Please enjoy this multi-faceted, interactive timeline interweaving historically situated events that reflect women’s narratives with art and STEAM breakthroughs as they relate to the unfolding herstories presented in New Media Futures by twenty-two featured book contributors. Explore co-created, innovative highlights including the Mosaic web browser, Virtual Reality CAVE, PHSColograms, digital games, computer animation, scientific visualization, and information design, alongside hidden figures, feminist heroines, and significant contributions made by women artists and scientists who transformed our world.
Trailblazing
Moments
circa. 1890s-1990s and beyond
"Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world."
–Jane Addams
'Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of New Media Art' features articles by Donna Cox and Claudia Hart; Cox's article includes 'New Media Futures' co-editors, contributors and book references.
Copper Giloth, Ellen Sandor, and Donna Cox were included in 'Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography and Film', Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, November 24, 2024-July 13, 2025, curated by Britt Salvesen.
Donna Cox, Ellen Sandor & (art)n, and Claudia Hart were included in 'GLOW: Illuminating Innovation' at King's College London, curated by Sarah Atkinson, March 7-April 20, 2024. The exhibition included Rebecca Allen, Peggy Weil, Margaret Minsky, Nicole Stenger, Tony Dove, Tamiko Thiel, and Nonny del la Peña.
'Patric Prince: Digital Art Visionary' uniquely explored Prince's collection of digital art and the fascinating collaborations and use of technology it reveals. The 14 featured works from the V&A's permanent collection provided a snapshot of digital art practices from the 1960s-early 2000s, and was co-curated by Melanie Lenz and Livia Turnbull.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists celebrated the 75th Anniversary of the Doomsday Clock, created by Martyl.
HERSTORY: Digital Innovations Symposium & Book Signing at NCSA in Urbana-Champaign, October 26, 2018.
'New Media Futures' was published during the 150th Anniversary of the University of Illinois in 2017 and the 100th Anniversary of the University of Illinois Press in 2018, whose Editor in Chief was Laurie C. Matheson. The book recalls the history of a technological revolution from the point of view of 22 women, making this a trailblazing initiative.
The culmination of 'New Media Futures' coincided with the 150th anniversaries of SAIC (2016) and the University of Illinois (2017). 'Celebrating Women in New Media Arts', a special one-day symposium, was held at SAIC on March 18, 2016, during Women’s Month “to examine the achievements of women in the field of New Media Arts and emerging technologies from the 1980s onward.” Organized by Tiffany Holmes, past dean of undergraduate studies.
First Lady Michelle Obama speaks about the importance of supporting and retaining women who choose careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and science, the so-called STEM disciplines.
In 2003, Donna Cox and Brenda Laurel contributed to Judy Malloy’s seminal 'Women, Art & Technology' published by MIT Press (Leonardo Series). Malloy’s book continues to resonate with many professionals and included Artists’ Papers by Dara Birnbaum, Lynn Hershman, Pauline Oliveros, and others. In the preface, Malloy wrote, “Many paths emerge from the matrix where art, technology, and gender intertwine.”
The Purple Moon team, led by founder Brenda Laurel, innovated a form of “emotional navigation” for the interface to the Rockett games based on research from play-testing with girls and boys conducted with Cheskin Research. Screenshot from 1998. Courtesy of Brenda Laurel.
The iconic NSFNet image that was the precursor to the Internet of today and still requested for use of the University of Illinois. The network data was first visualized by Donna J. Cox and Robert Patterson in 1991 and again in 1993. This version is from 1993. Courtesy of Donna J. Cox and Bob Patterson, NCSA, University of Illinois.
Mosaic was developed at NCSA and was the first graphical web browser; it became a global phenomenon leading with an easy-to-use interface. Colleen Bushell worked with the Mosaic team to design the interface for the first Mosaic. She designed the Mosaic wordmark with the world globe in center of the “S” that became the NCSA logo. The animated globe was created by Robert Patterson and was the first Internet icon that served as an indicator to viewer that processing or downloading was happening.
Joan Truckenbrod’s Integrated Creativity: Transcending the Boundaries of Visual Art, Music and Literature is published in Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1992), pp. 89-95
Carolina Cruz-Neira worked to help conceive and build the virtual immersive environment that would later evolve into the VR CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment).
Science by Satellite: Televisualization” 1989 event on stage in Boston Computer Museum auditorium. Three screen projections in the background showing images being broadcast in real time over satellite from Illinois. This was the first demo showing the “look and feel” of the future of Internet teleconferencing so common today. This vision of doing science and data visualization interactively and remotely was ahead of its time.
The Cray-1 supercomputer was a very photographic environment for many people who visited Illinois. Photographer Kurt Fishback captured Donna J. Cox as part of his series documenting female artists in their studios. Donna J. Cox sitting on the Cray-1. Courtesy of Kurt Fishback, 1988.
Cover of the influential 1987 National Science Foundation special report that delineated the major visualization challenges in the twentieth century. Coauthored by Bruce McCormick, Tom DeFanti, and Maxine Brown. Cover art visualization by Donna J. Cox and Michael Norman. Courtesy of Donna J. Cox.
The cover image was published in 1987. It was exhibited in the SIGGRAPH Art Show 1998 retrospective as part of the twenty-five years of pioneering computer art. Joan Truckenbrod was art show chair. The cover shows a visual comparison between the Paleolithic Venus on the left and the postmodern supercomputer graphics Venus on the right.
Simulations/Dissimulations Symposium Poster. A major Chicago conference held at SAIC, November 5–7, 1987, where presenters and attendees discussed the primary contemporary issues around emerging computer art and New Media. Invited speakers included Jean Baudrillard, Muriel Cooper, Alan Rath, Stephen Wilson, and Myron Krueger. Courtesy of Donna J. Cox
Copper Giloth and Jane Veeder co-author "The Paint Problem," published in IEEE, July/August 1985: "The paint interface: Is it a vehicle to easy electronic art or an obstacle to creative involvement with computer graphics?"
PHSCologram ’83 by Ellen Sandor, Jim Zanzi, Mark Resch, Randy Johnson, and Gina Uhlmann, (art)n and Gary Justis, Jerry August, Tom Cvetkovich and Steven Smith. Five 32" × 48" PHSCologram panels, Cibachrome, Kodalith, Plexiglas featuring tributes to Georgia O’Keeffe, the Outsider Artist, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Louise Nevelson. Exhibited at SAIC, Fermilab, and other venues, and featured in the New Art Examiner cover story, January 1984. Courtesy of Ellen Sandor, (art)n.
Joan Truckenbrod becomes the Chair of the School of the Art Institute’s Art and Technology Program in 1981-86. Fourier Transform, 1976 Courtesy of Joan Truckenbrod
Copper Giloth becomes the first MFA graduate in May 1980 at the Electronic Visualization Lab, University of Illinois at Chicago.
Barbara Sykes jamming and performing on the image processor during “Environmental Symmetry,” 1977, a day-long multimonitor, interactive performance environment that included audience participation, dancers, and musicians. Courtesy of Barbara Sykes.
"Technology is a valuable handmaiden in the advances of culture, but only when wielded with a spirit of empathy, collaboration, and care, skills in which women, in my opinion, excel.”
–Dr. Lisa Wainwright
Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Our timeline research for New Media Futures included regional and national historic events that related to the arts, computer science, feminist history, and politics. These important events deepen the historical context of the digital revolution for readers while revealing their culturally enriched interrelated connections, some of which have been described in the book’s introductory essays, illuminated from our interviews and research. Highlights in bold point to some of the events described in Part II of the introductory essay, while dates are thematically color coded in blue–politics, purple–arts and culture, green–science and technology and pink– herstory milestones.
REMEMBER TO DREAM, VOTE 2020
Carrie Mae Weems
22 ½” x 30 1/8”
From the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection
Women Trailblazing Political Milestones in Illinois
2024: In Chicago, U.S. Vice President, Kamala Harris becomes the Democratic Nominee for the 50th President of the United States.
2019: Juliana Stratton becomes the first African-American woman to become Illinois' lieutenant governor, and the state's fourth woman lieutenant governor overall, after Corinne Wood, Sheila Simon, and Evelyn Sanguinetti; she was re-elected in 2022.
2019: Lori Lightfoot becomes the first African American and openly LGBT woman and second woman elected as mayor of Chicago, through 2023.
2016: Hillary Rodham Clinton secures the Democratic Nomination for the U.S. Presidential Election and wins the popular vote.
2017: Tammy Duckworth is elected to the U.S. Senate and becomes the first woman to give birth while in office; she was re-elected in 2022.
