In the IT field, many different people have been forgotten over the years. Perhaps you have never heard of “The ENIAC Six“, a group of women computer pioneers who have a great influence on modern computing. We will explain to you what ENIAC is and what its contribution has been.
ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. It is one of the first general-purpose computers focused on solving a large number of numerical problems.
Originally, this system was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the US Army. It was to perform calculations on the angle of inclination, the relationship between the range of a weapon and the type of projectile used, its charge and the weather conditions.
ENIAC’s pioneering women
It is important to know that the ENIAC was the first of its kind and of course, this implies that everything was new. It had to be programmed from scratch and different problems had to be solved for this system. Those in charge of this were six women, six great engineers such as:
- Frances “Fran” Bilas Spence: He graduated in mathematics and worked at the US Army Ballistics Research School. Within the group, he was primarily in charge of programming and operations tasks for ENIAC. After leaving the project, he worked for a time in the computer field, although he eventually gave up his career to start a family.
- Jean Jennings Bartik: She also has a degree in mathematics, but in this case she was mainly responsible for writing the instructions and complex configurations to solve ballistic problems. After finishing ENIAC, I worked on converting that computer to a program storage system and developing other computers.
- Kathleen “Kay” McNulty Mauchly Antonelli: She also has a degree in mathematics and was one of the people in charge of programming this computer. Later, he devoted himself to software development for other projects.
- Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer: another mathematician whose main contributions were the configuration of the ENIAC to solve ballistic problems and other complex calculations. His time was short-lived, as after the war he left his job to start a family.
- Frances “Betty” Snyder Holberton: Interestingly, we are talking about a journalist who became one of the main programmers of ENIAC. After leaving the project, he continued to develop programming languages and software standards. I contribute to the creation of the COBOL programming language.
- Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum: She also has a degree in mathematics and her role at ENIAC was to program and train others in computer programming. After this project, she moved on to develop other computers, including the EDVAC.
First, they were faced with programming this new system, which has nothing to do with current programming. At that time, there were no programming languages or compilers, so it had to be done from scratch. In addition, during the programming process, the wiring and switches of this computer had to be adjusted in order to perform the required calculations.
If the task was already complex in itself, it was added to the need to deal with complex mathematical problems. A solid mathematical and logical basis was needed to be able to translate these problems into a series of steps that would allow the system to perform them.
Additionally, component testing was performed, ensuring that circuits and wiring configurations worked as expected. It was a big challenge to solve different problems on the fly, as well as optimize performance.
Perhaps one of the best things these women did was document the process and the various discoveries. This documentation was revolutionary and was used to develop and program new computer systems.
These six women also developed different processes to simplify the programming process. All of these advances served as the basis for later programming techniques.