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Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World’s First Modern Computer
An untold, World War II-era story of the six American women who programmed the world's first modern computer.
After the end of World War II, the race for technological supremacy sped on. Top-secret research into ballistics and computing, begun during the war to aid those on the front lines, continued across the United States as engineers and programmers rushed to complete their confidential assignments. Among them were six pioneering women, tasked with figuring out how to program the world's first general-purpose, programmable, all-electronic computer--better known as the ENIAC— even though there were no instruction codes or programming languages in existence. While most students of computer history are aware of this innovative machine, the great contributions of the women who programmed it were never told -- until now.
Over the course of a decade, Kathy Kleiman met with four of the original six ENIAC Programmers and recorded extensive interviews with the women about their work.
After the end of World War II, the race for technological supremacy sped on. Top-secret research into ballistics and computing, begun during the war to aid those on the front lines, continued across the United States as engineers and programmers rushed to complete their confidential assignments. Among them were six pioneering women, tasked with figuring out how to program the world's first general-purpose, programmable, all-electronic computer--better known as the ENIAC— even though there were no instruction codes or programming languages in existence. While most students of computer history are aware of this innovative machine, the great contributions of the women who programmed it were never told -- until now.
Over the course of a decade, Kathy Kleiman met with four of the original six ENIAC Programmers and recorded extensive interviews with the women about their work.
297 pages, Hardcover
First published July 26, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews
July 8, 2022
I had no idea that the history of computer development was so closely intertwined with military history. And I was surprised to learn that women were deeply involved and so commonly overlooked in the history books. I’ve been considering a career in the technology industry and this is even more motivation to find my place in history.
This book covers the lives of the 6 women involved in the beginning of the ENIAC computer and though I got lost in their personal stories since there are so many of them, I do appreciate that the author took the time to get to know these titans of history and to make sure their story is not lost to time.
This book covers the lives of the 6 women involved in the beginning of the ENIAC computer and though I got lost in their personal stories since there are so many of them, I do appreciate that the author took the time to get to know these titans of history and to make sure their story is not lost to time.
May 8, 2023
This is pretty dry and told with a lot of detail. I don't know that I would recommend it to someone who isn't super interested in computer history because it's not really told in a fun accessible way like some nonfiction, but I thought it was interesting. It also really helps that I live near where the bulk of this story takes place so when the author gets into the nitty gritty of every location and tidbit of info I know what she's talking about. I think she wanted to document every scrap of info she found out so it wouldn't be lost to history.
But it's crazy that these women's contributions were completely overlooked until now. I think any woman who reads this will feel that deep down to their soul.
But it's crazy that these women's contributions were completely overlooked until now. I think any woman who reads this will feel that deep down to their soul.
September 30, 2022
I loved that Betty (pretty sure it was her) invented the concept of break points, and that it actually involved breaking a connection. Some of the personal threads were hard to follow, like when Mary died, I had to search back to try to remember who she was. Such an important story, that without this author, could've been lost. Still, the feelings of resignation at not being recognized because of their sex, especially postwar, "that's how it is," are very familiar, as we uncover more and more of these stories.
January 18, 2023
I didn't enjoy the writing style at all and the author added too much unnecessary information about all the characters (not just the six). Gotta give an extra rating for the out-calling with names in the epilogue — don't let men get away with sexist research.
December 2, 2022
Most people, working in IT, fail to realize the role which women have played in the early history of same. This book attempts to correct some of these oversights.
A couple of the chapters discuss, in greater depth, how ENIAC worked. I found that particularly enlightening. It's a bit like the IBM Unit Record Equipment cross-tabs / Accounting Machines, in that you have limited quantities of storage, limited accumulator space (holding a value and adding incoming values), limited amounts of more-complex computing power and you have to plug in cables, connecting the output of this hardware to the the input of this other hardware. Unlike the cross-tabs, data was passed in parallel (much faster), used vacuum tubes to do the processing (cross-tabs, initially, used mechanical rotary counters) and had more-complex computing capabilities which wouldn't be seen in cross-tabs for many years.
The stories of the men who engineered the ENIAC are documented in a variety of books. Fewer and further between are the stories of the women who had to figure out how to program them. Indeed, these ladies were presented with block diagrams and wiring diagrams and had to figure out what had to be connected to what (there was no documentation other than what they wrote). To say that they were "just operators" is entirely missing the point; they had to have considerable expertise to do their job and ALL of them had advanced degrees in Mathematics (how do you calculate differential equations when you have basic add, subtract, multiply, divide, square root and if/then/else logic?). When they, later, modded the machine store its program in punched cards, it was because they finally settled on a hardware configuration which would interpret the data as program steps, getting closer to what we now think of as programmable computers.
Yes, I read the whole thing in a few days. The chapters flow well, from one to the next, making it an easy, absorbing read.
A couple of the chapters discuss, in greater depth, how ENIAC worked. I found that particularly enlightening. It's a bit like the IBM Unit Record Equipment cross-tabs / Accounting Machines, in that you have limited quantities of storage, limited accumulator space (holding a value and adding incoming values), limited amounts of more-complex computing power and you have to plug in cables, connecting the output of this hardware to the the input of this other hardware. Unlike the cross-tabs, data was passed in parallel (much faster), used vacuum tubes to do the processing (cross-tabs, initially, used mechanical rotary counters) and had more-complex computing capabilities which wouldn't be seen in cross-tabs for many years.
The stories of the men who engineered the ENIAC are documented in a variety of books. Fewer and further between are the stories of the women who had to figure out how to program them. Indeed, these ladies were presented with block diagrams and wiring diagrams and had to figure out what had to be connected to what (there was no documentation other than what they wrote). To say that they were "just operators" is entirely missing the point; they had to have considerable expertise to do their job and ALL of them had advanced degrees in Mathematics (how do you calculate differential equations when you have basic add, subtract, multiply, divide, square root and if/then/else logic?). When they, later, modded the machine store its program in punched cards, it was because they finally settled on a hardware configuration which would interpret the data as program steps, getting closer to what we now think of as programmable computers.
