In August 1968, Lynn Conway, a promising computer engineer at IBM in Sunnyvale, Calif., was called into the office of Gene Myron Amdahl, then the company’s director of advanced computing systems.
Mr. Amdahl had been supportive when he learned that she was “undertaking a gender transition,” Ms. Conway wrote in an account, but the company’s chief executive, Thomas J.
Watson Jr., was less tolerant. That summer day, Mr. Amdahl had grim news. “I was fired,” Ms. Conway wrote. Fifty-two years later, Ms.
Conway was called back to speak with IBM supervisors. This time, the setting was a virtual meeting witnessed by other company employees.