With women in the far minority today in computer science, it is often forgotten the roles that females played in the history of programming. The first theoretical software was created by a woman Ada Lovelace, when she was working with Charles Babbage on his theoretical Analytical Machine. In scientific study, people were needed to perform complex mathematics by hand for use in calculations. The work was very tedious and was usually preformed by assistants, many times women, until the creation of digital computers. Men took leading roles in the creation of the first computer machines, as women at the time did not have the education or opportunity to participate in the building of hardware. These hardware creations were seen as more important than the clerical work that women did with software. “A preoccupation with hardware, therefore, has had the unintended effect of obscuring the role of women” (Abbate 4). The six women programmers of the ENIAC were some of those who were not recognized for their work as some of the first real computer programmers. Often overlooked, women played important roles in the history of computer science, for various reasons, being the first to work with and create the field into software engineering as we know it.
Ada Lovelace is often called the mother of computer science and the first programmer because of her vision for Babbage’s machine. Charles Babbage first sought to create a machine in 1822 that would calculate tables of logarithms. With this thought he created what he called his ‘Difference Engine’. Unable to properly build such a machine, Babbage came up with another idea. Instead of building a machine that preformed only one specific function, he could create a machine that preformed many different mathematical functions. This ‘Analytical Engine’ would take input from punch cards and perform tasks specified by the input. (Rheingold par. 12-22) Ada Lovelace realized the possibilities of what Babbage was trying to build and wanted to help him develop the software for the machine. After meeting Lovelace, Babbage asked her to translate his texts of the machine from French into English. Lovelace translated the texts, adding her own notes as she went along. When she finished, her addendum was three times as long as the original text (Karwarka par. 5). Professor B.H. Newman noted in that her notes “show her to have fully understood the principles of a programmed computer a century before its time” (Rheingold par. 32). Although the Analytical Engine was never built, Lovelace wrote the first computer program for it, calculating Bernoulli numbers. She was never able to test it, but when run with modern computers, Lovelace’s program works (Karwarka par. 6). She is also credited with creating concepts important to computer programming such as loops and subroutines. With all of the conceptual programming she wrote, it is speculated that if she had not died at a young age, digital computers might have been create a century earlier (Goyal 37). In recognition of Lovelace’s contribution to computer science, the United States military named the computer language they developed ‘Ada’. Since Lovelace and Babbage were never able to create a working model of the Analytical Machine, for the next century human computers were still needed.
Before digital computers, mathematical computations needed to be done by hand, by a person known then as a ‘computer’. Since the 18th century women were employed to do calculations by hand. They worked in fields such as astronomy, architecture, aviation and weapons research (Abbate 5). To aid in the computers work, books of tables were created that had values that could be looked up and copied. The work of the computer was tedious and considered not worth the time of college educated men, but was perfectly suited for college educated women (Light 461). When machines were built to perform mathematical computations, it seemed natural that women’s jobs as computers would change as well. “A ‘computer’ was a human being until approximately 1945. After that date the term referred to a machine, and the former human computers became ‘operators’” (Light 469). Many of the pioneering women programmers started off as mathematicians and human computers, then going on to work on machines such as the ENIAC.
The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was one of the first digital computers and was programmed exclusively by women. It was developed by the army to provide calculations for ballistics. During World War II women were needed to fill jobs left by men, and ballistic computing was no exception. The US Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) and the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania collaborated on the building and use of the ENIAC machine. Before the machine was built, BRL had been recruiting women to work as computers, using differential analyzer and hand calculating firing tables for bullets and rockets (Light 460-463). Employees with mathematical backgrounds were needed and then they were educated on anything else they would need for their job. Women with college math degrees were hired as well as other college graduates with math experience and eventually even high school graduates with solid mathematical experience were hired as well (Fritz 15). BRL decided that six of the best computers were to be transferred to Moore School to learn to program the ENIAC. Since BRL hired almost exclusively women computers, all six were female. “…designing hardware was a man’s job: programming was a woman’s job” (Light 469). The women hired to program the machine were taking orders from the engineers and army officials who built and maintained it. Their job was seen as clerical, but in reality it was much more complex. In order to complete their job of programming the ENIAC, they needed to learn everything about the machine, the logic, circuitry, blue prints and operations. The women learned how things worked by crawling inside the massive frame and write controls for the punch card machines. (Light 470) Betty Jean Jennings, one of the programmers, described, “Since we knew both the application and the machine, we learned to diagnose troubles as well as, if not better than, the engineer” (Light, 471) After World War II ended, the details of the ENIAC project came out as before it had been a military secret. The War Department press release and subsequent news stories never made mention that the primary operators of the ENIAC were women. The male engineers who headed the project were named but the women who did the work were omitted. Even in photographs taken of the machine and its workers, only photos with men working or with females only in the background where they could be cut out, were released in newspapers and military pamphlets (Light 473-477). This omission is particularly glaring as BRL had hired all women for the job, and they did not receive any recognition deliberately.
The above imagage was taken with the male maintance engineers in the front and the women in the background. The picture was used by the Army in pamphlets and posters for recuiting, with the women cropped out.
In a field with so few females today, it is often forgotten that women were the pioneers of computer programming. The first theoretical programmer was Ada Lovelace when she laid the basics of programming out without ever testing on a machine. Because of their jobs as human computer, women were able to switch into the role as digital computer operators. Such as the women of the ENIAC, they became some of the first real computer programmers. With females historically a part of creating the field of computer science, women should be confident in continuing to work with computer software.
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