Misunderstandings of the past
An article by Katherine Kleiman published in June 2019 on Princeton University's website, and then missing from there for unknown reasons. Kleiman - Founder, ENIAC Programmer History Project, historian, member of ICANN founding team
People ask me why I started researching the history of computers. Now there are so many laws and policies related to the Internet - so why delve into the old technologies of the 1940s? The reason is that the past is a prologue, and the pioneers of programming and their innovations can give us ideas for solving our current dilemmas. Our problems with the exact sciences, with a low percentage of women and minorities involved in computer science, may arise from misunderstandings of the past.
In twenty years of research for the ENIAC Programmers project, I learned two things. First: women (and men) were engaged in incredible computer innovations during and immediately after World War II, and this work laid the foundations for modern computers and programming. Second: some historians do not want to tell a more complete history of computers, and intend to maintain a point of view on history in the style of "all white, all men." But the past shows us something else.
Innovation is a necessity, and necessity is an invention. The great ENIAC computer is one of the great examples of this; The first modern computer (fully electronic, programmable, general purpose), ordered in 1942 in the darkest days of World War II. And this story shows us an exciting and diverse group of inventors.
At the beginning of the US involvement in World War II, the military ballistic research laboratory (BRL) realized the need to calculate a large number of ballistic trajectories. Gunners needed to know at what angle to fire cannons to hit a target located 10-15 km away. A special differential equation could give an answer to this - and the angle of the shot - but to calculate it, people who needed differential calculus (which was rare in those days) were required. Electromechanical machines could not do this on their own.
In 1942, BRL moved to Philadelphia and into the walls of Moore's Electrical School at the University of Pennsylvania. BRL recruited women math students from nearby institutes, including Drexel University, Temple University, and Chestnut Hill College. As a result, the computing project has grown to nearly 100 women. To fill its ranks, the military turned to the universities of New York and Missouri. Brilliant female calculators worked days and nights, six days a week, counting thousands of ballistic trajectories, compiling the results into ballistic tables, which were then sent to soldiers on the battlefields. It was an incredible job.
Secondly, the army and BRL agreed to order a fairly experimental machine, the first modern computer to speed up the calculation of trajectories. It was called ENIAK , or "electronic numerical integrator and calculator", and it had to calculate ballistic trajectories not in days, but in seconds - but only if its inventors, Dr. John Mouchley and J. Presper Eckert could make it work, including all its 18,000 electronic tubes. The chief technology experts of the time, of course, told the military that ENIAC would never work. But in the dark days of the war, when new guns were made and the need for ballistic tables grew, ENIAC was a justifiable risk to the military.
Mauchly and Eckert involved a group of young engineers - Americans, Chinese, even an albino - in the construction of 40 ENIAC modules. As we approach the end of the project, Lieutenant Herman Goldstein of BRL selected six women from the computing project as programmers for ENIAC. These were Kathleen McNulty of Maughley Antonelli, Gene Jennings Bartik, Betty Snyder Halberton, Marilyn Weskoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum and Francis Bilas Spence.
To say that women's programming was difficult is to say nothing. There were no instructions for working with ENIAC (they will be written only next summer) and codes for programming (they will be written by ENIAC programmer Betty Halberton in a few years for the next UNIVAC computer, the first commercial computer). Women studied the logical diagrams and the ENIAC circuit and independently learned to program it. Then they sat down and figured out how to break the program for calculating the ballistic trajectory through differential equations into small separate stages that the computer can handle - just like programmers do today.
Then they figured out how to program these steps into a computer — by “direct programming” using hundreds of cables and 3,000 switches. This is something like modern programming, only with complex acrobatic numbers. Women created flowcharts to describe each logical step in the equation of the trajectory, as well as each physical: the settings of each switch and each cable. Like brave soldiers, they did what no one had done before them. Tom Petzinger devoted an article to their work in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Program History Begins with the Work of Smart Women.”
On February 15, 1946, ENIAC lost its secret status and fell into the front page of newspapers. He was praised by The York Times, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin and Boston Globe, and the world learned that technology had taken a giant step forward. On the same day, a demonstration was held at Moore’s school for senior officials and leading army technologists, where they showed a program for calculating ballistic trajectories written by women. The program worked perfectly and actually calculated the trajectory in a few seconds.
