Unsung History8 Aug 2022

The Women who Programmed the ENIAC

During World War II, the United States Army contracted with a group of engineers at the University of Pennsylvania Moore School of Electrical Engineering to build the ENIAC, the world’s first programmable general-purpose electronic digital computer in order to more quickly calculate numbers for ballistics tables. Once the top-secret device was built, someone needed to figure out how to program the more than 17,000 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 6,000 switches, and 1,500 mechanical relays so that the calculations could be run. Six women mathematicians who had been manually calculating the figures, were chosen to develop the programming, which they worked out before they were even allowed to see the machine.

Joining me to help us learn more about the ENIAC six is Kathy Kleiman, a leader in Internet law and policy, founder of the ENIAC Programmers Project, and author of the 2022 book, Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World's First Modern Computer.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Photograph of World's First Computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator,” National Archives at College Park, ARC Identifier 594262.

Sources:

Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World’s First Modern Computer by Kathy Kleiman
The ENIAC Programmers Project
“Jean Bartik, Software Pioneer, Dies at 86,” by Steve Lohr, The New York Times, April 7, 2011.
“Frances E. Holberton, 84, Early Computer Programmer,” by Steve Lohr, The New York Times, December 17, 2001.
The Computers: The Remarkable Story of the ENIAC Programmers, 2016, Vimeo On-Demand.
“ENIAC Accumulator #2,” Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
“The world’s first general purpose computer turns 75,” by Erica K. Brockmeier, Penn Today, February 11, 2021.
“The Brief History of the ENIAC Computer,” by Steven Levy, Smithsonian Magazine, November 2013.
“ENIAC: First computer makes history,” by Michael Kanellos, ZDNet, February 13, 2006.
“ENIAC Programmers,” Women in Technology Hall of Fame Awards.

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