Yes, I read the whole thing in a few days. The chapters flow well, from one to the next, making it an easy, absorbing read.
March 26, 2023
A solid, enjoyable read about another aspect of history of which I was unaware...and one that deserves exposure, considering the conclusion indicates an attempt to aggressively whitewash these important women from the history of computing. To hell with such misogyny...read the book and pass on the story.
March 24, 2024
I'm glad I read this. The ENIAC 6 deserve more respect and more awareness of how much they brought to programming. I expected the quiet sexism of having their work accepted but not their value as people. I wasn't expecting modern jackasses to try to erase their contributions and deny their importance.
April 22, 2024
4.5 stars! Loved learning about these women and their spot in history pertaining to the ENIAC and all that came after!!
November 2, 2022
3✨
I went into Proving Ground with very high hopes. I love women’s history and I’m always so intrigued by the pioneering women of STEM and their stories. Proving Ground is no different but I will say, the execution fell a bit flat for me. The writing was pretty weak and felt very repetitive throughout.
I do appreciate the author touching briefly on the discrimination that women, and communities of color/minority identities experienced then and how it persists today. Even if it was a blip at the end of the whole book.
I think if you’re already a little bit interested in computer history, women in STEM, etc. you might enjoy this but don’t go into thinking you’ve found another Hidden Figures. The concepts are the same but Hidden Figures and Proving Ground are not in the same league when it comes to the writing and storytelling. All in all, not bad. Not mind-blowing either.
—
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I went into Proving Ground with very high hopes. I love women’s history and I’m always so intrigued by the pioneering women of STEM and their stories. Proving Ground is no different but I will say, the execution fell a bit flat for me. The writing was pretty weak and felt very repetitive throughout.
I do appreciate the author touching briefly on the discrimination that women, and communities of color/minority identities experienced then and how it persists today. Even if it was a blip at the end of the whole book.
I think if you’re already a little bit interested in computer history, women in STEM, etc. you might enjoy this but don’t go into thinking you’ve found another Hidden Figures. The concepts are the same but Hidden Figures and Proving Ground are not in the same league when it comes to the writing and storytelling. All in all, not bad. Not mind-blowing either.
—
✍🏽 Follow me on Goodreads for more reviews like this!
📚 Instagram: @whataprilreads
🐝 Keep tabs on me here, so you know when I start a new project! https://linktr.ee/whataprilreads
September 10, 2022
A great piece of detective work and really well written. Sometimes the author has to pad the narrative out but in this case there’s no need. And the writing is clear and easy to follow.
The subjects are the women who worked for the war calculating complex trajectories on early calculating machines, itself an overlooked part of history, and then the 6 who were the first programmers of ENIAC one of the very first supercomputers. These women basically invented how to program this machine and have never been properly acknowledged. The author herself was responsible for drawing the attention of the organisers of the 50th anniversary celebrations to these women.
It’s a history that shows how women have always been involved in computing and that they are more than capable of handling the skills. Highly recommended.
The subjects are the women who worked for the war calculating complex trajectories on early calculating machines, itself an overlooked part of history, and then the 6 who were the first programmers of ENIAC one of the very first supercomputers. These women basically invented how to program this machine and have never been properly acknowledged. The author herself was responsible for drawing the attention of the organisers of the 50th anniversary celebrations to these women.
It’s a history that shows how women have always been involved in computing and that they are more than capable of handling the skills. Highly recommended.
August 21, 2022
Hidden Figures for the computer age — the six women who worked with first super computer inventors during and right after WWII to create the field of computer programming. Starting with performing high function math problems manually during WWII to improve ballistic missile trajectories, these six went on to work on ensuring that the first super computer - ENIAC — could “talk” with those who posed problems that would have otherwise taken hours and even days to resolve. Of course getting no recognition in the history of computing til the author stumbled across a picture of the ginormous ENIAC room at Univ of Penn and noticed several unidentified women seriously at work. Great book to inspire young women to pursue STEM careers. Writing is weak and repetitive, but the story of these women, and their contributions to the modern age of computer processing is important.
December 25, 2022
This should be required reading for all software developers. Not because they will learn more about programming, but so they can appreciate what it was like before programming languages, compilers, libraries, github, etc. Not to mention what it is like to labor in the shadows, without proper credit for vital contributions. Bonus: the invention of the breakpoint, and debugging of the first(?) off-by-one error.
April 3, 2023
Great story of the women who first programmed and troubleshooted the world's first computer ENIAC during WWII and the bizarre tale they have of trying to get recognition of their work in the male dominated 40's through the misogynistic times of the today. No wonder women have a tough time in STEM if they can't be recognized for the achievements they have made. With 30yrs of hiring experience, I can tell you women pay more attention to details than most men.
February 17, 2023
very good book and perfect example of how history is lost on important people because they are women. thankful someone did the research on these amazing women
only downsides are the backstories can be a little overwhelming and make you confused on the characters
only downsides are the backstories can be a little overwhelming and make you confused on the characters
November 6, 2022
Documentary: The Computers: The Remarkable Story of the ENIAC Programmers
P. xviii-xix
"Dr Gwen Bell, cofounder of the Computer Museum..."
""Who are the women?"I asked Bell. "They're refrigerator ladies," she said. ......"they're models."
P. 162
"As a final preparation point, Herman notified the women that he would need them in the ENIAC room for the event. Not as Programmers, but as "hostesses.""
P. xviii-xix
"Dr Gwen Bell, cofounder of the Computer Museum..."
""Who are the women?"I asked Bell. "They're refrigerator ladies," she said. ......"they're models."
P. 162
"As a final preparation point, Herman notified the women that he would need them in the ENIAC room for the event. Not as Programmers, but as "hostesses.""
December 14, 2023
Invaluable history of early computing and programming, and the critical roll women played in it. Very enjoyable!
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March 1, 2024Staff pick from Kelly! Find this book in our catalog!
