The ENIAC Programmers: Women Who Wired the First Computer and Were Forgotten for 40 Years
ENIAC Programmers (2011)
When ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer, became operational in 1945, it was programmed entirely by women who had to physically rewire cables and flip switches. The six original programmers—Jean Bartik, Betty Holberton, Kathleen Antonelli, Marlyn Meltzer, Ruth Teitelbaum, and Frances Spence—taught themselves from diagrams. At the 1946 public unveiling, the Army introduced the male inventors but never the women. Their pioneering work was forgotten for four decades until historian Kathy Kleiman rediscovered their story in 1985.
The Army never introduced the ENIAC women. No one gave them any credit or discussed their critical part in the event that day. Their faces, but not their names, became part of the beautiful press pictures of the ENIAC. For forty years, their roles and their pioneering work were forgotten and their story lost to history.