Ann Hardy was an American computer programmer and entrepreneur, best known for her pioneering work on computer time-sharing systems while working at Tymshare from 1966 onwards.
17 Facts About Ann Hardy
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Ann Hardy's father had a small advertising agency and her mother, Ruth H Ewing, was a high school math teacher and homemaker.
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Ann Hardy was the eldest of five children in a conservative Methodist family.
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In 1955, Ann Hardy graduated from Pomona College with a degree in physical education.
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Ann Hardy chose physical education because it was the only degree program which allowed her to take math and science courses after her desire to major in chemistry was stymied by the chemistry department head who was opposed to having women in the lab.
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In 1956, Ann Hardy entered the programming field after taking IBM's Programmer Aptitude Test.
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Ann Hardy then switched to programming and worked in IBM Research, which was in Poughkeepsie, and then in Ossining, New York.
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Ann Hardy was one of a team of five who worked on the Livermore STRETCH's Fortran compiler from 1963 to 1966.
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In February 1966, after her husband got a job at IBM in the Bay Area, Ann Hardy got a job at Tymshare, a newly formed time-sharing company in Los Altos, California.
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Ann Hardy worked on some of the first time-sharing systems and computer networks, used by a variety of corporations and government agencies.
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Ann Hardy eventually rose to vice-president, the first woman in that role.
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Ann Hardy subsequently co-founded Agorics, which focuses on web-based marketplace applications.
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Ann Hardy's experiences are representative of the state of gendered labor in the field of computing during the mid to late 20th century: despite having technical skills and proving their value as workers, women in computing were continually undervalued as the field rose in power and importance.
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Ann Hardy served as co-chair of the Software Industry Special Interest Group at the Computer History Museum.
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Ann Hardy married, and later divorced, Norman Ann Hardy, an alumnus of IBM and Tymshare.
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Ann Hardy had two daughters, born in 1968 and 1970; one became an environmentalist and the other a costume designer.
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Ann Hardy died in Palo Alto, California on December 7,2023, at the age of 90.