2013-17: Tammy Duckworth is the first Thai American woman and first disabled veteran woman elected to U.S. Congress.
2009-17: Michelle Obama becomes the first African American First Lady to serve in the White House.
2009-13: Hillary Rodham Clinton is the third woman appointed to serve as the U.S. Secretary of State.
2003-11: Maria Shriver serves as the First Lady of California.
2001-09: Hillary Rodham Clinton is the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate in New York.
1992: Carol Moseley-Braun of Chicago becomes the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
1979: Jane Byrne becomes the first woman mayor of Chicago.
1931: Jane Addams wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
1892: Chicago attorney, Myra Bradwell becomes the first woman admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Dream with ambition, lead with conviction, and see yourselves in a way that others may not.”
–Kamala Harris, 49th Vice President of the United States and
Democratic Nominee for the 50th President of the United States
Former U.S. Senator and Attorney General of California
1776 – The U.S. Declaration of Independence includes one woman's name alongside the men who signed it; Katherine Mary Goddard, the woman who officially printed it.
1833 – Ada Lovelace meets Charles Babbage and later collaborates with him. Based on her work, she is often honored as the world's first computer programmer, and her method, the first computer program.
1843 – The Note G computer algorithm, attributed to Ada Lovelace, is published along with her substantial notes on the possibilities of the invention: "The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths."
1856 – The Chicago Historical Society is formed and renamed Chicago History Museum in 2006.
1866 – The Chicago Academy of Design is formed.
1868 – Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship and “due process” to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S.
1869 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) and Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) co-found the National Womanʼs Suffrage Association (NWSA).
1869 – Lucy Stone (1818-1893) founds the American Woman Suffrage Association that merges in 1890 with NWSA.
1869-69 – Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, which was set in the Civil War, was published in two volumes. The archetypal female characters she created have inspired future generations of women, and recent fandom with movies and mini-series based on the best-selling, timeless novel. She was the best-selling author of her era, whose earnings exceeded Henry James and Herman Melville combined.
1869 – St. Louis Law School becomes the first law school to admit women; Belle Mansfield, who read for the law on her own time, becomes the first practicing female attorney in the U.S.
1870 – Sixty percent of all women workers are employed in domestic service jobs.
1871 – The Great Chicago Fire destroys the city.
1871 – Frances Elizabeth Willard (1839-98) becomes the first female college president when she is elected to head the Evanston College for Ladies.
1872 – Victoria Woodhull runs for the office of President of the United States as the candidate of the Equal Rights Party.
1876 – The Chicago Womanʼs Club is formed and is joined by Philanthropist, Bertha Palmer.
1879 – The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) is established as a museum and school on southwest corner of State and Monroe Streets.
1880 – Approximately 2.5 million women in the U.S. are working for wages.
1880 – Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt (1845-1926) paints Woman in Black at the Opera.
1882 – The School of the Art Institute (SAIC) is formed [former Chicago Academy of Design].
1885 – Bryn Mawr College opens and becomes the first womanʼs college in the U.S. to offer graduate studies.
1886 – Jane and Nell Lloyd Jones co-found Hillside Home School in Wisconsin, the first co-education boarding school in the U.S. based on their “learn by doing” approach to teaching.
Suffrage Parade, New York City, May 6, 1912.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
“Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?”
–Michelle Obama, 47th First Lady of the United States
Becoming
“Shortly after I came home, my daughter Ada was born on April 19, 2010, named for Ada Lovelace [see p. 16] because I loved her contribution to the field of computer programming so much.”
–Tiffany Holmes
Mary Cassatt’s (1844–1926) design of the Woman’s Building South Tympanum celebrated young women pursuing knowledge and science. This is one of the themes emerging in the twentieth-century modern woman. Decoration of South Tympanum, “Modern Woman” by Mary Cassatt.
Source: Maude Howe Elliott, Art and Handicraft in the Woman’s Building of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893,
“A Celebration of Women Writers.” http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/.
1889 – SAIC offers a program in Architecture through an alliance formed with the Armour Institute of Technology.
1889 – Lorado Taftʼs (1860-1936) class stage a fountain comprised of nude nymphs on the lakefront south of the museum that was considered controversial–not for nudity, but because it was executed by women.
1899 – Jane Addams (1860-1935) and Ellen Gates Starr co-found Hull-House on Chicago's Near West Side.
1890 – Mary A. Blood and Ida Morey Riley co-found Columbia College Chicago.
1890 – Board of Lady Managers meets to plan Womanʼs Building, organized by Bertha Palmer.
1891 – The word “feminist” is first used in a book review in Athenaeum.
1892 – Mary Cassatt receives commission to paint a mural depicting the Modern woman for the Womanʼs Building.
1893 – Womanʼs Building opens for the Worldʼs Columbian Exposition.
1893 – The Art Institute of Chicago relocates to present Michigan Avenue site after Worldʼs Columbian Exposition.
1894 – Marion Mahony Griffin, the second woman Architect to graduate from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for her design of an 'artistʼs home studio' design– becomes Illinoisʼ first licensed woman architect and is hired by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1895.
1900 – Women equal one-fifth of the American labor force, numbering 5 million workers.
1901 – Frank Lloyd Wright delivers ʻThe Art and the Craft of the Machineʼ lecture at Hull-House that is published in Brush and Pencil.
1903 - Marie Curie shares the Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband, Pierre Curie for their joint researches on the radioactivity phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel. The Curies were the first married couple to share a Nobel Prize. The Curie family has won a total of five Nobel Prizes.
1903 – Marie Curie becomes the first woman professor at the University of Paris.
1905 – Georgia OʼKeeffe studies drawing with John Vanderpoel at AIC. Her paintings continue to be prominently displayed in the Art Institute's permanent collection; she broke auction records in 2014 as one of thirteen top selling female visual artists.
1906 – Daniel Burnham creates civic plans for ʻThe White City.ʼ
1907 – The Ladies Home Journal publishes Frank Lloyd Wrightʼs ʻFireproof Home for $5000,ʼ delineated by Marion Mahony that defines Prairie Style Architecture.
"There is a mountaintop with enough room for all of us. None of us will get there and stay there unless all of us get there and stay there. If women succeed only in isolated cases, the professional world will continue to be on unsure ground for women in general."
–Marianne Williamson
Author and Activist
1909 – Daniel Burnhamʼs urban plan for Chicago is published.
1910 – ʻPaintings from the Mrs. Potter Palmer Collectionʼ are exhibited at The Art Institute.
1910 – The first woman suffrage parade is held in New York City.
1910 – Approximately 8 million women work outside the home.
1910 – Ella Flagg Young becomes the first woman president of the National Education Association (NEA).
1911 – Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of the element, radium, and the study of its nature and compounds. She is the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice in two different fields. Many books and films have been written about her life, and she was first portrayed by Greer Garson in 1943.
1911 – Walter Burley Griffin and wife Marion Mahony Griffin submit award-winning plans to design the Australian capitol of Canberra.
1911 – The Overbeck Sisters open Overbeck Pottery in Cambridge City, Indiana who include Margaret, Hannah Borger, Elizabeth Gray and Mary Frances.
1912 – Frederick Fursman and Walter Marshall Clute, artists from The Art Institute of Chicago co-found Ox-Bow in Saugatuck, Michigan.
1912 – First electric washing machine is introduced.
1915 – The Renaissance Society, a non-collecting “contemporary art museum” is founded at the University of Chicago.
1915 – ʻSuffrage Loan Exhibition of Old Masters and Works by Edgar Degas and Mary Cassattʼ opened at the Knoedler Galleries in New York.
1917 – Jeanette Pickering Rankin (1880-1973), suffragist and pacifist, is sworn in as the first U.S. Congresswoman.
1917 – School and Home Education reports in a clipping ʻInventions of an American Artistʼ that Mary Cassatt has “invented surgical appliances for patients suffering from fractures, which have contributed to the comfort and recovery of the wounded in France.”
1918 – The Representation of the People Act granted women over 30 the legal right to vote in general elections if they already voted in local government elections or were married to male voters. The Act granted all men over 21 the legal right to vote, or at age 19, if they had been in active service or were not legally disqualified.
1917– Agnes Meyer Driscoll of Illinois origins, enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve, and later became known as the 'First Lady of Naval Cryptology', for her many contributions during W.W. I & II.
1919 – Walter Gropius opens Bauhaus School [Building School] in Weimar, Germany that combined crafts with fine arts.
1920 – Helen Gardner begins teaching full-time at SAIC and establishes the art history department.