June 9, 2023
Different than what I thought it would be, but still pretty good. I was worried that is would be all about math and too technical, but it wasn't too bad in that way. I learned more about war efforts than I previously knew and definitely more about early computers. I wish there were more personal stories about the women though.
June 15, 2023
Fascinating read
April 29, 2023
This book is fantastic, perfect for binge reading. The author provides a good mix of context background and details about the six who are inspiring figures in all senses. Very relevant to understand the foundation of computers (so many parts are directly linked to the area today) and the critical role they player in it.
August 12, 2023
I was facinated reading the history of the these women (I was also reading at the same time the book "Hidden Figures" and amazed at these women also. In both books, the women were known as human computers.). Their intelligence, pioneering in the field of computers and math. Their work ethics, courage, and poise against the odds in their field. It is a shame that they are just being recognized at this time.
(Although, of course in both the ENIAC and the NASA programs much of it was done in secret. I wish we had more of these amazing stories of these people. I recently visited the Oak Ridge facility and I am sad about the loss of all those people who worked in the nuclear facilities scattered around the US.)
I enjoyed computer basics that the women had to learn and use:
Punch cards- how they had to be carefully typed and organized
Plugboard-12 by 18 inch panel used to control the IBM card reader and card punch
Circuit diagrams (This was the first exposure the women received to ENIAC and had to learn how it work from these diagrams.)
Vacuum tubes--the main components of ENIAC
Accumulators- 20 of them whic did more than add and subtract
Units--there were 4 types Pg135)
Loops
Sequencing
Parallel Programming--getting ENIAC to do multiple steps at once.
Summary: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
"Two weeks after she graduated, McNulty responded to that Evening Bulletin ad. She was immediately hired by the army. A couple of years later she became one of six women who would program the first modern computer. Their stories and the saga of that computer’s invention are the subjects of this beguiling book.
The author, Kathy Kleiman, now a law professor at American University, was a computer programmer in high school. As an undergraduate at Harvard, she discovered two photos with women standing in front of the Eniac, the 8ft-tall and 80ft-long behemoth invented for the army by J Presper Eckert and John Mauchly. From that moment on, Kleiman became obsessed with learning the identities of all the earliest women programers.
The result of that magnificent obsession was a documentary in 2014 and this book, which melds social history with the major events of the second world war and the biographies of these six remarkable pioneers to produce an irresistible narrative.
The others besides McNulty were Jean Jennings Bartik, Frances Elizabeth Snyder, Frances Bilas Spence, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer and Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum. Among them were a Catholic, two Jews, a Quaker and a Presbyterian.
They were all hired for the army’s Philadelphia Computing Section and their title was assistant computer, which meant they did lengthy calculations on old-fashioned mechanical machines. All started with the rank of “subprofessional” or “subscientific” just because they were women, but their starting salary of $1,620 (about $27,000 now) was double that of any secretary.
Like all successful pioneers from previously discriminated-against groups, each of the women had to be exceptional to succeed. Marlyn Meltzer, for example, quickly became famous for never making a mistake in any of her calculations.
They had to overcome every traditional sexist hurdle, including an “overly familiar doctor” who performed the entrance physical on Jean Bartik and invited her to his home to complete it.
“The old farm boys had taught me well to stay out of secluded places such as haylofts,” Bartik remembered, so she refused to go the doctor’s home. Remarkably, when she reported “what kind of lecher he was”, the army stopped using him for physicals.
How Eckert and Mauchly convinced the army to finance the world’s first all electronic programmable computer is the story which animates a long section of Kleiman’s book.
The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (Eniac) originally had a single goal: to improve the accuracy of American artillery. Early in the war the army figured out that it had to account for distance, humidity, air density, temperature and the weight of the shell. When troops took artillery units to the desert, the difference in soil from Europe required a whole new set of calculations.
Before the new computer was invented, the women who would program it had to use desktop calculators. They were “essentially pushing the missile’s motion forward across its arc in the sky, step-by-step, to its explosive end at the completion of its journey”. A precursor of the Eniac had dozens of motors, thousands of relays, 2,000 vacuum tubes and 200 miles of wire – “all to solve just one ballistics trajectory”.
The Eniac had an astonishing 18,000 vacuum tubes, and the failure of any one of them could ruin its calculations. One of the inventors’ eureka moments occurred when they realized they could make the tubes more reliable by under-powering them.
Because Our Fathers Lied review: Robert McNamara, Vietnam and a partial healing
Read more
One of the many astonishing accomplishments of these pioneering women was the system they developed to identify the location of any defective tube in the huge machine. And because nothing like it had ever existed before, the only way they could teach themselves to program it was by studying its blueprints.
“They gave us these great big block diagrams … and we were supposed to study them and figure out how to program it … Well, obviously we had no idea what we were doing,” one remembered.
But Marlyn Meltzer “had a sense they would grope it out and figure it out together”.
Incredibly, she was right. But because most male-written histories of this incredible invention omitted the crucial role of these women, this book marks the first time they have all received the gigantic credit they deserve."
These women figured out trajectories with variables such as distance, the gun make-up, weather, barometric pressure, humidity, curvature of the earth, etc. and how to program the computer with all these variables to produce useful, accurate trajectories for the military.
Pg. 147 " As Computers (the human/women computers), they relied on their intuition, knowledge, and expertise, but ENIAC had none of those attributes. They realized that what ENIAC needed to do and what they had done as Computers were very different."
Pg 148 "But ENIAC knew nothing. It would do only what its Programmer, through careful planning and preparation, made it do."
I think the working of computers is almost magical. I was flabbergasted how the women understand how to manipulate the switches (3000), dials, wires, tubes, and cables of the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer consisting of forty-five units
pg 219 " ENIAC remained in active use at the Proving Ground until October 1955. In its new form using the Converter Code, and upgraded from time to time, ENIAC ran over 100 important problems."
