The ENIAC Women
Last Updated: December 20, 2021
Kathy Kleiman, Jean Bartik, Marlyn Meltzer, Kay Antonelli, Betty Holberton
Image Courtesy: eniacprogrammers.org
WHAT WAS THE ENIAC?
The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer was the world’s first fully electronic, digital computer. It was created as a secret American project in 1945, during World War II to calculate artillery trajectories, i.e. the path bombs would take after being fired.
Image Courtesy: U.S. Army
DEVELOPMENT
It was invented by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert from the University of Pennsylvania. When it was revealed post-war in 1946, the clunky computer stood tall at 8 feet and 80 feet wide. The demonstration first showed the computer adding 5,000 numbers together- a task it completed in one second.
Next, the computer calculated the exact path a shell fired from a gun would take before it even reached its target. It was 1000 times faster than other developed machines during WWII and 2,400 times faster than a human brain for calculating the trajectory. Ironically, the six young women who had done the bulk of the programming to allow this to happen weren’t even invited to the demonstration.
THE ENIAC WOMEN
Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Meltzer, Fran Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman. Originally hired as ‘human computers’ to hand calculate thousands of equations, they were later selected to operate the ENIAC because they were the most mathematically advanced in their group.
This was during a time when women were hired to do computing work- a task that was considered ‘too clerical’ for the male engineers. So, this promotion was pretty revolutionary. The women were now ‘machine operators’- controlling the electronic circuit of the computer which contained tens of thousands of switches, wires and digit trays.
Jennings recalls the time when she joined the team:
““I had no idea what the job was or what the ENIAC was. All I knew was that I might be getting in on the ground floor of something new, and I believed I could learn and do anything as well as anyone else.” ”
First four (ENIAC board is on the left)
Image Courtesy: U.S. Army
Now, learning to operate this machine was no easy task. While they were provided with the blueprints to familiarize themselves with the machine’s workings, it took them six months to fully learn to operate it. During this time, they had to ‘debug’ any faults, crawl into the machine to fix any vacuum tubes that had burned out, and take copious, detailed notes on what they fixed.
And this was before any programming language had been invented. So these women essentially manually programmed the first electronic computer. And while they soon gained the respect of their male counterparts, their contributions to the ENIAC were largely overlooked by the general public.
It wasn’t until the mid 1980s that they were credited for their efforts. Kathy Klieman, a young computer programmer at the time, discovered a picture of the ENIAC women in the archives of the Computer History Museum in California. She was told by the museum officials that they were just models hired to make the machine look better. But upon further investigation, Kleiman soon discovered the truth.
She decided to work with a director and trace these women down in order to share their stories. The ' ENIAC Programmer Project’ was the result. It contains all the recordings and speeches collected by Kleiman during the course of her research. This led to all the six women getting inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 1997. Additionally, they were also the subject for the documentary ‘The Computers’ released in 2013.
SISTERHOOD
Despite these six women hailing from different backgrounds, they became close friends who worked well together. Snyder was a Quaker, Wescoff and Lichtermann were Jewish, McNulty was a Catholic, whereas Jennings was a Protestant.
During an interview, Jennings talks about the diversity in their team:
“We had a wonderful time with each other, mainly because none of us had ever been in close contact with anyone from one of the others’ religions. We had some great arguments about religious truths and beliefs. Despite our differences, or perhaps because of them, we really liked one another.”
ENIAC Team
Image Courtesy: eniacprogrammers.org