The Computers: The Remarkable Story of the ENIAC Programmers

During World War II, women took over many jobs normally done by men at the time, including top secret military support jobs. The army recruited almost 100 women who were adept at differential calculus to calculate ballistic trajectories for firing artillery. The army was also working on a machine, developed by Dr. John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, that could do these calculations: ENIAC, the world's first all-electronic, programmable, general-purpose computer. But who would run the computer? Why, the women who were tops in differential calculus! And they had to figure th eprogramming out as they went. But strangely, in the decades following, the role of women in computer history has been diminished. Read about the ENIAC programmers and their legacy at Freedom to Tinker. 



The author of the article, Kathy Kleiman, produced this documentary on the women of ENIAC. (via Boing Boing)