Monthly archives August 2015

Uncle Sam’s first programmers

Two_women_operating_ENIAC

Betty Jennings (later Bartik) and Frances Bilas (later Spence) are here shown programming the the first electronic general-purpose computer in Philadelphia in the 1940s. These brilliant women helped win the war, but remained unsung heroes for decades. In Walter Isaacson’s book The Innovators, read how these and the other female mathematicians who programmed ENIAC were shut out of the banquets and other celebrations of this massive achievement.

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