Women honored as world's first computer programmers

Women will be honored as programmers for world's first

computer--the ENIAC used by the military, at the Women

in Technology conference sponsored by WITI.

Ray Van Eng (05/15/97)

Did you know that the programmers who worked on the world's first computer, the ENIAC were all women? Yes, and they were Kay Mauchley Antonelli, Jean Bartik, Betty Holberton, Marlyn Meltzer, Frances Spence, and Ruth Teitelbaum.

It was during WWII more than fifty years ago when this group of 6 women was chosen among 80 female mathematicians to carry out the task to calculate ballistic trajectories using the ENIAC computer. But their pioneering work was never recognized and they were actually being classified as "sub-professionals" and "clerks" and recieved a lower pay.

This little-known episode was buried until years later, when Kathryn Kleiman, a then Harvard student rediscovered the facts as she did a research paper for women in computing in 1986.

It was due to Kleiman's diligence in bringing this long forgotten story to light that the six women will finally be honored in a conference sponsored by the Women in Technology International (WITI) to be held next month.

"Somebody else stood up and took credit at the time, and no one looked back," says WITI's Anna van Raaphorst-Johnson. "And there's still a lot of frustration with men taking credit for women's ideas - it doesn't seem to have changed much over the last 50 years."

Kleiman who is currently working on a documentary about the ENIAC women has this to add: "I hope it provides wonderful role models so that girls and women know that they have as much of a right to go into the computer industry as men do."

Ladies first in computing? You bet.

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