1920 – The U.S. Department of Labor establishes the Womanʼs Bureau to oversee wage-earning womenʼs rights and interests with Mary Anderson as the first director.
This notable portrait by Man Ray of the influential, feminist British author, Virginia Woolf, was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, April 12, 1937, Vol. XXX, No. 15. While Woolf is admired for her novels, including Mrs. Dalloway and Orlando, which were both adapted to feature films in 2002 and 1992 respectively, she is well known for her classic essay ‘A Room of One’s Own’, penned in 1929. She is the daughter of Julia Jackson, whose portrait by Woolf’s great-aunt, Julia Margaret Cameron, is included in Ellen Sandor’s chapter interview in Part I. Woolf’s sentiments continue to resonate with new meaning as women redefine spaces of their own to work and be creative in during these challenging times that are shifting our society. Brenda Laurel’s research in Part III also explored a feminist concept of spatial navigation in her work with virtual reality and games for girls. While Woolf’s pivotal essay addressed women’s spatial needs in the physical realm, Laurel’s research expanded the concept to include the virtual, whereas she observed, boys and girls negotiate and navigate physical spaces differently, opening up new possibilities for our community to think about inclusion in designing virtual environments.
Virginia Woolf, 1935, Man Ray
9 1/8” x 7” Vintage gelatin silver print
From the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection
Margaret Bourke-White (1904–1971) was an American photographer and photojournalist who influenced many generations with her images of strong women playing a major role in the industrial workforce during World War II. “Self-Portrait,” 1943, Margaret Bourke-White, 191⁄8" × 15¼" vintage gelatin silver print. From the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection. Digital photo by James Prinz Photography.
1921 – Three black women, Georgianna R. Simpson (University of Chicago), Sadie Tanner Mossell (University of Pennsylvania) and Eva Dykes (Radcliffe College) become the first in the country to earn Ph.D. degrees.
1921 - Joseph T. Tykociner, Professor of Electrical Engineering, joins University of Illinois faculty and demonstrates sound reproduced from motion picture film.
1922 – Rebecca Latimer Felton becomes the first woman appointed to U.S. Senate.
1923 – An Equal Rights Amendment is presented to Congress by Alice Paul of the National Womanʼs Party.
1923 – Loja and Eliel Saarinen emigrate to U.S. from Finland.
1924 – Ma Ferguson of Texas becomes the nationʼs first elected woman governor.
1925 – The Womanʼs World Fair, the first ever devoted to womenʼs accomplishments, is held in Chicago.
1926 – First Edition of Helen Gardnerʼs Art Through the Ages is published, featuring the chronological survey as a pedagogical approach for teaching art history to artists.
1927 – The Walker Art Center is established as a public art gallery situated in the Upper Midwest.
1927-31– Robert Briffault, a surgeon, anthropologist and novelist published his important research in three volumes: The Mothers: A Study of the Origins of Sentiments and Institutions. Known for coining 'Briffault's Law' found in Vol. I: "The female, not the male, determines all the conditions of the animal family. Where the female can derive no benefit from association with the male, no such association takes place."
1929 – Eva Watson-Schütze leads the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago through 1935 and creates groundbreaking exhibitions of Modernists including Braque, Arp, Brancusi, Miro and Picasso.
1929 – Loja Saarinen becomes Director of the Weaving Department at Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
1929 – The U.S. Stock Market Crash launches the Great Depression.
1930 – Four-fifths of all households have electricity.
1931 – Jane Addams becomes the first woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1933 – The Nazi regime closes Bauhaus School in Berlin, Germany.
1932 – Helen Gardnerʼs Understanding the Arts is published for teachers.
1932 – The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture opens at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin with a group of 23 apprentices implementing the Wrightsʼ
“learn by doing” approach and the ʻWisconsin Ideaʼ ideology formulated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
1932 – Eliel Saarinen designs buildings for and heads Cranbrook Academy of Art, founded in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan by George Gough Booth.
1933 – Frances Perkins is named U.S. Secretary of Labor and becomes the first woman to hold a cabinet post.
1935 – The Farm Security Administration is formed under the New Deal and employs women photographers, including Esther Bubley from the Midwest.
1936 – Revised Edition of Helen Gardnerʼs Art Through the Ages is published.
1936 – Nobel Prize winning chemist, Richard Kuhn scientifically analyzes a thread from the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe and cannot scientifically explain the pigment origins used in the apparition artwork. Scientists continue to ponder and explore how this artwork was made. Considered the Madonna of the Americas, her 500th Anniversary will be celebrated on December 12, 2031. More recent pilgrimages have inspired interest in the Black Madonnas.
1937 – László Moholy-Nagy relocates to Chicago from Germany and creates the New Bauhaus that later becomes the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
1938 – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe relocates to Chicago from Germany and becomes the Director of the Architecture Department at the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago.
1939 – Hyde Park Art Center is formed in Chicago as one of the oldest alternative spaces in the city.
1940 – Illinois Institute of Technology is formed by the merger of the Armour Institute of Technology founded in
1893 and Lewis Institute founded in 1895.
1940 – During WWII, Lascaux Cave paintings were remarkably discovered by four teenagers near Montignac, France, dating 17,000-22,000 years ago, circa the pre-historic Upper Paleolithic Era, and were likely painted by women artisans honoring The Great Mother and Goddess Culture in their sacred ceremonies.
1941 – Fifty-two percent of American families have mechanical refrigerators and/or washing machines.
1942 – Margaret Bourke White (1906-71) becomes the first woman war correspondent.
1942 – In 1942, actress Heddy Lamarr and composer George Antheil received a U.S .Patent for FHSS - ‘frequency hopping spread spectrum’ – which is foundational to our daily use of smart phones, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices. Initially their technology was used as a radio guidance system for Allied torpedos in WWII that was later adopted by the U.S. Navy in the 1960s. Heddy and George were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. Her most successful film role was in Cecil B. DeMille’s 'Samson & Delilah' in 1949.
1942 – world's first electronic digital computer, built by John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State University during 1937-42.
1943 – The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) first general purpose programmable computer commissioned by army. Completed in 1946.
1944 – The Renaissance Society exhibits ʻPaintings by Martylʼ and ʻMarli Ehrman Textilesʼ.
1945 – About 3.5 million U.S. women are union members.
1945 – World War II ends; the following year, federal support of childcare facilities, vital during wartime for women workers, is abruptly cut off.
1946-1953 – Macy Conferences held in New York City and engendered the field of Cybernetics. Participants included Norbert Weiner, John von Neuman and Heinz von Foerster, University of Illinois.
1946 – Grace Hopper, Ph.D. and U.S. Navy Rear Admiral wrote the first computer manual while at Harvard University's Bureau of Ordinance's Computation Project, A Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, describing how to operate Harvard's Mark I computer, and extensively how to program a computer. <Explore More>
Portrait of Dr. Grace Hopper, January 1945
(who became a U.S. Navy Rear Admiral and woman computer programmer in the 1940s)
Anonymous
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
1947 – Martyl creates ʻDoomsday Clockʼ for the magazine cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
1947 – AIC receives controversial review from Eleanor Jewett for ʻChicago and Vicinityʼ exhibition.
1947 – The Renaissance Society exhibits ʻPrints and Sculpture by Kathe Kollwitzʼ and ʻHelen Balfour Morrison – The Inheritance.ʼ
1947 – The Great Books Foundation is formed by University of Chicago Chancellor, Robert Maynard Hutchins, and Mortimer Adler.
1947 – Berenice Abbott files for a U.S. Patent for her invention of “Composition Guide” awarded on January 27, 1953, No. 2,626,467, that “relates to composition guides for use by photographers, both amateur and professional, for aiding in pre-determining the field to be encompassed by the picture.”
1948 – SAIC students mount ʻExhibition Momentumʼ at Roosevelt College, juried by Josef Albers, Robert von Neuman, and Robert Jay Wolff.
1948 – Third Edition of Helen Gardnerʼs Art Through the Ages is published after her death.
1948 – Berenice Abbott files for a U.S. Patent for her invention of “Distorting Easel” awarded on August 21, 1951, No. 2,565,446, that “relates to the art of photography, and, in particular, to easels for holding a sheet of light sensitive paper or other material during projection printing, as, for example, in enlarging and in reducing.” She files a second invention on May 7 for “Display Mount” that was awarded on May 12, 1953, No. 2,638,299.
1949 – Simone de Beauvoir publishes The Second Sex.
1949 – Heinz von Foerster goes to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Joins faculty in Electrical Engineering, 1951-1975.