(Although, of course in both the ENIAC and the NASA programs much of it was done in secret. I wish we had more of these amazing stories of these people. I recently visited the Oak Ridge facility and I am sad about the loss of all those people who worked in the nuclear facilities scattered around the US.)
I enjoyed computer basics that the women had to learn and use:
Punch cards- how they had to be carefully typed and organized
Plugboard-12 by 18 inch panel used to control the IBM card reader and card punch
Circuit diagrams (This was the first exposure the women received to ENIAC and had to learn how it work from these diagrams.)
Vacuum tubes--the main components of ENIAC
Accumulators- 20 of them whic did more than add and subtract
Units--there were 4 types Pg135)
Loops
Sequencing
Parallel Programming--getting ENIAC to do multiple steps at once.
Summary: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
"Two weeks after she graduated, McNulty responded to that Evening Bulletin ad. She was immediately hired by the army. A couple of years later she became one of six women who would program the first modern computer. Their stories and the saga of that computer’s invention are the subjects of this beguiling book.
The author, Kathy Kleiman, now a law professor at American University, was a computer programmer in high school. As an undergraduate at Harvard, she discovered two photos with women standing in front of the Eniac, the 8ft-tall and 80ft-long behemoth invented for the army by J Presper Eckert and John Mauchly. From that moment on, Kleiman became obsessed with learning the identities of all the earliest women programers.
The result of that magnificent obsession was a documentary in 2014 and this book, which melds social history with the major events of the second world war and the biographies of these six remarkable pioneers to produce an irresistible narrative.
The others besides McNulty were Jean Jennings Bartik, Frances Elizabeth Snyder, Frances Bilas Spence, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer and Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum. Among them were a Catholic, two Jews, a Quaker and a Presbyterian.
They were all hired for the army’s Philadelphia Computing Section and their title was assistant computer, which meant they did lengthy calculations on old-fashioned mechanical machines. All started with the rank of “subprofessional” or “subscientific” just because they were women, but their starting salary of $1,620 (about $27,000 now) was double that of any secretary.
Like all successful pioneers from previously discriminated-against groups, each of the women had to be exceptional to succeed. Marlyn Meltzer, for example, quickly became famous for never making a mistake in any of her calculations.
They had to overcome every traditional sexist hurdle, including an “overly familiar doctor” who performed the entrance physical on Jean Bartik and invited her to his home to complete it.
“The old farm boys had taught me well to stay out of secluded places such as haylofts,” Bartik remembered, so she refused to go the doctor’s home. Remarkably, when she reported “what kind of lecher he was”, the army stopped using him for physicals.
How Eckert and Mauchly convinced the army to finance the world’s first all electronic programmable computer is the story which animates a long section of Kleiman’s book.
The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (Eniac) originally had a single goal: to improve the accuracy of American artillery. Early in the war the army figured out that it had to account for distance, humidity, air density, temperature and the weight of the shell. When troops took artillery units to the desert, the difference in soil from Europe required a whole new set of calculations.
Before the new computer was invented, the women who would program it had to use desktop calculators. They were “essentially pushing the missile’s motion forward across its arc in the sky, step-by-step, to its explosive end at the completion of its journey”. A precursor of the Eniac had dozens of motors, thousands of relays, 2,000 vacuum tubes and 200 miles of wire – “all to solve just one ballistics trajectory”.
The Eniac had an astonishing 18,000 vacuum tubes, and the failure of any one of them could ruin its calculations. One of the inventors’ eureka moments occurred when they realized they could make the tubes more reliable by under-powering them.
Because Our Fathers Lied review: Robert McNamara, Vietnam and a partial healing
Read more
One of the many astonishing accomplishments of these pioneering women was the system they developed to identify the location of any defective tube in the huge machine. And because nothing like it had ever existed before, the only way they could teach themselves to program it was by studying its blueprints.
“They gave us these great big block diagrams … and we were supposed to study them and figure out how to program it … Well, obviously we had no idea what we were doing,” one remembered.
But Marlyn Meltzer “had a sense they would grope it out and figure it out together”.
Incredibly, she was right. But because most male-written histories of this incredible invention omitted the crucial role of these women, this book marks the first time they have all received the gigantic credit they deserve."
These women figured out trajectories with variables such as distance, the gun make-up, weather, barometric pressure, humidity, curvature of the earth, etc. and how to program the computer with all these variables to produce useful, accurate trajectories for the military.
Pg. 147 " As Computers (the human/women computers), they relied on their intuition, knowledge, and expertise, but ENIAC had none of those attributes. They realized that what ENIAC needed to do and what they had done as Computers were very different."
Pg 148 "But ENIAC knew nothing. It would do only what its Programmer, through careful planning and preparation, made it do."
I think the working of computers is almost magical. I was flabbergasted how the women understand how to manipulate the switches (3000), dials, wires, tubes, and cables of the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer consisting of forty-five units
pg 219 " ENIAC remained in active use at the Proving Ground until October 1955. In its new form using the Converter Code, and upgraded from time to time, ENIAC ran over 100 important problems."
October 6, 2022
I've always been interested in the history of early computers, and you can't get earlier than the ENIAC created at the University of Pennsylvania in the later years of World War II. Long familiar with the stories of the creators of the computer, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, I'd never known anything about the people who created the first programs for ENIAC. Kathy Kleiman documents that history with this amazing book. Early in World War II, "computer" meant a person, typically a woman, who laboriously created firing tables for artillery pieces for the US Army. This work involved pencil, paper, and a massive electro-mechanical desktop calculator, over which the "computer" would slave for upwards of 40 hours for a single artillery trajectory. Created to automate construction of these firing tables, the ENIAC creators naturally turned to these women to train the first programmers. Kleiman, spurred by curiosity as to their identities, tracked them down for an undergraduate thesis project, and over the ensuing decades continued to collect oral histories from them and others about the work of programming the ENIAC. This fine addition to the history of computing finally gives the six ENIAC programmers their proper place.
August 31, 2022
At Last, Recognition for Women Contributing to the Dawn of the Computer Age
There are several reasons this is an important book, not the least of which is that it at last recognizes six women who were important contributors to the dawn of the computer age.
