As a young girl, I was fortunate to be encouraged by my father to pursue whatever interested me even if it wasn’t a traditional field for a woman. Not so for Valerie Thomas.
Valerie Thomas was fascinated by technology as a young child but it wasn’t until college that she was finally able to pursue her passion for physics. She was one of two women in her class who majored in physics. She went on to work for NASA in variety of capacities where she developed real-time computer data systems, conducted large-scale experiments and managed various operations, projects and facilities
In 1980, she patented an illusion transmitter. In operation, concave mirrors are set up on both ends of the transmission. The net effect of this is an optical illusion of a 3-D image that looks real on the receiving end. Uses for the technology have yet to be fully realized, but with the increased interest in 3-D, her work will surely be an integral part of the future.
So, for all those girls out there with an interest in science and technology, I say, “You go girl.”