“We Can Do It!” iconic 1942 poster for Westinghouse by J. Howard Miller, an artist employed by Westinghouse for the poster used by the War Production Co-ordinating Committee. Closely associated with Rosie the Riveter, although not a depiction of the cultural icon itself. Pictured Geraldine Doyle (1924–2010), at age seventeen. From a scan of copy belonging to the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, retrieved from the website of the Virginia Historical Society.
Early history of computer at Illinois. A woman points to the screen of a PLATO terminal as part of her studies. Courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives, Photographic Subject File, COL-13-13, Image #0001141.
1951 – While a Research Associate at King's College London, Rosalind Franklin discovered key properties of DNA which led to the correct description of the double-helix structure of DNA. She is best known for her X-Ray diffraction images of DNA, Particularly Photo 51.
1952 – The ILLIAC computer series began at the University of Illinois–one of the first computers built and owned by a U.S. university.
1953 – The Kinsey Report ʻSexual Behavior in the Human Femaleʼ is published.
1953 – Berenice Abbott files for a U.S. Patent for her invention of “Camera” awarded on November 18, 1958, No. 2,860,556, “to provide a candid camera for snapping a changing scene practically instantaneously and provided with a plurality of means whereby the camera may be held, aimed, and operated by one hand, so that the photographer on catching a scene he wishes to photograph may aim the camera and release the shutter in the matter of less than a second or so; the means for holding the camera being so constructed as to enable a finger or the thumb of the supporting hand to operate mechanism within reach of the digits of the hand to release the shutter.”
1955 – Activist Rosa Parks refuses to release her seat in the "colored" section of a Montgomery, Alabama bus for a "white passenger". Later honored by U.S. Congress as the 'first lady of civil rights" and the "mother of the freedom movement."
1955 – Edward Steichenʼs Family of Man exhibition opens at MOMA and includes works by Ester Bubley and other women photographers with its catalog accompanied by a prologue written by Carl Sandburg.
1955 – Erich Neumann’s The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype was first published in English, exploring the evolution of the feminine archetype in mythology and culture.
1955 – University of Illinois, Lejaren Hiller, with Leonard Isaacson, uses ILLIAC I, to compose the Illiac Suite, which is the first piece of music to be written with the aid of a computer.
1956 – John Bardeen,William B. Shockley and Walter H. Brattain share the Nobel Prize for research on semiconductors and transitor effect. This research transformed electronics and computing.
1958 – Berenice Abbott makes photographs to illustrate laws and processes of physics for the Physical Science Study Committee of Educational Services, Inc., through
1961 – An exhibition, ʻThe Image of Physicsʼ was circulated nationally by the committee and the Smithsonian Institution.
1958 – Film artist John Whitney Sr. uses analog computer to make art.
1958 -- University of Illinois, Biological Computer Lab (BCL) opened under the direction of Heinz von Foerster.
1958 – Professor Lejaren Hiller establishes the first experimental music studio in the Western world at the University of Illinois.
1959 – Berenice Abbott publishes article ʻThe Image of Scienceʼ in Art in America.
1959 – Mrs. Sterling Morton endows AICʼs south wing, and consolidates SAIC into one building with its own Columbus Drive entrance.
–Betty Friedan
Feminist Activist and Author, The Feminine Mystique
1960 – Junior Great Books is founded by The Great Books Foundation in Chicago to encourage literacy for tweens.
1960 – Artist John Whitney Sr. founds commercial graphics company, Motion Graphics, Inc.
1960 – The first version of the PLATO computer-based education system is implemented on the ILLIAC I. PLATO was developed as a solution to individualize instruction, developed by a team led by faculty Donald Bitzer. PLATO became the basis for the first online community, complete with online forums and message boards, online testing, email, picture languages, and remote screen sharing.
1961 - Ivan Sutherland at MIT presented 'Sketchpad'.
1961 – The Peace Corps is established with Sargeant Shriver appointed by President Kennedy as its first Executive Director.
1962 – Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins share a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, based on Rosalind Franklin's research, particularly Photo 51 of the DNA double-helix structure. For this oversight, she is often called the 'dark lady of DNA,' or the 'forgotten heroine.'
1962 – The Renaissance Society exhibits ʻClaire Zeisler – Weavings, and Artifacts from Her Collection.ʼ
1962 – Peter and Dora Janson publish Jansonʼs History of Art, initially excluding women artists.
1962 – An estimated 46.5 million viewers watch on all three major networks as Jacqueline Kennedy leads a tour of the White House.
1963 – Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique is published.
1963 – Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first ever woman cosmonaut (astronaut) in space, in Russia. Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the second woman in space in 1982.
1963 - Biologist Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring, inspiring the Environmentalist Movement in the 1970s, and is recognized as the environmentalist text that awakened the world. Her pivotal book sold more than 100,000 copies in the first week of its release.
1962 – University of Illinois Alumnus Nick Holonyak invents the first practical LED (light-emitting diode).
1963 - Maria Goeppert Mayer wins the Nobel Prize in Physics for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus.
1964 – Margaret Mead published Continuities in Cultural Evolution, based on her 1957 'Terry Lectures' at Yale University. She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1979 for her life's work as an American Cultural Anthropologist: “We – mankind – stand at the center of an evolutionary crisis, with a new evolutionary device – our consciousness of the crisis – as our unique contribution.”
1964 – Charles Csuri creates first computer artwork with FORTRAN programming language and an IBM 7074 computer at The Ohio State University.
1964 – The monochrome plasma video display is co-invented by University of Illinois Donald Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and graduate student Robert Willson for the PLATO Computer System.
1965 - The first Computer Art exhibition, at Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart
1965 – The Renaissance Society exhibits ʻRuth Duckworth – Stoneware.ʼ
1965 – The federal program Project Head Start is established to assist impoverished children.
1965 – Computer scientist Ken Knowlton developed a computer-controlled movie making system at Bell Labs
1966 – University of Illinois began building ILLIAC IV, funded by the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
1966 – The Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women is held in Washington D.C. and the National Organization of Women (NOW) is founded by 28 feminists with 300 member. (Ellen Sandor was a founding member of the first Berkeley chapter of NOW).
1967 – The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) opens in Chicago and becomes the first museum in the U.S. devoted to both exhibiting and collecting contemporary art.
1967 – John Szarkowski, Director of Department of Photography at MOMA curates ʻOnce Invisible,ʼ featuring “photographs revealing images which cannot be seen by the human eye without the aid of photography.”
1967 - Sine Curve Man and Hummingbird created by Artist Chuck Csuri at Ohio State University.
1967 - Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) started in New York by artist Robert Rauschenberg and Bell Labs engineer Billy Klüver.
1968 – The MCA receives its first work, Six Women by Venezuelan sculptor, Marisol.
1968 – The National Science Foundation awards $100,000 to Charles Csuri at The Ohio State University for ʻA Software Requirement for Research and Education in the Visual Arts.ʼ http://accad.osu.edu/history.htm
1968 - Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts exhibition at London Institute of Contemporary Arts. Art Catalog published 1969 by Praeger, 101 pages.
http://www.moma.org/learn/resources/archives/EAD/InfoExhibitionRecordsf
1968 – Ivan Sutherland invented the head-mounted display.
1968 - In Director Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey film, the sentient artificially intelligent entity HAL 9000 (based on the novel by Arthur C. Clarke) computer is depicted as having been born in Urbana, Illinois.
1969 – The first Womenʼs Studies baccalaureate degree program is offered at San Diego State University.
1969 – Christo and Jeanne Claude wrap the exterior of the MCA building.
1969 – The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, held August 15 to 18 on a farm in upstate New York, draws some 300,000 to 400,000 people.
An iconic photo showing women’s empowerment during the late 1960s. “Venice, California,” 1968, by Dennis Stock, 13" × 19¼" vintage gelatin silver print. From the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection. Digital photo by James Prinz Photography.
Installation view of The Dinner Party: Wing 3 by Judy Chicago © 1974–1979. Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo courtesy of Judy Chicago/Art Resource, New York. Used with permission.
1969 – Apollo II becomes the first manned moon landing on July 20 with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
1969 - Bell Labs builds first framebuffer (3 bits), New Jersey
1969 - SIGGRAPH - ʻSpecial Interest Group on Computer Graphicsʼ, formerly the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery). SIGGRAPH is the largest technical computer graphics and digital art/media organization in the world.
1970 – Sonia Sheridan teaches course on developing ʻGenerative Systemsʼ at SAIC that utilizes copy machines in printmaking.
