Ada Lovelace wasn't interested in making slavery more efficient, but neither was she driven by pure scientific inquiry. She invented programming to help her bet on the horses (it didn't work):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
The silicon transistor was co-invented by William Shockley, one of history's great pieces of shit, a eugenicist who was committed to exterminating all non-white people that he never managed to ship a commercial product:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/the-traitorous-eight-and-the-battle-of-germanium-valley/
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