World War II opened up unprecedented opportunities for women, but it by no means meant that they would receive the recognition, pay, and status commensurate with their contributions.
Author Kathy Kleiman has done a wonderful job capturing the contradictions of the war years. There was a desperate need for those with mathematics talent, which allowed the six women she profiles to assume responsibilities that would never before have been open to them.
But despite their talent, they were treated as second class citizens in terms of rank, access to meetings, and to celebrations as they made the earliest programmable electronic computer work. This exclusion extended to anniversary celebrations recognizing the profound historic importance of that computer, ENIAC. Photographs made at the time identified the men but not the women. The women were in fact were actively monitoring the computer or programming it (by connecting wires, the primitive way, at the time, of programming) and should also have been named. They were not “models,” as in a refrigerator commercial, as many assumed.
Kleiman apparently spent decades researching and writing this book. She seems to have spent a great deal of time with most if not all the six women, five of whom lived into the 21st Century. (Francis Bilas Spence was the last to pass in 2012).
Thus we get a rich description of life for young women in the 1940s. Most were very young and had lived rather closeted lives, whether on a farm in Missouri or in protected lives in Philadelphia or New York. Had the war not created demand for talented mathematicians, they likely would have become public school math teachers. Instead, they were hired as “computers” to manually calculate artillery trajectories.
At the time the Kleiman interviewed her subjects, then in advanced age, the women’s detailed recollection of their social lives at the time, and the nature of the unprecedented problems they had to solve, is truly remarkable. Apparently several recorded histories with the women were also available to the author.
As the first computer was in the planning stages, men were involved in translating math and logic to the layout of some 80,000 vacuum tubes that formed the heart of the machine (no transistors or integrated circuits back then). Men were also responsible for the fabrication of hardware that consisted of some 40 huge machines, each eight feet tall and much larger than a refrigerator. These were arranged in U shape in an enormous room.
But the women, who were to become the first professional programmers of a modern computer, were not even allowed to see the physical machine. Instead, they were handed electrical diagrams to pore over without explanation from the men who had prepared the materials. There was no book to consult, and no programming manual. The women became the authors of such documentation.
When the women finally were allowed to see the machine that they were asked to program, they found on the face of the 80 machines a number of knobs and outlets. Programming consisted of translating the calculating task to correctly setting the knobs and using wiring properly to connect various outlets. (To visualize the wiring connections required, think of photos of the early telephone switchboard in which an operator connected callers by plugging in a wire to an outlet. But these were lengthy, heavy wires that might run from one of the 80 machines to another. And everything had to be done flawlessly.)
If these women were the first programmers, they were also the first to have to de-bug programs that weren’t running correctly. They were the first to adapt techniques now standard procedure for programmers today — run the program in stages, see if the calculations are accurate to that point, and if so move to the next stage until you find the fault. In the case of ENIAC, due to the unreliability of 80,000 vacuum tubes, that could as easily be a hardware problem as a programming (software) problem.
Kleiman seems to be a reliable writer with regard to the technological breakthroughs, but as a lay reader I had to take this on faith. For example, she explained that Jean and Adele helped develop “direct programming.” Readers will not need to completely understand such ground-breaking achievements to appreciate how important these and other early insights were to computer programming.
In the end, the six women who lived long enough saw their work recognized in a number of forums and ceremonies held — can this be a surprise — by women who have important roles in computer technology today. I was shocked, however, that Kleiman referenced opposition from a number of male computer historians. Reviewing her work, some rejected the important role that these women had played and accused the author of “revisionist history.” Unbelievable.
All in all, this a wonderful book, so I hesitate to mention “nits” that should have been caught by an editor. It was the Royal Air Force, not the Royal Navy, that battled the Luftwaffe over the skies of Britain. The Free French were not the first soldiers to land at Normandy. Instead, they were allowed to be the first soldiers to enter Paris. FDR was elected three more times after he took his first oath of office, not four more times. There were also more typos than one normally finds in a book. These errors should not dissuade potential readers.
There are several reasons this is an important book, not the least of which is that it at last recognizes six women who were important contributors to the dawn of the computer age.
World War II opened up unprecedented opportunities for women, but it by no means meant that they would receive the recognition, pay, and status commensurate with their contributions.
Author Kathy Kleiman has done a wonderful job capturing the contradictions of the war years. There was a desperate need for those with mathematics talent, which allowed the six women she profiles to assume responsibilities that would never before have been open to them.
But despite their talent, they were treated as second class citizens in terms of rank, access to meetings, and to celebrations as they made the earliest programmable electronic computer work. This exclusion extended to anniversary celebrations recognizing the profound historic importance of that computer, ENIAC. Photographs made at the time identified the men but not the women. The women were in fact were actively monitoring the computer or programming it (by connecting wires, the primitive way, at the time, of programming) and should also have been named. They were not “models,” as in a refrigerator commercial, as many assumed.
Kleiman apparently spent decades researching and writing this book. She seems to have spent a great deal of time with most if not all the six women, five of whom lived into the 21st Century. (Francis Bilas Spence was the last to pass in 2012).
Thus we get a rich description of life for young women in the 1940s. Most were very young and had lived rather closeted lives, whether on a farm in Missouri or in protected lives in Philadelphia or New York. Had the war not created demand for talented mathematicians, they likely would have become public school math teachers. Instead, they were hired as “computers” to manually calculate artillery trajectories.
At the time the Kleiman interviewed her subjects, then in advanced age, the women’s detailed recollection of their social lives at the time, and the nature of the unprecedented problems they had to solve, is truly remarkable. Apparently several recorded histories with the women were also available to the author.
As the first computer was in the planning stages, men were involved in translating math and logic to the layout of some 80,000 vacuum tubes that formed the heart of the machine (no transistors or integrated circuits back then). Men were also responsible for the fabrication of hardware that consisted of some 40 huge machines, each eight feet tall and much larger than a refrigerator. These were arranged in U shape in an enormous room.