1970 – The Renaissance Society exhibits ʻBarbara Young.ʼ
1970 – Womenʼs employment is 31.2 million, compared to 18.4 million in 1950.
1970 - Lillian Schwartz produces "Pixellation" at Bell Labs
1971 – ARTnews publishes Linda Nochlinʼs critical essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”
1971 – Ms. magazine is launched in Gloria Steinemʼs living room in New York City; its first issue hits the newsstands in 1972.
1971 - Robert Abel and Associates founded.
1971 - University of Illinois Alumnus Michael S. Hart founds Project Gutenberg, what is now the oldest digital library. As of December 2007, the project had digitized over 28,000 books with approximately 50 more added each week by dedicated volunteers.
1972 – Judy Chicago produces Womanhouse with Miriam Shapiro in Los Angeles.
1972 – The Equal Rights Amendment is sent to the states for ratification after passing congress.
1972 – SAIC launches Midwest Regional Film Center where Phil Morton creates the ʻVideo Databank.ʼ
1972 – Seymour Cray, “father of supercomputing”, founded Cray Inc. (R&D and manufacturing in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and business headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota)
1972 – The University of Illinoisʼ ILLIAC IV completed. It was the first large-scale array computer.
1972 – Computer Graphics and Image Processing journal begins publication
1972 – Atari formed (Nolan Bushnell) and Pong video game developed for Atari.
1972 – Graphics Symbiosis System (GRASS) developed at Ohio State by Tom DeFanti.
1973 – Motorola researcher Martin Cooper invents the first cellular portable phone released as a commercial product ʻMotorola DynaTAC 8000X.ʼ
1973 – Circle Graphics Habitat founded at University of Illinois at Chicago, eventually evolving into the Electronic Visualization Lab.
1973 – Dan Sandin completes development of first analog image processor and with Tom DeFanti, produces “Inconsecration of New Space, the first public event held at UIC that included the ʻSandin IP.ʼ
1973 – MCA exhibition of Eva Hesse.
1973 – Chicago Womenʼs Video Festival is held at UIC.
1973 – ARC and Artemesia, Chicagoʼs first alternative art spaces open across the street from the MCA.
1973 – British professor of film and media studies, Laura Mulvey develops the concept of the “male gaze” in visual culture which is published in her critical essay ʻVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinemaʼ by Screen in 1975.
1973 – Susan Sontag writes ʻOn Photographyʼ as part of a series of essays for The New York Review of Books that are published into her award-winning book On Photography in 1977.
1973 – Sculptor and art historian, Merlin Stone published her first article, 'The Paradise Papers,' in Spare Rib, that became a seminal book on the sacred feminine in the UK; and was later published in the U.S. in 1976.
1973 – Evans & Sutherland begins marketing first commercial frame buffer.
1973 - Ethernet - Bob Metcalf (Harvard).
1974 - First SIGGRAPH conference (Boulder).
1974 – The first of Marija Gimbutas Goddess trilogy is published with The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974); The Language of the Goddess (1989), which inspired an exhibition in Wiesbaden, Germany (1993–94) and the last of the three, The Civilization of the Goddess (1991). The Living Goddesses was posthumously published in 1999.
1974 – Judy Chicago produces Dinner Party.
1974 – Susanne Ghez becomes Executive Director of Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.
1975 – Dan Sandin and Tom DeFanti premier EVE I (1975) at the Circle Graphics Habitat at UIC.
1975 – The Renaissance Society exhibits ʻFifty Years of Photography Women Observed, As Seen in Vogue 1924-1974.ʼ
–Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Author, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
1975 – U.N. International Womenʼs Year conference is held in Mexico City with 6,300 women attending; it leads to the U.N. Decade for women.
1975 - Microsoft is founded in 1975 in Redmond, Washington, influencing the use of personal and business computer applications, including word processing and spreadsheets.
1975 - JPL Graphics Lab developed (Bob Holzman).
1975 - Anima animation system developed at CGRG at Ohio State.
1976 – Ruth Leavitt publishes Artist and Computer in Minnesota.
1976 – April Fool's Day, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs released the Apple I computer and started Apple Computers.
1976 – Tom DeFanti gets PhD at Ohio State, student of Charles Csuri.
1976 – Dan Sandin and Tom DeFanti premier EVE II (1975) at the Circle Graphics Habitat at UIC and establish the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL).
1976 – Alanna Heiss founds P.S. 1 in New York, now MoMA PS1, dedicated solely to contemporary art.
1977-1983 – French computer scientist Jean Ichbiah, of Honeywell under U.S. DoD contract, leads the design team of the ADA programming language to replace over 450+ computing languages used by the U.S. DoD. ADA was named after Ada Lovelace, considered the first computer programmer.
1976 – Cray-1 completed, fastest and first commercially successful vector processor supercomputer.
1977 – Joan Truckenbroad delivers white paper on computer art and the humanities at the University of Waterloo.
1977 – National Womenʼs Studies Association (NWSA) is formed.
1977 – Eleanor Holmes Norton, chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), authors federal guidelines on sexual harassment in the workplace.
1977 – Marcia Tucker founds the New Museum in New York, exclusively dedicated to showing contemporary art from around the world.
1977 – Jenny Holzer creates ʻTruismsʼ her most known work, comprised of a series of aphorisms or “truisms” that are publicized in public spaces including telephone booths, billboards and in 1982 on one of the Times Square giant LED screens.
1977 - University of Illinois Alumnus Bruce Artwick (MS'76) develops Flight Simulator and forms subLOGIC to market the simulator for personal computers. He forms a new company in 1982 and licenses the simulator to Microsoft.
1978 – Jane Veeder and Phil Morton create experimental video artwork, ʻProgram #7.ʼ
1978 – MCA exhibition of Frida Kahlo; one of her paintings broke auction records for a female artist in 2021.
1978 – The first year that all seven sister colleges – Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley–have female presidents.
1978 – NASA announces its first ever, six female astronauts among its 35-member Astronaut Group 8: Anna Lee Fisher, Shannon Lucid, Judith Resnick, Sally Ride, Margaret Rhea Seddon, and Kathryn Sullivan.
1979 – Jane Byrne is elected as Chicagoʼs first female mayor and is the countryʼs largest city to have elected a woman mayor.
1979 – For the first time, more women than men enter college in the U.S.
1979 – Two of the U.S. hostages in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, are women: Kathyrn Koob and Elizabeth Ann Smith.
1979 – Washington Bureau Chief returns loaned feminist artwork of Ayatollah Khomeini by Ellen Sandor two weeks after hostage crisis.
1979 – Eleanor Dickinson conducts interview with Dr. Peter Janson published in Women Artists News.
1979 - Motorola 68000 32-bit processor 1979 - Atari 8-bit computers introduced.
1979 - University of Illinois Alumnus John Cioffi (BS'78) begins to develop DSL (digital subscriber line) technology, which enables digital data transmissions over regular telephone networks. The technology revolutionizes the capabilities of Internet use.
1979 - Disney produces The Black Hole using CGI for the opening.
1979 - Sunstone - Ed Emshwiller (NYIT).
1979 - George Lucas hires Ed Catmull, Ralph Guggenheim and Alvy Ray Smith to form Lucasfilm.
1980 – Copper Giloth receives the first MFA awarded by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at UIC for her award-winning animation ʻSkippy peanut butter jarsʼ.
1980 – Center for New Television-CNTV renamed from Chicago Editing Center.
1980 – Art Chicago is established as the premier contemporary art exposition in the U.S. at Navy Pier.
1980 – Over 40 percent of the total workforce is female; women with children at home constitute 20 percent of the total U.S. workforce.
1980 – The U.S. Census allows that “the head of the household” need not be the husband.
1980 – Disney contracts Abel, III, MAGI and DE for computer graphics for the movie Tron.
Charlotte Moorman, Artist Performing Cello Bomb at Chicago Art Fair, 1984, 5 1/4” x 4 1/4” Vintage black-and-white Polaroid print From the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection
This notable photograph, taken by Cal Kowal of Charlotte Moorman performing in Carl Solway’s booth at the Chicago Art Fair. Moorman was a pioneering performance artist and collaborator of Nam June Paik, who incorporated electronic media into her works to make provocative feminist statements.
Moorman is an important Fluxus artist, along with Paik, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, and John Cale. Formed in 1961, Fluxus artists were influenced by the ideas of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage.