After the war, the military asked all six ENIAC programmers to continue their work - not one of the soldiers returning home from the battlefield was able to program ENIAC. BRL was required by ENIAC programmers in order to train the next generation of ENIAC programmers, and some of them took care of it. Others made other significant contributions: Gene Bartik led the team that turned ENIAC into the first computer capable of storing programs, and her best friend Betty Halberton joined Computer Corporation Eckert Mauchly and wrote the most important programming tools for UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer, including C- code 10 (predecessor of programming languages).
Alas, half a century after their work, a small group of historians consider it appropriate to belittle the contribution of ENIAC programmers. In the 2010 book Computer Boys Go Forward, Nathan Ensmanger devoted a whole section to “renowned office workers” and hedged insults at these civilians who worked actively during World War II. Despite being honored by the IEEE Computer Society, the Museum of Computer History, and the Women in Technology International Award, he wrote:
As a friend of the ENIAC programmers who recorded their story, I can imagine Jean Jennings Bartik's reaction to this - her laughter and a reminder that “the engineers treated us with great respect.”
The misunderstanding of historians, apparently, stems from the army's classification of women as "subprofessionals" (despite their diplomas). However, from the history of Bletchley Park and the book “Girls Coders: The Untold Story of American Women Hacking Codes and Helping to Win World War II,” we know how, in wartime, the top secret roles of women cryptographers were hidden under names like “secretary” or "clerk." Why not evaluate women instead by the depth of their education, quality of work, degree of innovation?
The negative criticism language of ENIAC programmers is similar to the cover of this book, which contains a photograph of a lone white man standing in front of a large computing mainframe. In general, the book leaves a clear message: the girls did not consider computer science as an education or career.
We can achieve a better result. I tell young techies around the world the story of the ENIAC team - a team of women and men who worked together and changed the world. The audience is animated. The knowledge that the pioneers of computers and programming had different races and different backgrounds is pleasing and inspiring. Our computer history is rich and includes everything - so why not share it?
People ask me why I started researching the history of computers. Now there are so many laws and policies related to the Internet - so why delve into the old technologies of the 1940s? The reason is that the past is a prologue, and the pioneers of programming and their innovations can give us ideas for solving our current dilemmas. Our problems with the exact sciences, with a low percentage of women and minorities involved in computer science, may arise from misunderstandings of the past.
In twenty years of research for the ENIAC Programmers project, I learned two things. First: women (and men) were engaged in incredible computer innovations during and immediately after World War II, and this work laid the foundations for modern computers and programming. Second: some historians do not want to tell a more complete history of computers, and intend to maintain a point of view on history in the style of "all white, all men." But the past shows us something else.
Innovation is a necessity, and necessity is an invention. The great ENIAC computer is one of the great examples of this; The first modern computer (fully electronic, programmable, general purpose), ordered in 1942 in the darkest days of World War II. And this story shows us an exciting and diverse group of inventors.
At the beginning of the US involvement in World War II, the military ballistic research laboratory (BRL) realized the need to calculate a large number of ballistic trajectories. Gunners needed to know at what angle to fire cannons to hit a target located 10-15 km away. A special differential equation could give an answer to this - and the angle of the shot - but to calculate it, people who needed differential calculus (which was rare in those days) were required. Electromechanical machines could not do this on their own.
In 1942, BRL moved to Philadelphia and into the walls of Moore's Electrical School at the University of Pennsylvania. BRL recruited women math students from nearby institutes, including Drexel University, Temple University, and Chestnut Hill College. As a result, the computing project has grown to nearly 100 women. To fill its ranks, the military turned to the universities of New York and Missouri. Brilliant female calculators worked days and nights, six days a week, counting thousands of ballistic trajectories, compiling the results into ballistic tables, which were then sent to soldiers on the battlefields. It was an incredible job.
Secondly, the army and BRL agreed to order a fairly experimental machine, the first modern computer to speed up the calculation of trajectories. It was called ENIAK , or "electronic numerical integrator and calculator", and it had to calculate ballistic trajectories not in days, but in seconds - but only if its inventors, Dr. John Mouchley and J. Presper Eckert could make it work, including all its 18,000 electronic tubes. The chief technology experts of the time, of course, told the military that ENIAC would never work. But in the dark days of the war, when new guns were made and the need for ballistic tables grew, ENIAC was a justifiable risk to the military.
