Launching today and running for the next two weeks only, we join other publishers in a new Humble Bundle “Geek Gals” promotion, offering two ebooks from our archives — Getting Started with Adafruit Flora and Wearable Electronics — as well as a brand-new ebook, The Geek Girl’s Guide to Geek Women by Lynn Beighley, author of more than 20 technical and nonfiction books.
Geek Girl’s Guide was written just for this Bundle and is only available through this Bundle — and that’s kind of cool. In fact, over $300 worth of great grrrrl stories are featured here, and you pay what you want to access them.
In Geek Girl’s Guide, Beighley briefly profiles four women who helped make the world a better place through their ingenuity and inventions. What she uncovered is both surprising and delightful.
For example, medieval composer Hildegard von Bingen is still hailed today for her amazing choral music — but did you know she created a secret language? Furthermore, did you know that she spent the majority of her adult life literally sealed into the wall of a church? She wasn’t unsealed until age 42.
We celebrate Ada Lovelace each year on the second Tuesday in October for her astute development in the 1840s of the computer algorithm, but did you know that her father, the poet Lord Byron, was a founding member of the Luddites? He abandoned the family when Ada was still an infant, inspiring her mother to raise her in the fullness of science as a rebuttal to Byron’s rancorous ignorance.
Born in 1799, botanist Anna Atkins grew up to become perhaps the first female photographer. Quick to see photographs as a superior method to drawing when capturing the minutiae of plant structure and habit, she used the new medium to document new scientific discoveries that might have faded by the time she could have drawn them.
And then there’s Mária Telkes, who was the first to invent a solar-powered still that turns seawater into fresh water, which becomes increasingly important the longer you are lost at sea. Born in Budapest in 1900, Telkes came to MIT in the 1920s and stayed on to study the opportunities of solar power, eventually holding seven patents on heat storage devices alone.
In this fun little book you’ll not only meet these pioneers, but you’ll get to try out some of their discoveries for yourself. Beighley has included step-by-step DIY projects suitable for kids and adults that accompany each story, making this the perfect do-it-together project text.
If you’re not familiar with the Humble Bundle distribution platform, change that reality! Whether you’re into games, comics, genre fiction, technology, or all of the above, you’ll find irresistible digital deals there. And, best of all, a percentage of the proceeds from all Humble sales go to worthy charitable organizations. The “Geek Gals” bundle supports Girls Who Code.
The Geek Gals bundle runs from today through 10:59amPT on Wednesday, Feb. 21.
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