The primary performers of the first Electronic Visualization Event, EVE I, in Chicago in 1975. Bottom row (left to right): Tom DeFanti, Barbara Sykes, Dan Sandin, Phil Morton, Bob Snyder, and Drew Browning. Second row (left to right): Guenther Tetz and Larry Cuba. Top row (behind music stand on right): Michael Sterling. Courtesy of Barbara Sykes.
1981 – Sandra Day OʼConnor becomes the first woman justice on the U.S. Supreme Court through 2006.
1981 – Helyn D. Goldenberg becomes the first woman president of the MCA. 1981 – The Renaissance Society exhibits ʻLouise Bourgeois - Femme Maison.ʼ
1981 – Eleanor Tufts includes Women Artists News interview with Dr. Peter Janson in Arts Magazine article.
1981 - University of Illinois at Chicago Tom DeFanti expands GRASS to Bally Z-50 machine (ZGRASS).
1981 – Cranston/Csuri Productions, first computer production company spin off at Ohio State University.
1981 - Digital Productions formed by John Whitney and Gary Demos.
1982 - Tron is released; the CGI effects were developed at the University of Illinois's EVL.
1982 - Jim Clark founds Silicon Graphics Inc.
1982 - Sun Microsystems founded (sun := Stanford University Network).
1982 – Aaron Klug, Rosalind Franklin's team member from her pioneering work at Birkbeck College circa 1953-56, continued her research on understanding the molecular structures of viruses and RNA, and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
1982 – Joan Truckenbroad becomes first department chair of SAICʼs Art & Technology Program.
1982 – Copper Giloth chairs the first juried and public exhibition of experimental two-dimensional, three-dimensional, interactive and time-based works by artists and scientists at ACM SIGGRAPH in Boston that becomes the annual SIGGRAPH Art Show.
1982 – Laurie Anderson performs at the MCA during New Music America.
1982 – The Renaissance Society exhibits ʻEva Hesse – A Retrospective of the Drawings.ʼ
1982 – The Equal Rights Amendment is defeated.
1982 – There are 444 Womenʼs Studies programs in colleges and universities nationwide.
1983 – NASA Astronaut, Sally Kristen Ride becomes the first American woman, and third woman, and the youngest person to travel into space, aboard the space shuttle, Challenger. She was an advocate for science education for girls.
1983 – Ellen Sandor coins the term ʻPHSCologramʼ an acronym for Photography, Holography, Sculpture and Computer Graphics; forms (art)n with SAIC peers and creates first new media installation with PHSColograms.
1983 – Sally Rosenthal receives an MFA from EVL and exhibits her work on the top floor of the John Hancock Building in Chicago, featuring a computer driven knitting machine rendering cows, output as a tapestry inspired by Eadweard Muybridgeʼs ʻStudies on Motionʼ.
1983 – SIGGRAPH Video Review is launched.
1983 – MCA exhibition of Louise Bourgeois. In 2019, one of her sculptures broke auction records for a female sculptor.
1983 – Oprah Winfrey relocates to Chicago to host the AM Show, later re-named The Oprah Winfrey Show, and becomes the number one talk show host in the U.S. and the first African American billionaire.
1984 – NASA astronaut Katheryn Sullivan became the first woman to walk in space. Dr. Anna Lee Fisher became the first mother in space when she flew on Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-51-A.
1984 - University of Illinois Alumnus Tomlinson Holman (BS'68) develops THX, a high-fidelity sound reproduction standard for audio systems, including cinema. Holman produced THX while at Lucasfilm to ensure that the soundtrack for the third Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi, would be accurately reproduced in the best venues.
1984 – University of Illinois School of Music founds the Computer Music Project, led by Sever Tipei, which makes extensive use of the Experimental Music Studios, currently led by Scott Wyatt.
1984 – Apple launches the MacIntosh, first successful personal computer with screen and mouse-driven graphical interface, included ʻMacPaintʼ and advertised as a counter-Orwellian device. Apple ran the famous “1984” commercial in late December 1983.
1984 – Nancy Burson produces Evolution II, an early example of computer generated portraiture, combining the face of a man with a monkey. 1985 ChoraLearn, a computer program designed at the University of Illinois School of Music, enables researchers and students to imitate and analyze Bach chorales.
1985 – Ellen Sandor collaborates with Tom DeFanti and Dan Sandin at EVL and creates ʻEllen Test II,ʼ the first digital 3D PHSCologram that also includes animation.
1985 – Donna Cox coins the term ʻRenaissance Teamsʼ as a methodology to “describe multidisciplinary teams of experts focused on solving visualization problems and provided guidelines for successful collaborations.” Published in Leonardo 1986, receives the international coler-maxwell award.
“I believe that behind every closed door there is an open space.”
–Ping Fu
Technologist and Author, Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds
1985 - University of Illinois NCSA (Donna Cox, George Francis, Larry Smarr,) and Electronic Visualization Lab / UC-Chicago (Dan Sandin, Tom DeFanti) collaborate with Ellen Sandor and (art)n to create digital process for producingPHSColograms (barrier-strip and lenticular autostereoscopic images).
1985 – Copper Giloth and Jane Veeder publish ʻThe Paint Problemʼ in IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, Vol. 5, No. 7.
1985 – Approximately 15,000 people die of AIDS; in 1986 Womenʼs AIDS Project is formed in Los Angeles.
1986 – Unanimous decision by the U.S. Supreme Court finds that sexual harassment is illegal job discrimination.
1986 – The space shuttle Challenger explodes, killing all seven crew-members including school teacher Christa McAuliffe and astronaut Judith Resnik.
1986 – Full-time working women make only about 64 cents to a manʼs dollar.
1986 – Educator Pleasant Rowland founds Pleasant Company in Middleton, Wisconsin and launches ʻAmerican Girlʼ dolls, books and accessories that focus on American History.
1986 – Berenice Abbott receives honorary degree from The Ohio State University.
1986 – Tom DeFanti hires Maxine Brown to write grants to help support the future growth of EVL, foster interdisciplinary collaboration and ultimately the Internet Revolution with high-speed networked supercomputers.
1986 – The National Center for Supercomputing (NCSA) is established at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign as one of the original sites of the National Science Foundationʼs Supercomputer Program Centers, with Larry Smarr as its first Director.
1986 – NCSA (Larry Smarr, Donna Cox, George Francis, Ray Idazik) and Electronic Visualization Lab / UIC-Chicago (Dan Sandin, Tom DeFanti) collaborate with Ellen Sandor and (art)n, resulting in the first scientific visualization PHSColograms of four dimensional mathematical models with Etruscan Venus, developed at NCSA as the subject of their first piece, shown at Feature and Fermilab Gallery.
1986 – High School teacher, Sharon Christa Corrigan McAuliffe becomes the first non-scientist, private citizen astronaut chosen in 1985 to travel into space, which tragically ended after launch and altered the space program. Several schools were named in her honor and she was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 2004.
1987 – Barbara Sykes-Dietze curates landmark international traveling exhibition, ʻVideo and Computer Art: Chicago Style.ʼ
1987 – Donna Cox and Ellen Sandor co-organize international symposium, ʻSimulations/Dissimulationsʼ at SAIC.
1987 – Martyl curates ʻPHSCologramsʼ exhibition at Fermilab Gallery, featuring collaborations between (art)n, EVL, and NCSA.
1987 – Dr. Mae Jemison becomes NASAʼs first black woman astronaut. She flew her sole, eight-day Space Lab Japan mission in September 1992, as part of the Space Shuttle Endeavour crew that also included astronaut Jan Davis.
1987 – The Illimath Collective forms. It is a group of students, scholars, artists, technologists, and scientists based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at Chicago who create computer mathematical artworks.
1987 – University of Illinois Alumnus Larry F. Weber (BSEE'69 MSEE'71 PhD'75) founds Plasmaco, which acquired from IBM what was then the worldʼs largest plant for manufacturing plasma displays.
1987 – (November 5-7) Simulations/Dissimulations was an early international symposium focused on "the interchange between artistic and technological modes of thinking and methods of production,” School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
1987 - (October 23, 1987 - February 10, 1988) UIC produced The Interactive Image, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL. This benchmark exhibition showed interactive, computer art and kiosk. More than four million people per year visit this museum.
1987 - Rianne Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future is published, citing Elizabeth Fisher’s earlier research (Women’s Creation, 1979) suggesting that Paleolithic cave art was produced by women, as evidenced from the Vedda in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) that "it is in fact the women, not the men, who do the rock painting."
1989 – The Arnold O. and Mabel M. Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology opens. Among the Beckman Institute's four research themes are Human-Computer Intelligent Interaction and Integrative Imaging.