But the women, who were to become the first professional programmers of a modern computer, were not even allowed to see the physical machine. Instead, they were handed electrical diagrams to pore over without explanation from the men who had prepared the materials. There was no book to consult, and no programming manual. The women became the authors of such documentation.
When the women finally were allowed to see the machine that they were asked to program, they found on the face of the 80 machines a number of knobs and outlets. Programming consisted of translating the calculating task to correctly setting the knobs and using wiring properly to connect various outlets. (To visualize the wiring connections required, think of photos of the early telephone switchboard in which an operator connected callers by plugging in a wire to an outlet. But these were lengthy, heavy wires that might run from one of the 80 machines to another. And everything had to be done flawlessly.)
If these women were the first programmers, they were also the first to have to de-bug programs that weren’t running correctly. They were the first to adapt techniques now standard procedure for programmers today — run the program in stages, see if the calculations are accurate to that point, and if so move to the next stage until you find the fault. In the case of ENIAC, due to the unreliability of 80,000 vacuum tubes, that could as easily be a hardware problem as a programming (software) problem.
Kleiman seems to be a reliable writer with regard to the technological breakthroughs, but as a lay reader I had to take this on faith. For example, she explained that Jean and Adele helped develop “direct programming.” Readers will not need to completely understand such ground-breaking achievements to appreciate how important these and other early insights were to computer programming.
In the end, the six women who lived long enough saw their work recognized in a number of forums and ceremonies held — can this be a surprise — by women who have important roles in computer technology today. I was shocked, however, that Kleiman referenced opposition from a number of male computer historians. Reviewing her work, some rejected the important role that these women had played and accused the author of “revisionist history.” Unbelievable.
All in all, this a wonderful book, so I hesitate to mention “nits” that should have been caught by an editor. It was the Royal Air Force, not the Royal Navy, that battled the Luftwaffe over the skies of Britain. The Free French were not the first soldiers to land at Normandy. Instead, they were allowed to be the first soldiers to enter Paris. FDR was elected three more times after he took his first oath of office, not four more times. There were also more typos than one normally finds in a book. These errors should not dissuade potential readers.
June 5, 2022
I really enjoyed this historical account of the women who paved the way of American computer programming. As someone who tok computer science courses in college, I am very sad that I did not know about the great work these women did. This account managed to describe the world of programming in a way that was accessible to the non programmer and that is a mark of a great history in my book. I will be recommending this to people who enjoy stories about women, people who like science and this looking for a unique subject to learn about.
August 21, 2022
Before Hidden Figures, there were the six women of the Army Ballistic Research Laboratory. Without their manual calculations, the first computer never would have gotten off the ground. This little known story is a must read.
December 25, 2023
This is a great book about the history of technology, specifically, about the first women ever to program a computer. The computer was the ENIAC - Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer - the world’s first general-purpose, programmable, all-electronic computer, and it was built at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia beginning in 1943. The ENIAC was a huge, room-sized machine of vacuum tubes, switches, and wires funded by the military and it was intended to speed up the process of calculating the trajectories of artillery, a process that during World War II employed many female mathematicians working long hours creating tables based on wind speed, temperatures, rain, and many other factors that could be used in the field to aim artillery weapons. From among these women were recruited the first 6 programmers of a modern computer. They studied the plans of the ENIAC while it was under construction, and once it was finished their programs could calculate a trajectory in twenty seconds that had taken them thirty to forty hours to calculate by hand. Their programming introduced concepts and vocabulary still in use today by programmers - things like loops, IF-THEN statements, bench tests, and the term breakpoint (one of the programmers, Betty Snyder, disconnected a cable and ran a program which stopped at the breakpoint so she could look at the results and compare them to hand calculations to check that all was in order before proceeding with the rest of the commands).
Unfortunately, almost as soon as the ENIAC was unveiled to the public in 1946 their contributions were minimized and ignored, something that went on for decades. At the receptions for journalists they were invited, but only to serve as “hostesses” to help pour coffee for the assembled male scientists and reporters. Later their names were misspelled or left out of the male scientists’ autobiographies, and they weren’t invited to the 50th anniversary of ENIAC.
Author Kathy Kleiman has done a lot to get them the recognition they deserve. She came across their stories when she was a student in college wondering who the women were standing next to the massive early computers in old black and white photos from the 1940s. She collected oral histories from many of them, made a documentary about them called The Computers, and now has written this great joint biography of the 6. It tells of their lives leading up to their work on ENIAC. How they were recruited during the war for their backgrounds in math to work on the early artillery trajectory calculating job - a labor intensive, never-ending work of solving math problems. And then how that led to their recruitment to the ENIAC project, where they basically invented computer programming and were the first to work in that profession. The book also provides an epilogue describing their careers after ENIAC and how they would eventually gain some recognition for their pioneering work. Thanks to Kleiman’s efforts and others, they have gradually gotten more recognition. One of them, Kay McNulty, who was born in Ireland and lived there till she was 3, actually has an award named after her that goes to the best student in computer science each year at Dublin City University, which also renamed its computer science building after her, the McNulty Building. There’s nothing named after these women in America, but this book is a fantastic and dramatic retelling of this important and fascinating story about the origins of computers and computer programming.
Unfortunately, almost as soon as the ENIAC was unveiled to the public in 1946 their contributions were minimized and ignored, something that went on for decades. At the receptions for journalists they were invited, but only to serve as “hostesses” to help pour coffee for the assembled male scientists and reporters. Later their names were misspelled or left out of the male scientists’ autobiographies, and they weren’t invited to the 50th anniversary of ENIAC.
