Women in the History of Computing Technology

"Do what you love. I loved every minute of what I did. If you don't love what you do, what do you have?"

"I think that's one of the reasons why mathematicians were considered the people that would be programmers is because you, the programmer, had to learn the problem."

"Everybody saw that the need for firing tables would be gone, so consequently, the ENIAC had to be used for different kinds of problems."

Betty Jean Jennings

Betty Jennings was one of the six original programmers of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the first general-purpose electronic digital computer.

Betty Jean Jennings Bartik was born in 1924 in Gentry County, Missouri. She receives her BSc degree in Mathematics from Northwest Missouri State Teachers College, her MSc degree in English – from the University of Pennsylvania, and, eventually, her PhD - from Northwest Missouri State University.

In 1945, Jean is hired by the University of Pennsylvania to work for the U.S. Army Ordnance at Aberdeen Proving Ground. When the ENIAC is developed for the purpose of computing ballistics trajectories, she is selected to become one of its original programmers, along with several other women including Marlyn Wescoff, Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, and Ruth Lichterman. Having no manuals or ready-made classes, she and her co-workers teach themselves operation and programming of the machine while studying its logical and electrical block diagrams.

Initially, the ENIAC is a classified project and, therefore, the programmers are not allowed to enter the room where the machine is located. Instead, they are given access to different blueprints they can use to develop programs while working in an adjacent room. The programming itself involves discretizing the differential equations involved in a ballistic trajectory problem to the precision allowed by the ENIAC and calculating the path to the appropriate bank of electronics in parallel progression, with each separate instruction having to reach the correct location in time to within 1/5,000th of a second. After working out a program on paper, the women are allowed to enter the ENIAC room and actually program the machine.

In 1947, Bartik joins a group charged with converting the ENIAC into a stored program computer; in its original implementation, programming the machine involves changing cable connections and setting dials. Her team’s efforts result in a significant drop in the ENIAC’s set-up time, thus making it possible to prepare the computer for solving a new problem in just a few hours. Jean herself later, also, contributes to the development of the Binary Automatic Computer (BINAC) and the Universal Automatic Computer I (UNIVAC I), the earliest commercially sold computer.

In 1951, Bartik takes sixteen years off from her job in the field of computing science in order to raise her family. Later on she returns to her career, this time becoming an editor for the publisher of information on high technologies Auerbach Publishers. In 1981, she leaves her job at Auerbach in order to accept a position as a senior editor of a Communications Research publication run by one of its major competitors – Data Decisions, founded by Davis Publishing in 1980. She works there till 1985 when Data Decisions is acquired by McGraw-Hill and shut down.

For exceptional contributions to the field of Computer Science, Betty Jean Jennings Bartik is inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 1997, along with the other five original ENIAC programmers - Marlyn Wescoff, Betty Snyder, Kay McNulty, Frances Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman. She is also honored by the U.S. Army Research Labs, the University of Pennsylvania, and her Alma Mater, the Northwest Missouri State University, which names its computing museum after her.

In 2008, Bartik becomes a Fellow Award honoree of the U.S. Computer History Museum.

Sources

The information presented above is taken from the following online sources:

• -- Jean Bartik (Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia)
• -- Jean Bartik - The First ENIAC Computer Programer (About.com: Inventors)
• -- Jean Bartik - Pioneer ENIAC Computer Programmer (About.com: Inventors)
• -- Fellow Awards, "Celebrating the Stories of the Information Age" (Jean Bartik, Computer History Museum)
• -- An Interview with Jean J. Bartik and Frances E. (Betty) Snyder Holberton (Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977, Smithsonian National Museum of American History)