Mauchly and Eckert involved a group of young engineers - Americans, Chinese, even an albino - in the construction of 40 ENIAC modules. As we approach the end of the project, Lieutenant Herman Goldstein of BRL selected six women from the computing project as programmers for ENIAC. These were Kathleen McNulty of Maughley Antonelli, Gene Jennings Bartik, Betty Snyder Halberton, Marilyn Weskoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum and Francis Bilas Spence.
To say that women's programming was difficult is to say nothing. There were no instructions for working with ENIAC (they will be written only next summer) and codes for programming (they will be written by ENIAC programmer Betty Halberton in a few years for the next UNIVAC computer, the first commercial computer). Women studied the logical diagrams and the ENIAC circuit and independently learned to program it. Then they sat down and figured out how to break the program for calculating the ballistic trajectory through differential equations into small separate stages that the computer can handle - just like programmers do today.
Then they figured out how to program these steps into a computer — by “direct programming” using hundreds of cables and 3,000 switches. This is something like modern programming, only with complex acrobatic numbers. Women created flowcharts to describe each logical step in the equation of the trajectory, as well as each physical: the settings of each switch and each cable. Like brave soldiers, they did what no one had done before them. Tom Petzinger devoted an article to their work in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Program History Begins with the Work of Smart Women.”
On February 15, 1946, ENIAC lost its secret status and fell into the front page of newspapers. He was praised by The York Times, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin and Boston Globe, and the world learned that technology had taken a giant step forward. On the same day, a demonstration was held at Moore’s school for senior officials and leading army technologists, where they showed a program for calculating ballistic trajectories written by women. The program worked perfectly and actually calculated the trajectory in a few seconds.
After the war, the military asked all six ENIAC programmers to continue their work - not one of the soldiers returning home from the battlefield was able to program ENIAC. BRL was required by ENIAC programmers in order to train the next generation of ENIAC programmers, and some of them took care of it. Others made other significant contributions: Gene Bartik led the team that turned ENIAC into the first computer capable of storing programs, and her best friend Betty Halberton joined Computer Corporation Eckert Mauchly and wrote the most important programming tools for UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer, including C- code 10 (predecessor of programming languages).
Alas, half a century after their work, a small group of historians consider it appropriate to belittle the contribution of ENIAC programmers. In the 2010 book Computer Boys Go Forward, Nathan Ensmanger devoted a whole section to “renowned office workers” and hedged insults at these civilians who worked actively during World War II. Despite being honored by the IEEE Computer Society, the Museum of Computer History, and the Women in Technology International Award, he wrote:
- The low priority of the ENIAC programming task was reflected in who was chosen to implement this task.
- Coders stood at a low level of intellectual and professional hierarchy.
- The use of the word “software” in this context is, of course, anachronistic - and it also includes sexual connotations. The difference between “hard” technical skill and “soft”, more social, secondary aspects of computer operation is applicable even to the earliest computer development projects.
As a friend of the ENIAC programmers who recorded their story, I can imagine Jean Jennings Bartik's reaction to this - her laughter and a reminder that “the engineers treated us with great respect.”
The misunderstanding of historians, apparently, stems from the army's classification of women as "subprofessionals" (despite their diplomas). However, from the history of Bletchley Park and the book “Girls Coders: The Untold Story of American Women Hacking Codes and Helping to Win World War II,” we know how, in wartime, the top secret roles of women cryptographers were hidden under names like “secretary” or "clerk." Why not evaluate women instead by the depth of their education, quality of work, degree of innovation?
The negative criticism language of ENIAC programmers is similar to the cover of this book, which contains a photograph of a lone white man standing in front of a large computing mainframe. In general, the book leaves a clear message: the girls did not consider computer science as an education or career.
We can achieve a better result. I tell young techies around the world the story of the ENIAC team - a team of women and men who worked together and changed the world. The audience is animated. The knowledge that the pioneers of computers and programming had different races and different backgrounds is pleasing and inspiring. Our computer history is rich and includes everything - so why not share it?
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