Author Kathy Kleiman has done a lot to get them the recognition they deserve. She came across their stories when she was a student in college wondering who the women were standing next to the massive early computers in old black and white photos from the 1940s. She collected oral histories from many of them, made a documentary about them called The Computers, and now has written this great joint biography of the 6. It tells of their lives leading up to their work on ENIAC. How they were recruited during the war for their backgrounds in math to work on the early artillery trajectory calculating job - a labor intensive, never-ending work of solving math problems. And then how that led to their recruitment to the ENIAC project, where they basically invented computer programming and were the first to work in that profession. The book also provides an epilogue describing their careers after ENIAC and how they would eventually gain some recognition for their pioneering work. Thanks to Kleiman’s efforts and others, they have gradually gotten more recognition. One of them, Kay McNulty, who was born in Ireland and lived there till she was 3, actually has an award named after her that goes to the best student in computer science each year at Dublin City University, which also renamed its computer science building after her, the McNulty Building. There’s nothing named after these women in America, but this book is a fantastic and dramatic retelling of this important and fascinating story about the origins of computers and computer programming.
December 13, 2022
Although it's heavy on technology this story is primarily about people, and more specifically, six women from throughout the eastern USA who ended up working together on several projects in the 1940s to the early 1950s.
If I gave you a child's drawing of a car could you learn how to drive a car? That sums up what six young women were tasked with. They were given crude drawings (block diagrams) of a thing that was being designed and constructed at the time. They were never allowed to see the thing much less perform any tests or experiments with the thing to better understand its capabilities and limits. The assignment for this team of women was to get this mysterious thing to perform useful tasks.
Somehow, the women succeeded, and thus the ENIAC computer was born with this team of women demonstrating it to the world. Most of the world promptly forgot about the women, who had never been acknowledged by name.
This team of women though continued to work with people who needed to use the ENIAC to solve various problems. The team's role was to talk with the clients and to translate their ideas into the detailed list of steps that the ENIAC, and all computers, need.
These women were the word's first professional computer programmers. They had to invent from the ground up nearly everything that we call "computer science" or "software debugging and development" today.
This book documents a fascinating history. It has one flaw, and unfortunately, it's a painful one. Much of the book seems to be constructed from transcripts of verbal interviews where the people involved in the interviews were already familiar with the topic. There are constant references to people, places, and projects where the reader is left scrambling. For example, pages 91-97 is in the middle of the section on Jean's upbringing where Jean moves into town to attend high school and lives with Erma, Jean's older sister. Jean attends and graduates from high school, goes off to college, graduates from college, and is now back home on the farm. A telegram for Jean is received at the Western Union office. The Western Union dispatcher did not know how to reach Jean and so he calls Erma who calls Jean. I'm reading along and wonder "who is Erma?" I start flipping back through the book and discover that yes, pages earlier the narrative had mentioned that Jean went to live with her older sister, Erma. It would have simplified things for the reader had the author written that the Western Union dispatcher had called Jean's older sister, Erma. That would have been enough context that people could continue reading without needing to figure out who Erma was and why she would know how to reach Jean.
If I gave you a child's drawing of a car could you learn how to drive a car? That sums up what six young women were tasked with. They were given crude drawings (block diagrams) of a thing that was being designed and constructed at the time. They were never allowed to see the thing much less perform any tests or experiments with the thing to better understand its capabilities and limits. The assignment for this team of women was to get this mysterious thing to perform useful tasks.
Somehow, the women succeeded, and thus the ENIAC computer was born with this team of women demonstrating it to the world. Most of the world promptly forgot about the women, who had never been acknowledged by name.
This team of women though continued to work with people who needed to use the ENIAC to solve various problems. The team's role was to talk with the clients and to translate their ideas into the detailed list of steps that the ENIAC, and all computers, need.
These women were the word's first professional computer programmers. They had to invent from the ground up nearly everything that we call "computer science" or "software debugging and development" today.
This book documents a fascinating history. It has one flaw, and unfortunately, it's a painful one. Much of the book seems to be constructed from transcripts of verbal interviews where the people involved in the interviews were already familiar with the topic. There are constant references to people, places, and projects where the reader is left scrambling. For example, pages 91-97 is in the middle of the section on Jean's upbringing where Jean moves into town to attend high school and lives with Erma, Jean's older sister. Jean attends and graduates from high school, goes off to college, graduates from college, and is now back home on the farm. A telegram for Jean is received at the Western Union office. The Western Union dispatcher did not know how to reach Jean and so he calls Erma who calls Jean. I'm reading along and wonder "who is Erma?" I start flipping back through the book and discover that yes, pages earlier the narrative had mentioned that Jean went to live with her older sister, Erma. It would have simplified things for the reader had the author written that the Western Union dispatcher had called Jean's older sister, Erma. That would have been enough context that people could continue reading without needing to figure out who Erma was and why she would know how to reach Jean.
January 3, 2024
4.5 - might not be the most objective, but my scoring always incorporated the sense of "the number of books we can read in a lifetime is limited, so am I thankful I read this/will I have regretted not reading this"
This is a gem of a book I never expected to find.
The book never put down anyone's achievements, and it had celebrated many other names related to the initial ideation and construction of the ENIAC machine, and credited people for recruitment and training of the ENIAC 6 in the first place. Just purely as a history/tech geek, this book was very very cool :). The insight into wartime US was very interesting to me as well.
I laughed but also teared while reading this book. The book was written with tame and restrained language, yet it allowed me to fully focus on the moving story. The reading experience was a deeply personal one, because I (and I'm sure many other women who are working in predominantly-male industries) had felt excluded, under-appreciated and unconfident before. It saddened me to recognise soft and meek traits in myself and others such as not feeling confident of my skills and not daring to own my accomplishments. Reading about how other women could find meaning, growth and happiness in their choice of work, especially through strong friendships, gives me the sense of gratitude and courage I need.
Although this book is centered around the experiences of a few women, it is by no means demeaning to either gender and does not make light of contributions of any 'side' to advancements in technology. At least, that was how I had read it. I am adding this part here because this book, though by no means controversial, had apparently ruffled some feathers. I am not educated as to whether people are trying to gatekeep computer history based on gender in some way, or if the criticism is actually valid. History had never been said to be 100% accurate and I hope this friction is part and parcel of the process uncovering previously lost information.
