Lynn Conway may hold the record for longest delay between being unfairly fired and receiving an apology for it. In 1968, IBM — a company that now covers its logo in a rainbow flag each June for Pride Month — fired Conway when she expressed her intention to transition. She died on June 9, 2024 at age 86. IBM eventually apologised to the now-famous computing expert, but only 52 years later, when Conway was 82 years old.
Although Conway’s start as a trans woman while at IBM was inauspicious, she quickly found a new job under her post-transition name and identity at the prestigious Xerox PARC and for many years kept the fact that she was trans from her employers to avoid being unfairly dismissed again. In so doing, Conway escaped becoming a target of the sensationalistic and harmful news coverage about trans people that dominated mainstream media in the 20th century. At the same time, however, this meant she was also not able to fully tell her story.
Even today, mainstream media coverage of trans people often positions them as unfortunate victims or questions trans people’s right to exist at all.
Through her groundbreaking work on chip design, Conway joined a long line of illustrious women in computing in the 20th century who made computers into the powerful and flexible tools that they are today. Conway’s co-invention of very large-scale integration, or VLSI, rocketed chip design into the future. VLSI allowed etching circuits on a computer chip’s surface to be as space efficient as possible, ensuring the maximum number of transistors on a chip.