| ENIAC's Women Programmers |
| Written by Sue Gee | |||||||||
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Fame and RecognitionIn 1997, the year after ENIAC's 50th Anniversary, the ENIAC Programmers were, as a group, inducted into the Women in Technology International's Hall of Fame. This program had been established inaugurated the previous year to: "recognize, honor, and promote the outstanding contributions women make to the scientific and technological communities that improve and evolve our society". The names of the ENIAC Programmers are recorded as: Kathleen "Kay" (McNulty) Mauchly Antonelli Introducing them, the audience was told: The first programmers started out as "Computers." This was the name given by the Army to a group of over 80 women working at the University of Pennsylvania during World War II calculating ballistics trajectories - complex differential equations - by hand. When the Army agreed to fund an experimental project, the first all-electronic digital computer, six "Computers" were selected in 1945 to be its first programmers. Having explained what the women were required to do as programmers the comment made is that the description for job might have read: "Requires physical effort, mental creativity, innovative spirit, and a high degree of patience." A later comment noted that: In 1947, the ENIAC was turned into a "stored program" computer, the world's first. Thus, these six programmers were the only generation of programmers to program it at the machine level. In her acceptance speech, Jean Bartik acknowledged the part played by Kathy Kleiman in bringing to light the overlooked history of the ENIAC programmers and also to the role of journalist Thomas Petzinger Jr. who, having interviewed Bartik, Holberton and Antonelli wrote an article titled "The First Computers Were the Women Who Invented Programming," published in the Wall Street Journal in 1996.
The groundbreaking role played by these six women was further recognized in 2018 when the IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award was renamed with the addition " in Honor of the Women of ENIAC". This can be seen as a belated response to the historical marginalization of the ENIAC women programmers and a deliberate effort to ensure their foundational contributions to computer science are permanently honored and remembered within the field. Further Information:ENIAC Programmers - Women In Technology 1997 Hall of Fame Awards Related articles:On This Day in 1946 - Eniac Unveiled Pioneering ENIAC Programmer Dies, Aged 86 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award 
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| Last Updated ( Monday, 28 April 2025 ) |
