Two of the goals we have here at DevChix are to promote women in development and educate others about women in development. I started thinking about how we might accomplish those goals and decided that one way would be to have history lessons on past women in development. Several women on the list have signed up to do these articles and my article is slated as the first one. So here is a little history lesson about the ENIAC programmers.

I first read about the ENIAC Programmers a couple of years ago when I accidentally stumbled on the WITI Hall of Fame. I was amazed I hadn’t heard about these women before, a little embarrassed that I hadn’t done more to find such women, and a little awestruck that they were never taught to me or mentioned in any computer science courses I had ever taken.

During WWII there were some 80 women who worked at the University of Pennsylvania calculating ballistics trajectories for the US Army. These women were referred to as the “computers” because they had to calculate complex differential equations by hand.

The ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator) computer was basically a very large calculator made up of 17,468 vacuum tubes, along with 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 6,000 manual switches and 5 million soldered joints. It covered 1800 square feet of floor space, weighed 30 tons, and consumed 160 kilowatts of electrical power. This computer was created to calculate these ballistics trajectories that all these women had been calculating by hand. It was built by John Mauchly and J Presper Eckert in 1946.

Six women were selected from the 80 “computers” to be the first programmers of the massive all-electronic digital computer. The programmers had to physically route data and program pulses through the machine with switches, digit trays and dozens of cables. Those first six programmers, all women, were Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Jean Jennings Bartik, Frances Snyder Holberton, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Frances Bilas Spence and Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum. This photo is of Jean Jennings Bartik (left) and Frances Bilas Spence (right) preparing for the public unveiling of ENIAC, February 1946.

On February 15, 1946, the ENIAC Computer was unveiled to the public and press. It ran the ballistics trajectory programmed by the six programmers and captured the world’s imagination. The machine became a legendary machine and all the engineers of the machine, all men, became quite famous. However, unlike the engineers, the programmers, all women, were never mentioned. Its not really that surprising but it is sad. These women did something extraordinary and it hasn’t been until the last 2 decades or so that their story has even begun to be told.

Currently there is an effort to produce a documentary about the ENIAC programmers before they all disappear. The site eniacprogrammers.org is currently taking donations to help fund the documentary so please do check them out and maybe throw a little bit of money their way to help with this. I would love to see the documentary get made and for these women become household names just like Ada, Grace, and Anita.

Also check out the WITI Hall of Fame For the ENAIC Programmers or just spend some time reading about some of the other women in the Hall of Fame. Wired Magazine also did an article on the women back in 97 which is a good read if your interested.

Resources used: Wikipedia, WITI, About.com, ENIACProgrammers.org and Wired Magazine

This blog entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Famous Women in Computer Science, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.