If you looked at photographs of those who worked on the first programmable general-purpose all-electronic computer, you would assume that J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly were the only ones who had a hand in its development. Invented in 1945, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was created to improve the accuracy of American artillery during World War II. Two men and their team built the equipment. But behind the scenes were six women—Jean Bartik, Kathleen Antonelli, Marleen Meltzer, Betty Holberton, Frances Spence, and Ruth Teitelbaum—who programmed a computer to calculate the trajectories of artillery pieces in a matter of seconds.

The US Army hired women in 1942 to work as so-called human computers.—mathematicians who made calculations using a desktop mechanical calculator.

For decades, these six women were little known. But thanks to Cathy Kleiman, co-founder of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the world is learning about the contribution of ENIAC programmers to computer science. This year, Kleiman’s book Proving Ground: The untold story of the six women who programmed the world’s first modern computer was published. He delves into the lives of women and their pioneering work. The book follows the award-winning documentary Computers: The Remarkable Story of the ENIAC Programmers, which Kleiman helped create. The film premiered at the 2014 Seattle International Film Festival and won the Best Documentary Short Film Award at the 2016 United Nations Association Film Festival.

Kleiman plans to give a presentation on programmers next year as part of the IEEE Industry Hub’s Impact Speaker series. The initiative aims to educate industry professionals and academics about the IEEE and its offerings.

Planning for an event to be held in Silicon Valley is underway. Details should be announced before the end of the year.

Institute spoke with Kleiman, who teaches Internet technology and management for lawyers at American University in Washington, DC, about her mission to promote the contributions of programmers. The interview has been shortened and edited for clarity.

Kathy Kleiman delves into the lives of the ENIAC programmers and the groundbreaking work they did in her book Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World’s First Modern Computer.Kathy Kleiman

Institute:
What inspired you to make the documentary?

Kathy Kleiman: ENIAC was a secret US Army project during World War II. It was the first programmable, all-electronic general purpose computer—the key to the evolution of our modern smartphones, laptops, and tablets. The ENIAC was a highly experimental computer with 18,000 vacuum cleaners and some of the leading technologists of the day didn’t think it would work, but it did.

Six months after the end of the war, the army decided to reveal the existence of ENIAC and publicize it widely. To do this, in February 1946, the army took many beautiful formal photographs of the computer and the team of engineers who developed it. I found these pictures while studying women in computer science as a Harvard student. At the time, I only knew two female computer scientists: Ada Lovelace and then US Navy Captain Grace Hopper. [Lovelace was the first computer programmer; Hopper co-developed COBOL, one of the earliest standardized computer languages.] But I was sure that there were more female programmers throughout history, so I went looking for them and found images made by ENIAC.

The paintings fascinated me because they featured both men and women. Some of the photos showed only women in front of a computer, but their names were not included in any of the photo captions. I tracked them down after I learned their identities and four of the six original ENIAC programmers responded. They were in their late 70s at the time, and for years they told me about their work during World War II and how they were recruited by the US Army as “human computers.”

Eckert and Mauchly promised the US Army that ENIAC would be able to calculate artillery trajectories in seconds, rather than the hours required for manual calculations. But after they built a computer 2.5 meters high and 24 meters long, they couldn’t get it to work. Of the approximately 100 human computers employed by the U.S. Army during World War II, six women were selected to write a program for a computer that executes differential calculus equations. It was difficult because the program was complex, memory was very limited, and the direct programming interface that connected programmers to ENIAC was difficult to use. But the women succeeded. The trajectory program was a great success. But the contributions of Bartik, McNulty, Meltzer, Snyder, Spence, and Teitelbaum to technology have never been recognized. Leading technologists and the public were never aware of their work.

I was inspired by their story and wanted to share it. I fundraised, researched, and recorded 20 hours of TV-quality oral histories with the ENIAC programmers, which eventually became a documentary. This allows others to see how women tell their story.

“If we open the doors of history, I think it will be much easier to recruit the great people that we are trying to attract to work in engineering, computer science and related fields.”

Why was reaching six women important?

Kleiman: Many consider ENIAC to be the beginning of the information age.

We usually think of the women leaving the factories and farms they occupied during World War II and returning them to the men, but after ENIAC was completed, six women continued to work in the US Army. They helped world-class mathematicians program the ENIAC to solve “a hundred-year-old problems.” [problems that would take 100 years to solve by hand]. They also helped train the next generation of ENIAC programmers, and some of them created the foundations of modern programming.

What motivated you to continue telling the story of the ENIAC programmers in your book?

Kleiman: After my documentary premiered at a film festival, young women from technology companies in the audience approached me to tell me why they were excited to learn about the history of programmers. They were delighted to learn that women were an integral part of the history of early computer programming and their stories inspired them. Young people also approached me and told stories about their grandmothers and great aunts who programmed computers in the 1960s and 70s and inspired them to choose a career in computer science.

I have met more women and men like those in Seattle around the world, so it seemed like a good idea to tell the whole story along with its historical context and background information about the lives of the ENIAC programmers, especially what happened to them after the computer. has been completed.

What did you find most helpful about sharing their story?

Kleiman: It was great and useful to get to know the ENIAC programmers. They were incredible, wonderful, warm, brilliant and exceptional people. Connecting with the people who created the program inspired me and helped me understand that I too can work at the forefront. Thanks to them, I got into Internet law as one of the first lawyers in this field.

What I love the most is that the experiences of women inspire young people today just as much as they inspired me when I was a student.

Clockwise from top left: Jean Bartik, Kathleen Antonelli, Betty Holberton, Ruth Teitelbaum, Marlene Meltzer, Frances Spence.Clockwise from top left: The Bartik family; Bill Mauchly, Priscilla Holberton, The Teitelbaum Family, The Meltzer Family, The Spence Family

Is it important to highlight women’s contributions to STEM throughout history?

Kleiman: [Actor] Geena Davis founded the Geena Davis Institute for Gender in Media, which partners with the entertainment industry to greatly increase the presence of female characters in the media. It is based on the philosophy “you can’t be what you can’t see”.

This philosophy is both right and wrong. I think you can be what you don’t see, and certainly every pioneer who has ever crossed racial, ethnic, religious, or gender barriers has done so. However, it is certainly much easier to get on the field if there are role models like you. To this end, many computer scientists today are trying to diversify the field. However, from my work in the field of Internet politics and my recent travels around the country on my book tour, I know that many students still feel locked in because of the old stereotypes in computing and engineering. I hope that by sharing compelling stories about pioneers in this field who are women and people of color, we can open doors to computing and engineering. I hope the story we share will make it much easier to recruit young people for jobs in engineering, computer science and related fields.

Do you plan to write more books or make another documentary?

Kleiman: I would like to continue the story of the ENIAC programmers and write about what happened to them after the end of the war. I hope my next book will delve into the 1950s and reveal more about the history of the Universal Automatic Computer, the first series of modern commercial computers, and the diverse group of people who built and programmed it.