Edit: saw some comments mentioning Hidden Figures so I will definitely be checking that out next.
This is a gem of a book I never expected to find.
The book never put down anyone's achievements, and it had celebrated many other names related to the initial ideation and construction of the ENIAC machine, and credited people for recruitment and training of the ENIAC 6 in the first place. Just purely as a history/tech geek, this book was very very cool :). The insight into wartime US was very interesting to me as well.
I laughed but also teared while reading this book. The book was written with tame and restrained language, yet it allowed me to fully focus on the moving story. The reading experience was a deeply personal one, because I (and I'm sure many other women who are working in predominantly-male industries) had felt excluded, under-appreciated and unconfident before. It saddened me to recognise soft and meek traits in myself and others such as not feeling confident of my skills and not daring to own my accomplishments. Reading about how other women could find meaning, growth and happiness in their choice of work, especially through strong friendships, gives me the sense of gratitude and courage I need.
Although this book is centered around the experiences of a few women, it is by no means demeaning to either gender and does not make light of contributions of any 'side' to advancements in technology. At least, that was how I had read it. I am adding this part here because this book, though by no means controversial, had apparently ruffled some feathers. I am not educated as to whether people are trying to gatekeep computer history based on gender in some way, or if the criticism is actually valid. History had never been said to be 100% accurate and I hope this friction is part and parcel of the process uncovering previously lost information.
Edit: saw some comments mentioning Hidden Figures so I will definitely be checking that out next.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 13, 2023
This was an informative book that highlights the contribution of women to the development and programming of the computer ENIAC — particulary the "ENIAC six". It also clearly shows how women have been undervalued and often unrecognized throughout much of history. The details about the development of ENIAC and its programming were new and interesting to me but, the quality of the writing felt lower than in books that really suck me in.
The following thoughts have little to do directly with the book, but are simply my thoughts inspired by one particular couple of sentences early in the book.
In the section that gave the background biographical information of one of the ENIAC six named Kay, the statement was made that many of Kay's contemporaries "had to learn how to cook and run a household well if they were going to be good housewives. Kay was not like many of the other students. She wanted to do something important."
Most people have at least a mental list of jobs that they deem "important." Perhaps doctor is high on the list for many people. Becoming a doctor takes years of study and perseverance. Doctors tend to be fairly high profile in their communities, and they tend to make more money than many other jobs. On the other hand, motherhood nowadays is almost universally denigrated as being not important. After all, it generally takes very little to put one irrevocably on the road to becoming a mother, and even the untrained and ignorant are typically capable to at least keeping their children alive.
Being a good mother, however, is not easy and involves spending a lot of time personally teaching and nurturing the children. I argue that good mothers are far more important to society than doctors. If we had far fewer doctors, certainly the average life expectancy of the world would likely go down. But if the numbers of good mothers significantly decreases, the negative effects of society would be far worse that that with the loss of doctors. It saddens me that girls today are bombarded with the message that being primarily a mother is somehow a degradation.
I strongly believe that a woman should be free to choose her career. I just wish that the message received by girls today had a more accurate portrayal of the value of motherhood, and that a woman who chooses to devote most of her energies to raising a family would not be made to feel less important than a woman who chooses to devote her life to a high-profile career.
The following thoughts have little to do directly with the book, but are simply my thoughts inspired by one particular couple of sentences early in the book.
In the section that gave the background biographical information of one of the ENIAC six named Kay, the statement was made that many of Kay's contemporaries "had to learn how to cook and run a household well if they were going to be good housewives. Kay was not like many of the other students. She wanted to do something important."
Most people have at least a mental list of jobs that they deem "important." Perhaps doctor is high on the list for many people. Becoming a doctor takes years of study and perseverance. Doctors tend to be fairly high profile in their communities, and they tend to make more money than many other jobs. On the other hand, motherhood nowadays is almost universally denigrated as being not important. After all, it generally takes very little to put one irrevocably on the road to becoming a mother, and even the untrained and ignorant are typically capable to at least keeping their children alive.
Being a good mother, however, is not easy and involves spending a lot of time personally teaching and nurturing the children. I argue that good mothers are far more important to society than doctors. If we had far fewer doctors, certainly the average life expectancy of the world would likely go down. But if the numbers of good mothers significantly decreases, the negative effects of society would be far worse that that with the loss of doctors. It saddens me that girls today are bombarded with the message that being primarily a mother is somehow a degradation.
I strongly believe that a woman should be free to choose her career. I just wish that the message received by girls today had a more accurate portrayal of the value of motherhood, and that a woman who chooses to devote most of her energies to raising a family would not be made to feel less important than a woman who chooses to devote her life to a high-profile career.
December 6, 2023
It's so important that this history was recorded. It's amazing to me, both 1) that people don't know the key role women have played in coding (and code breaking), and 2) that people are still surprised that this history has been shoved to the background if not completely erased in praise of men. I love reading about the history of technology, specifically computers and coding, the less technical cryptanalysis that came before it, and the role that new tech, like AI, will play in our future. It's all related, and important to recognize that women and men from all walks of life have played key roles historically. Even more, it's an area that inexplicably proves that where diversity is increased, important and impressive leaps in achievement happen. Ada Lovelace wrote the first rudimentary "computer code" (and imagine what she could have done if Babbage had been more productive!), women code breakers were key in breaking enemy codes during WW2, the ENIAC 6 covered here were the first programmers of modern computers, women computers and mathematicians - especially Black women - were key in putting a man on the moon, and somehow we live in a world even in the 21st century that tells girls they can't be good at math or coding and we still have men in positions of power, with huge platforms, downplaying women's intelligence and their role in major historical intellectual pursuits. The ENIAC 6 were not even going to be invited to the 50th anniversary party as they had been forgotten by the people in charge of the event, despite still being very much involved just a mere 10 years prior to that. So yes, this book is important. Could the writing have been a little better, like many have commented? Maybe, sure. Does it need to be? Absolutely not. Highly recommend.
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