1989 -– Formal dedication of the Renaissance Experimental Laboratory April 20, 1989 at the Beckman Institute, NCSA. Jim Clark, co-founder and leader of Silicon Graphics Inc., donated 20 personal Irisʼs to the REL for education and research . Donna Cox is REL principal investigator, director and project lead.
1989 – Donna Cox publishes ʻThe Tao of Postmodernism: Computer Art, Scientific Visualization and Other Paradoxesʼ in LEONARDO, Computer Art in Context Supplemental Issue.
1989 – Televisualization, SIGgraph, Boston, Larry Smarr, Donna Cox, Michael Norman, and [live video recording of] Senator Al Gore introduce the look and feel of the Internet at the Boston Science Center during SIGGRAPH, sponsored by AT&T.
A 3D photograph of Cindy Sherman, captured by Richard Prince in NYC’s Chinatown. In 1983, Ellen Sandor formed (art)n and created PHSCologram ’83, the first immersive 3D environment that was a precursor to Virtual Reality. Sandor’s first 3D installation was completed in 1981 that lead to the development of the PHSCologram medium that became all digital by 1989.
Cindy Sherman, 1983, Richard Prince
10”x8” Vintage Nimslo lenticular print
From the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection, Digital photograph by James Prinz Photography
On Saturday, May 22, 2010, thousands gathered at the Millennium Park Pritzker Pavilion for SAIC’s commencement ceremony to hear the Guerrilla Girls’ “Käthe Kollowitz” speak. Photo credit: Yoni Goldstein. Courtesy of SAIC.
1989 – Mary Rasmussen has her EVL MFA exhibition at Maximʼs on Oak Street in Chicago, featuring a live interactive performance with students dressed in lab coats who worked with people who came into the salon to have their faces “morphed” into the likeness of an animal in real-time for their personalized, printed digital portrait.
1989 – Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés released the critically acclaimed Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype as an audio bestseller ahead of the print edition, which remained on The New York Times Bestseller List for 145 weeks, and sold over two million copies.
1990 – Donna Cox publishes ʻScientific Visualization: Collaborating to Predict the Futureʼ in EDUCOM Review, describing her work with ʻRenaissance Teamsʼ at NCSA.
1990 – Human Genome Project begins, initially headed by Dr. James D. Watson at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
1990 – Women hold 25 seats (4.7%) in the U.S. Congress; 23 are in the House of Representatives and 2 are in the Senate.
1990 – Act for Better Child Care (ABC) becomes law, enacting comprehensive childcare legislation.
1990 – A record 3.1 million women hold two jobs at once.
1990 – With the appointment of Justice Sandra Gardebring, the Minnesota Supreme Court becomes the first powerful legal institution to employ a majority of women.
1990 – Ping Fu is hired by NCSA.
1991 – First visualization of the NSFnet, non-military and non-commercial internet, by Donna Cox and Bob Patterson.
1992 – Ping Fu hires Marc Andreesen.
1992 – The CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) premiers at SIGGRAPH. Its inventors at the Electronic Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago are Thomas A. DeFanti, Daniel J. Sandin, and Carolina Cruz-Neira. NCSA at the Beckman Institute clones the CAVE. First MFA exhibition of women artists featured in the VR CAVE, co-invented by Carolina Cruz-Neira with Tom DeFanti and Dan Sandin.
1992 – Mosaic web browser is developed at NCSA by Mark Andreesen with its graphical user interface designed by Colleen Bushell.
1992 – Copper Giloth is the only woman, and the only artist and educator on the jury for the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater from which she begins creating a reel of collected clips that show how women have been represented in computer graphics by the industry.
1992 – Women hold only 4.5 percent of all seats on the boards of Fortune 500 Companies.
1992 – Illinois native Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes the first presidentʼs wife to hold a professional degree when William Jefferson Clinton is elected to office.
1992 – Seventy percent of all wives outlive their husbands.
1992 – University of Illinois Alumnus Eric Bain (BS86) in mathematics, computer science co-creates Mortal Kombat, the video game, which becomes an international phenomenon. In 2000, Henry Jenkins and Justine Cassell co-edited From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games that was followed by a sequel, Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming (2008), both from The MIT Press.
1993 – Anne Baring and Jules Cashford co-author The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image. Continuing her exploration from this seminal book, Baring co-authors The Divine Feminine: The Feminine Face of God Around the World with Andrew Harvey (1996). An essay from Baring's books was included in the co-edited volume, Philo-Sophia: Wisdom Goddess Traditions (2021).
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
–Margaret Mead
Ethnographer, Anthropologist, Curator, and Author, Culture and Commitment
1993 – Brenda Laurel becomes the first woman in the field to receive her Ph.D. at The Ohio State University that was widely published as Computers as Theater.
1993 – Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) becomes the second woman associate justice of the U.S Supreme Court until her passing in 2020.
1993 – NCSA launches Mosaic web browser, an extremely popular visual graphical browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. Under Ping Fu's direction, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina led software development, later founding Netscape™ with Jim Clarrk. Designer/artist Colleen Bushell designed Mosaic interface which is still used today as the basic browser paradigm.
1993 – Carol Moseley Braun becomes the first and only African American woman elected to U.S. senate and the only female senator elected to office in Illinois.
1994 – Donna Cox, Robert Patterson and Marcus Thiebaux begin development of Virtual Director™ using the CAVE. On-going development continues today.
1994 – Mark Andreessen and Jim Clark form Netscape Communications Corporation and release Netscape Navigator web browser.
1995 – Ellen Sandor and (art)n collaborate with Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation on a PHSCologram series based upon drawings of a barracks made by a concentration camp survivor from Auschwitz-Birkenau.
1995 –ACM@UIUC Student Chapter initiates Reflections | Projections, an annual student computing conference that draws national speakers, some working in digital arts media, and hosts the MechMania programming contest and a job fair.
1995 – Elizabeth Wayland Barber's watershed book, Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years is published
1997 – Cyberfest at the University of Illinois, March 10-15. Arthur C. Clarke wrote in his novel 2001: Space Odessey, that HAL 9000 computer was born 12 January 1997. The University of Illinois held a birthday party for HAL in Urbana. The CyberGala was hosted by film critic and native son Roger Ebert.
1997 – Members of a scientific visualization team at NCSA, led by Donna Cox, are nominated for an Academy Award for their work on the science documentary Cosmic Voyage (1996). The team will become AVL.
1997 – Ellen Sandor and (art)n are commissioned by A Living Memorial to the Holocaust - Museum of Jewish Heritage and Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History to create site-specific PHSCologram installations.
Katherine Johnson, former NASA "human computer," is pictured in a close-up on the right, and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, seated second from the right, are gathered for a reception to honor NASA's hidden women figures known as "human computers" on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016, at the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton, VA.
Afterward, the guests attended a premiere of "Hidden Figures" an historic feature film starring Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Johnson, the brilliant African American mathematician, physicist, and space scientist, who calculated flight trajectories for John Glenn's first orbital flight in 1962. Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan and Janelle Monae as Mary Jackson, are also featured in the film, portraying Johnson’s esteemed colleagues in the segregated West Area Computers division of NASA Langley Research Center.
Katherine Johnson, former NASA Human Computer, 2016
From Wikimedia Commons
Book Contributors on the road to HERSTORY: Digital Innovations Symposium & Book Signing at NCSA, October 26, 2018; From left to right: Copper Giloth, Brenda Laurel, Margaret Dolinsky, Barbara Sykes, Mary Rasmussen, Maxine Brown, Carolina Cruz-Neira, Ellen Sandor and Dana Plepys
1998 – Ellen Sandor and (art)n are commissioned by CameraWorks for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Out of Science: Imaging/Imaging Science, the first contemporary art exhibition of art and science works since the museum's collaboration in 1967 with John Szarkowski, Museum of Modern Art and University of California Berkeley that represented hundreds of images that "exist in the world but cannot be seen by the human eye without the aid of photography," focusing on form rather than function, "that is, scientific or artistic" in purpose.
1998 – Maxine Brown receives SIGGRAPH Outstanding Service Award.
1999 – RiverWeb funded by a major NSF grant, is developed by NCSA in partnership with three Midwestern science museums.
2000 – University of Illinois Donna Cox, Bob Patterson, and Marcus Thiebaux receive a patent for the technologies behind Virtual Director™, a virtual choreography and navigation system that also provides capabilities to collaborate and interact over the Internet from remote locations.
2000 – Copper Giloth and Tom DeFanti receive SIGGRAPH Outstanding Service Award.
