacy is still one best-known in niche circles. Moreover, the argument from some for reducing her role in the formation of modern-day computers comes rather charged by the fact she was a woman. 

Given Charles Babbage is hardly a household name either, it supports our argument in the introduction for this series that it is so often our outputs that are remembered, with ourselves being the insignificant part. 

Henrietta Lacks: the woman with remarkable cells

In 1951, very few hospitals in the Baltimore area would treat a patient of colour for free. One such building was Johns Hopkins hospital, and that is where Henrietta Lacks attended experiencing a knot-like pain in her womb and abnormal bleeding. She died a handful of months later from cervical cancer at age 31, leaving five children. 

However, Henrietta’s cancer cells had been harvested without her knowledge and consent. It is important to note that before we delve into her legacy, she was first robbed of her humanity.

 It was soon found that Hentrietta’s cells, instead of dying within a few days as expected, could divide indefinitely; in a sense making them immortal. This incredible discovery was shared freely, far, and wide. 

Here are a few of the applications that the cell line ‘HeLa’ has had:

• Vast contribution to cancer studies
• To develop the first polio vaccine 
• In virology, to develop treatments for and understand the impact of HIV, Mumps, Parvovirus, and more 
• A key part of producing the COVID-19 vaccine 
• Genetic and genomic breakthroughs 

However, despite the significance of the tissue, it took decades for the Lacks family to even find out about the HeLa line. While common practice at the time was to leave informed consent out of the picture when it came to harvesting cells, the Lacks family were consistently left with no power as to the subsequent cultivation, sale, and use of Henrietta’s cells. 

It is clear enough that the ignorance towards the original doner, and decades-long exclusion of her family in having their say, is inextricably linked to the fact she was an African American woman. All that ensued from the original taking of the cells must be contextualised as having taken place in a society wherein racism was (and still is) prevalent. 

 The Lacks family has fought to raise awareness of the human at the root of the cell line, and have their say in the publication and dissemination of Henrietta’s medical information (her cell’s genome was published online…). 

Not only was Henrietta given this legacy without her consent, her family has had to fight hard, and still does, to ensure that she is correctly credited and praised. A legacy is no gaurentee even if your very cells improve the lives of millions. 

Hedy Lamarr: the actress double-booked (in two halls of fame)

Born in Austria, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler sought to make a big name for herself in late-30’s Hollywood. To help with this, and at the behest of the man at the top of MGM, she made a smaller name for herself: Hedy Lamarr. 

While being typecast as the glamorous, somewhat one-dimensional, character in her movies, Hedy was a budding inventor on the side- and wickedly clever. And so like countless others the advent of World War 2 enabled the application of Hedy’s other, less-realised, talents. 

Hedy was keenly aware of the foreboding dread inflicted by the German U-boat. These submarines stalked their prey, before striking from the deep with their explosive tendrils. She knew, as did everyone, that a way to reliably target and sink these immersed predators would represent a significant alleviation of the creeping fear of the U-boat in the Atlantic and beyond. 

It was a meeting at a dinner party with the like-minded pianist and composer George Antheil that set ideas in greater motion. And so (cue the A-team theme) it was that the Hollywood Star and the composer set out on long brainstorming sessions to do their part in decelerating the German War Machine. 

The central problem at play was how to radio-control torpedoes, launched from the surface, without the Germans simply jamming the signal and throwing them off course.  The answer lay, surprisingly, in a piano.

George had previously composed a piece incorporating multiple pianos playing simultaneously. This resulted in a group of pianos playing in sync to a ‘program’, creating a symphony that, while identical, cannot be predicted by an outside force.

So, thought Hedy, why not replicate this with a symphony of radio frequencies. She coined this ‘frequency hopping’ and it would allow ships to communicate with their torpedoes while, to the targets, the signal would be hopping seemingly erratically. 

Unfortunately, the navy promptly dismissed the idea. The designs, however, were stashed away and labelled top-secret. After the war, military research gave way back to the day job for Hedy, and frequency hopping was quite literally gathering dust. That is until it exploded in application in the latter-half of the 20th Century. 

By the 90’s, frequency hopping became the standard for secure radio communications, and so became extremely widespread. Frequency hopping is in fact the technologial precursor to Bluetooth, GPS, and Wi-Fi. 

Naturally, Hedy didn’t see a cent of credit (either monetary or in the currency of recognition) until much later on in her life. George also died before the application of frequency hopping seriously took off. In fact, as the patent had expired, neither co-inventor ever saw any money from the industry that exploded from the base-invention of frequency hopping. 

Hedy did receive some long-overdue recognition later in life, including a BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award. She has also enjoyed a surge of interest recently around her fascinating ‘Hollywood Inventor’ story. Other recognitions include a telescope named after her, as well as her very own Star Trek ship. 

Almost 15 years after her death in 2000, Hedy was posthumously inducted to the Inventors Hall of Fame. She also has a spot on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a contrasted legacy that reflects the dually-talented woman in life. 

Hedy, and those above, represent the many legacies of important women who are only just, in the context of the push for embracement of women’s history, being discovered and appreciated for what they did in life. It is an effort that ought to continue; anyone who appreciates history will find a trove of stories, and help to bring into the light these important individuals. 

Wrapping up

For all three of the above cases you can see why the fact they were women has previously diminished their remembrance in history, and led to a fight in crediting them with their deserved legacy. 

Ada was second to Charles Babbage ‘the father of computers’. The subsequent debate regarding the merit of her achievements ignores her brilliance regardless. Henrietta was the unimportant origin of the scientific breakthroughs conducted and perpetuated by male doctors using her cell line. Her story, and her African American origin, deemed decidedly not of value. Hedy, typecasted on and off-screen as the simple beauty, found no official recognition of her bright and inventive mind coming until late in life or after her death. 

The very nature of the common argument that ‘someone else would’ve done it at some point’ is to ignore that someone, a woman, did do it- and they did it first. All three have at least enjoyed a resurgence recently as women in history who’ve done remarkable things, and are being championed as such. 

While we are glad that these women are now being celebrated, the chief Selfish History lesson here is that we give timely celebration to women in our lives- and ensure others around us do the same. 

Legacy is not just a man’s game, but it sure isn’t built on an even playing field.

***

Selfish History’s book recommendations: 

I thought to break the constraints of only book recommendation. As I suggested earlier you read further about all of my examples, here is a book for each.

Ada’s Algorithm by James Essinger

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr by Richard Rhodes