Ada Lovelace died at thirty-six from uterine cancer. At the time of her death, only a very few realized the significance of her work.
There’s another fun bit of history I’d like to mention. The classic computer game The Oregon Trail was developed by a senior in college named Don Rawitsch. In 1971, Don developed the game to help teach American history to a class of eighth graders where he was a student teacher. The game was instantly popular. When the semester was over, Don deleted the game from the school’s servers, but not before printing out a copy of the source code. For the next three years, that printout was the only copy of The Oregon Trail in existence. That story was part of my inspiration for Pen’s final act in the truck.
When every file is now backed up on cloud servers across the web, it’s easy to forget that even something as simple as paper can store a computer file (if you’re willing to type it out by hand again afterward).
You may also enjoy some clips of the real-world robots that inspired the drones in this book on my website at erikhanberg.com/books/semi-human/
About the Author
Erik Hanberg lives in Tacoma, Washington, with his wife, Mary, and two children. In addition to writing, he was elected to the Metro Parks Board of Tacoma in 2011 and works in marketing for his local public radio station.
Find him at ErikHanberg.com or on Twitter: @erikhanberg.
Semi/Human
By Erik E. Hanberg
Copyright © Erik Hanberg 2020
All rights Reserved
Cover Design by Kerry Jesberger
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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