2001 – Ellen Sandor and (art)n receive an honorary commission by City of Chicago, Public Art Program and Department of Aviation to create Battle of Midway Memorial for Midway Airport, Chicago.
2001 – Judy Malloy published the co-edited Women, Art and Technology, by MIT Press, including Lynn Hershman, Dara Birnbaum, Patric Prince, Donna Cox, Brenda Laurel and many other pioneers.
2004 – Judy Brown and Steve Cunningham receive SIGGRAPH Outstanding Service Award.
2009 – Lynn Herhman Lesson receives The Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art from ACM SIGGRAPH.
2009 – Betty De Shong Meador published Princess, Priestess, Poet: The Sumerian Temple Hymns of Enheduanna, who is celebrated as the earliest known named author in world history, c.2300 BCE.
2009 - Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, whom are credited for their discovery of telomerase, which can reverse human aging and diseases.
2009 –The inauguration of 'Ada Lovelace Day', to be held every second Tuesday in October commences to honor Ada Lovelace and raise awareness of the contributions of women in STEM, founded by Suw Charman-Aderson.
2009 – Sonia Maria Sotomayor becomes the third woman associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and the first woman of color, first Hispanic and Latina justice.
2010 – Elena Kagan becomes the fourth woman associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
–Amma, Sri Mata Amritanandamyi Devi
Humanitarian
On View at the Victoria & Albert South Kensington through September 2024 . . . exhibition detail in background.
Patric Prince was very early to curate and collect digital artwork, in the U.S. and internationally. She had a flair for abstract art, fashion and for life; she was an authentic leader and inspiring to those who knew her. She is greatly missed.
Stay tuned for a few reflections from NMF women . . .
2010 - On Saturday, May 22, thousands gathered at the Millennium Park Pritzker Pavilion for SAIC’s commencement ceremony to hear the Guerrilla Girls’ “Käthe Kollowitz” speak. Photo credit: Yoni Goldstein. Courtesy of SAIC.
2014 – Ellen Sandor was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
2015 - Amma delivers the keynote address at the United Nation’s first Academic Impact conference on technology and sustainable development. Amma received awards in Chicago in 1993 and 1998 for her many contributions. Her beautiful spiritual work was the subject of a documentary film by Barbara Sykes. Often called the 'Hugging Guru' and 'A Living Saint,' who is an advocate for universal motherhood.
2015 – Lillian Schwartz receives The Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art from ACM SIGGRAPH.
2016 – SAIC celebrates its 150th Anniversary, and hosts
Celebrating Women in New Media Arts, a special one day symposium during Women’s Month “to examine the achievements of women in the field of New Media Arts and emerging technologies from the 1980s onward.”
2017 – University of Illinois celebrates its 150th Anniversary.
2017 - Ellen Sandor and (art)n begin collaborating with Jennifer Doudna and the Doudna Lab at the University of California-Berkeley on PHSCologram sculptures and VR experiences about the potential of CRSPR Cas-9 and mRNA gene editing to possibly prevent terminal diseases, including cancer and conditions like autism, for which Doudna was awarded a Nobel Prize for her work in 2020.
2018 – Joan Truckenbrod's artworks were included in The Whitney Museum of American Art's “Programmed: Rules, Codes and Choreographies, 1965-2018,”curated by Christiane Paul.
2018 – Chicago artist, Theaster Gates explores the phenomena of the Black Madonna in his work, shown in Basel, Switzerland.
2018 – Marija Gimbutas Memorial Lecture at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago: Lord Colin Renfrew presents: 'Marija Redivia: DNA and Indo-European Origins' during Women's Month.
2018 - New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts is published during the centennial of the University of Illinois Press; the Bicentennial birthday of Emily Brontë; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey & Persuasion; the 150th of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, the 97th anniversary of the 19th Amendment (that gave women the right vote); and the 25th Anniversary of NCSA's Mosaic web browser.
2019 – Donna Cox receives The Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art from ACM SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles.
2019 – Bureau of Labor Statistics assessed that employed women outnumbered men for the first time since 2010.
2019-20 – On her mission to the International Space Station, NASA Astronaut Christina Koch set a record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman with a total of 328 days in space; and was part of the first all-female spacewalks with fellow NASA Astronaut, Jessica Meir.
2020 – A McKinsey Global report revealed in the U.S. alone, 43% of our nation’s workforce that was empowered by women–accounted for 56% of job losses related to the pandemic during 2020-21.
2020 – Amy Coney Barrett becomes the fifth woman associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
2020 - Mellody Hobson, a Chicago born African American woman was recognized by Forbes as No. 94 on their list for being among the 'World's Most Powerful Women'; she is the chairwoman of Starbucks Corp.– the first black woman chair of an S&P 500 Company. She was also the first African American woman to head the Chicago Economic Club in 2017, and is a former chairwoman of DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc.
2020 – SAIC invited Judy Malloy to open her course, Women Space Cyberspace, featuring work by Donna Cox and Ellen Sandor.
2022 - The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Doomsday Clock, created by Martyl.
2022 - New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts becomes available in paperback edition from the University of Illinois Press.
2023 - Patric Prince: Digital Art Visionary, co-curated by Melanie Lenz and Livia Turnbull at the V&A South Kensington through September 15, 2024, explores Patric's unique visionary collection of digital art and the "fascinating collaborations and use of technology it reveals. The 14 works on display provide a snapshot of digital art practices from the 1960s to early 2000s." The show includes an early archived artwork by Ellen Sandor and (art)n. Also note Lenz's related article on 'Cataloging Change: Women, Art and Technology.'
2023 - Faith Ringgold: American People travels to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; she previously enjoyed a notable solo show at the Chicago Cultural Center in 1999.
2024 - Ellen Sandor & (art)n, Donna Cox and Claudia Hart are included in GLOW: Illuminating Innovation at King's College London, curated by Sarah Atkinson, March 7-April 20, 2024. The exhibition includes Rebecca Allen, Peggy Weil, Margaret Minsky, Nicole Stenger, Tony Dove, Tamiko Thiel, and Nonny del la Peña.
2024 - Adrian Piper: Retrospective, PAC Milano, March 21-June 16, 2024. Adrian's precursory video art, performance art and mixed media installations were inspiring for women working in new media.
2024 - Astronaut, Sarah Gillis becomes the first person to perform the violin while in orbit for the private crewed Polaris Dawn spaceflight by SpaceX. She is accompanied by fellow Astronaut, Anna Menon, both setting the record for women space traveling farthest from our Earth.
2024 - Copper Giloth, Ellen Sandor, and Donna Cox are included in Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography and Film, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA , November 24, 2024-July 13, 2025, curated by Britt Salvesen.
2025 – Valerie Neal published On a Mission: The Smithsonian History of U.S. Women Astronauts.
2025 - Copper Giloth has a retrospective of her early work at Microscope Gallery in NYC; Claudia Hart curates a group exhibition at the gallery, featuring works by Nancy Burson, Giloth and other artists.
2025 - Judy Malloy's Hunting and Gathering in Cyberspace, premiered at York University, Toronto at the Electronic Literature Conference, July 11-13, 2025, and won Honorable Mention in the 2025 Robert Coover Prize for electronic literature.
2025 – Jane Austen's 250th birthday is celebrated, whose novels and juvenilia continue to inspire future generations; she was a real trailblazer who influenced generations of women writers including the Brontë Sisters, Virginia Woolf and many more. Janite culture and fandom continue to inspire films, games and books inspired by her work.
2025 - Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of New Media Art features articles by Donna Cox and Claudia Hart; Cox's article includes New Media Futures co-editors, contributors and book references.
2026 – NASA Astronaut Christina Koch becomes the first woman to travel to the moon on a 10-day journey of the space program's Artemis II mission. This marks NASA's second moon mission, since Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969, when Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first human beings to walk on the moon's lunar surface.
As stakeholders in the future of art and technology and the positive impact it could have on humanity, the twenty-two women we interviewed adopted a variety of innovative, collaborative strategies in order to navigate their career paths, which led to the co-creation of new forms of artistic expression and co-invented technologies that helped engender the now so familiar. It is important that we all work together, with men and women on equal footing, to raise human consciousness and make the world a better place. The synthesis of the arts in New Media is a metaphor for a harmonious society. Our book is truly about women supporting each other towards this end.
Many of the active women in the book continue to forge ahead with new research initiatives, teaching, exhibiting, and cultivating their expression of consciously living in today’s world. Women have become authors of their own stories. Together, we are all co-creators of our cultural heritage and stewards of our world.
–Co-Editors, New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts