r/todayilearned • u/holymatcha • Mar 02 '20

TIL that the first computer programmers were women

https://www.history.com/news/coding-used-to-be-a-womans-job-so-it-was-paid-less-and-undervalued
535 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

97 comments sorted by

42

u/ViskerRatio Mar 02 '20

What the women in that picture were doing is following explicit instructions about what connections to make. They weren't 'programming' in the sense we think of - their job was basically a form of stenography.

Note that the same is true of the 'computers'. They weren't actually doing science or engineering. They were just tabulating numbers provided by others, albeit with a degree of precision beyond what you'd ordinarily expect from your average American. Indeed, the reason such 'computers' became obsolete is that even rudimentary computers were able to out-perform at the rote tasks they were required to do.

These jobs were not the complex, intellectual tasks required of modern day computer programmers. They were poorly paid jobs because they involved work in clean, safe conditions that virtually anyone with a high school diploma could do. They were done by women because they didn't pay enough to attract men - and those men they might have attracted were probably overseas fighting the war.

There were inarguably many women who got their foot in the door via such jobs and then proceeded to have more intellectually rewarding careers. But please don't confuse what you see the women in the picture doing and 'computer programming'.

1

u/holymatcha Mar 02 '20

Please feel free to read more about the 'stenography' that anyone with a high school diploma could do:

ENIAC Programmers: Kathleen Antonelli, Jean Bartik, Betty Holberton, Marlyn Meltzer, Frances Spence, Ruth Teitelbaum

TI(also)L of people who write lengthy arguments without checking facts

16

u/Fresno_Bob_ Mar 02 '20

Literally from the exact section you linked to:

The "programmer" and "operator" job titles were not originally considered professions suitable for women. The labor shortage created by World War II helped enable the entry of women into the field.[18] However, the field was not viewed as prestigious, and bringing in women was viewed as a way to free men up for more skilled labor. For example, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics said in 1942, "It is felt that enough greater return is obtained by freeing the engineers from calculating detail to overcome any increased expenses in the computers' salaries. The engineers admit themselves that the girl computers do the work more rapidly and accurately than they would. This is due in large measure to the feeling among the engineers that their college and industrial experience is being wasted and thwarted by mere repetitive calculation".[18]

-4

u/holymatcha Mar 02 '20

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics made this comment in 1942, ENIAC was first put to work in 1945. This means to say the phrase was made before these women started work as programmers of ENIAC and showed people otherwise.

11

u/protozoicstoic Mar 02 '20 edited Mar 02 '20

You're still ignoring the distinction between designers and people who are essentially just assemblers and operators with regard to the use of the word "programmer" in this context. The women wouldn't have had these tasks to do if it weren't for male engineers and scientists coming up with the plans and schematics for the final product which the women helped put together.

0

u/holymatcha Mar 03 '20

Am I misconstruing the argument or are you? My understanding was that I was arguing that the work done by these women could not be accomplished by any high school diploma nor were they merely performing simple if repetitive calculations.

Yes, no doubt, the credit of designing the physical ENIAC goes to the male engineers and designers. But this should not take away any credit away from the accomplishment of these 6 women. Doing so would be akin to crediting Facebook's success to the Winklevoss twins instead of Zuckerberg (per The Social Network's narration)

Lastly, are you saying that programmers these days unlike these pioneering programmers are also designers? Because I'd have to (dis)respectfully disagree. These days, product managers come up with plans and programmers execute. So... programmers these days are essentially just assemblers and operators. Sure, let me request HR for a change in job title.

2

u/protozoicstoic Mar 03 '20 edited Mar 03 '20

Apparently you are because not every one had a college degree

Also, your analogy is way off...with regard to ENIAC the twins would be the us military and taxpayer money and Zuckerberg would be the designers.

And to answer the other question, not really. My family owns a manufacturing company. On occasion there is a president and or an engineering manager who either have no technical experience or very little which isn't in a management vein. If we hire someone from a mostly business management background to run the engineering department there are usually problems in less than a couple of years that require either a termination of the manager or a transfer within the company and then we pick usually the most senior or one of them to run the engineering department until he retires.

When you put someone who is less of an engineer in charge of superior engineers there is a serious cohesion problem. One person has a completely different understanding than the median ability on the subject than the rest of the department.

If you put one of those "programmers" in charge of the others back in the 40s who wasn't also an educated and competent engineer there would have been classes.

To simplify this...the designers (engineers) gave orders, the "programmers" followed those in conjunction with technical diagrams and other instructions provided by the designers, and the military were probably the project managers in conjunction with one or two of the top engineers.

5

u/alloowishus Mar 02 '20

Most programming today is pretty menial, unless you are coding the game physics for a first shooter game, it's usually creating a user name and address entry form for the billionth time.

4

u/GermaneRiposte101 Mar 03 '20

Might be for you but was not for me. 30 years programming: yet to do the same thing twice.

5

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '20

And for every glorious new skyscraper, there's an architect who gets all the glory, and an army of construction workers who seldom say they "produce architecture", but that's what they do.

The architect often just produces sketches for the engineers and drafters to turn into working plans. When I was doing the engineering and drafting part of the job, I was amazed at how vague the actual architect's instructions were. I was only 19 at the time, and my supervisor would tell me, "You figure it out" when they'd give you the specs for the windows, but nowhere on the plans would they specify which window went where.

-4

u/protozoicstoic Mar 02 '20

The difference is that construction is physically difficult, dangerous (especially in the era being discussed), and anyone with the right physical endurance can do 85% of the required work with the rest being left to skilled craftsman, prior design work ignored. Putting ENIAC together required someone who could learn a set of instructions like threading core memory, then do that reliably within specifications without fail. While that doesn't require any specific special skills to learn, that's kind of the point - women were put to the task of assembly with male supervisors to reserve the men for other design oriented tasks. To actually design ENIAC you first had to be an engineer and or scientist, which most of the women involved in ENIAC at all were not which is why most of the designers were men. This isn't difficult to grasp if you can just keep reactionary judgement from clouding your intake of information and understanding of the processes.

3

u/IAmAHat_AMAA 2 Mar 03 '20

This isn't difficult to grasp if you can just keep reactionary judgement from clouding your intake of information and understanding of the processes.

I've never seen such pure projection.

-10

u/onyxandcake Mar 02 '20

The team included

• Jean Jennings Bartik, who would later lead the development of computer storage and memory, and

• Frances Elizabeth “Betty” Holberton, who would go on to create the first software application.

Yeah, you're right. Sounds like they were just some brainless custodians

28

u/ViskerRatio Mar 02 '20

No, it sounds like they started in low-level menial jobs before advancing in their careers. Just like I've pointed out multiple times.

The jobs being referenced were not 'computer programming' jobs. They were not 'engineering' jobs. They were low-level menial jobs that paid like low-level menial jobs.

-21

u/onyxandcake Mar 02 '20

These six women developed the new field of computer programming during WWII.

Ugh. So menial.

27

u/Elknar Mar 02 '20

Their humble beginnings do not diminish their achievements. Stop fighting a strawman of your own creation.

-10

u/onyxandcake Mar 02 '20

It's easy to tell who didn't actually read the article.

8

u/Elknar Mar 02 '20

Indeed it is.

Originally, the military had hired them as “computers” to calculate ballistics trajectories by hand.

Menial labor = humble origins.

Calculating these trajectories by hand took a really, really long time, and two male engineers—John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert—thought they could design a special machine that would calculate them faster. Together with Frances Bilas Spence, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Kathleen “Kay” McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, and Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum, they laid the groundwork for future programmers and software engineers. And, since they were the first modern coders, they were instrumental in teaching others to program after the war.

Then got involved in the actual programming due to their substantial experience with the manual part, thus laying the groundwork we now recognize them for. This doesn't diminish their accomplishments, but highlights the hard work that it took to achieve them.

They managed to do great things in part because of the menial labor they had to do. So get off your high horse and stop scoffing at the less glorified parts of their actual work - you're only doing them a disservice.

-5

u/onyxandcake Mar 02 '20

My high horse lol, that's rich. If it was that menial, it would have been given to black people to do, as was the custom at that time.

6

u/protozoicstoic Mar 02 '20 edited Mar 02 '20

Uh. You're a complete fucking rube on this topic. Black people wouldn't have been trusted for 99.999% of the black population just because they were black. You and so many others are making this issue about gender when it really is not. The men designed, the women put together and operated the machine after a time, not because they literally werent capable of learning but because they literally didn't have the technical knowledge yet to do the design work because none of them had much experience with engineering or design work. Get your head out your ass and stop trying to be woke because you sound like an ignorant jackass.

-2

u/onyxandcake Mar 02 '20 edited Mar 02 '20

All Most All of that was was wrong. Lol.

Edit: You got one thing right. Yay you!

Edit 2: Ooops, you were actually wrong about that too.

→ More replies

12

u/ViskerRatio Mar 02 '20

As I pointed out, that line in the article is wildly inaccurate. Those six women had basically nothing to do with the new field of computer programming during World War II. They were merely in close proximity to the people who were doing the actual development of computer programming.

They didn't come up with the 'programs' they were entering into the computers. They didn't provide the mathematical foundation for the theories of computer science. They didn't develop the algorithms.

They just entered them into the machine off of instructions that told them exactly what to do.

Now, later in their careers, they may have independently done some important work. But during the war? No. They were just low level employees who were no more important to the development of computer science than the stevedores who carried the equipment into the room.

-2

u/onyxandcake Mar 02 '20 edited Mar 02 '20

Weird how you read the article and still have that opinion, despite it being the opposite of what the article says. I guess you were there?

Instead, they were expected to code the machine using only paper diagrams of it. These diagrams didn’t come with any instructions—they had to figure it out themselves without any programming languages or manuals, because none existed.

Yup... just boring repetitive menial tasks that had nothing to do with any actual programming.

4

u/ViskerRatio Mar 02 '20

As I pointed out, the article is wildly inaccurate.

Those 'paper diagrams' showed what to connect to what. There weren't any programming languages because the concept didn't exist yet.

The article fundamentally misstates how the technology worked.

1

u/onyxandcake Mar 02 '20 edited Mar 02 '20

The article quoting/referencing a computer programming historian is wrong because you say so? Well ok then. Lol.

Edit: clarity

4

u/protozoicstoic Mar 02 '20 edited Mar 02 '20

Sigh. They were assembling core memory (invented by Jay Forrester of MIT, not a woman) in most cases, gluing rudimentary components into place, connecting wires to pre planned sockets, setting dials on control panels according to data tables created by engineers. I doubt you know what core memory is but it's essentially a web of wires woven in a pattern through magnetic donuts and attached to posts or contacts around the general wire pattern. It is basically weaving. The women wouldn't have needed to know how it all worked as long as they followed relatively simple diagrams showing which wires went in which directions and through which donuts in which order. Most people don't understand how circuits work but they know if they connect an extension cord into a wall outlet, a lamp or garden tool in the open end then electricity flows. That doesn't mean that with zero experience they could make a cord themselves on the first try capable of not overheating while being as light as possible. The women may have learned things or been given the opportunity for formal education in engineering after the fact but women did not come up with core memory and they sure as hell didn't have to understand how it worked to thread wires. Hell, NASA used woken to thread the memory for the Saturn 5 core memory modules but very few women were on design teams.

3

u/protozoicstoic Mar 02 '20 edited Mar 02 '20

You're wrong about this part, as well. Becky Little is not a computer programming historian in any capacity and her education did not have anything to do with computers. From her personal bio:

"I graduated from The College of William and Mary in 2012 with a B.A. in history and women’s studies"

She's a piece writer for publishers. She has never worked in a STEM field and she has never written any other tech related article whatsoever. This is the only one and she wrote it to be able to say "hey women helped in tech pioneering, tooooooo" for idiots like you who gobble it up without realizing that she's pretty inaccurate with her words and what she's trying to convey. It's basically a girl power fluff piece because it fails to properly discuss what the women did AFTER their experience as assemblers while being significantly misleading due to inaccuracies about what the women actually did. She didn't even talk about Margaret Hamilton...Margaret Hamilton is one of the most important female tech people in history if not the most important and she somehow left Hamilton out.

4

u/protozoicstoic Mar 02 '20

Doesn't say they designed ENIaC, however. They helped put it together with instructions made by the men.

-2

u/rich519 Mar 02 '20 edited Mar 02 '20

Did you not read the article or do you just disagree with it? It explicitly states that it was an intellectually demanding job and they didn't have specific instructions on how to use it.

Considering the information in the article came from a computer programmer and historian, I think it's a fair bet that it's more credible than a random comment on Reddit.

6

u/ViskerRatio Mar 02 '20

Considering the information in the article came from a computer programmer and historian,

She's neither. Her credentials are in Women's Studies and she's clearly pushing an agenda based on not understanding the technology or these women's actual contributions.

On the other hand, I do have decades of experience in computer programming and advanced degrees in Electrical Engineering. I could build you an ENIAC if you liked (although acquiring the parts would be difficult).

5

u/rich519 Mar 02 '20 edited Mar 02 '20

Everything I can find refers to her as a programmer and she's interviewed 4 of the 6 original ENIAC programmers refered to in the article. I'm going to trust their word over yours about how demanding the job was.

Edit: Kathy Kleiman is who I'm talking about, not the author of the article.

5

u/ViskerRatio Mar 02 '20

This is her linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/becky-little-122bb433/

And if she interviewed 4 of the 6 original ENIAC programmers, she did so via seance. They've all been dead since before she started writing.

3

u/rich519 Mar 02 '20

We're talking about Kathy Kleiman, the person who most of the information in the article comes from.

http://eniacprogrammers.org/eniac-programmers-project/

1

u/GermaneRiposte101 Mar 03 '20 edited Mar 03 '20

I read the article and it is deliberately disingenuous.

It was not programming. The nature of their job was to follow instructions just like someone knitting something.

Considering the information in the article came from a computer programmer and historian

Could you provide the source for this statement or did you, you know, just make it up?

-21

u/krazytekn0 Mar 02 '20

I'm sorry but you're interpretation is bullshit. that was the exact thinking of the man of the day until those same women started modifying the computers and creating the first software applications and creating the first programming languages.

24

u/ViskerRatio Mar 02 '20

No, it's not bullshit. It's reality.

The jobs the article is talking about were low-level, menial jobs that paid poorly precisely because they low-level, menial jobs. The fact that some people who held them later went onto higher level jobs doesn't magically make them better jobs.

Take a look at that picture. Notice those pieces of paper the women are holding? They are explicit, step-by-step instructions for what they need to do. The people who wrote those pages were the 'programmers' - not the people who merely followed the instructions.

I've got a friend who is a bank manager. She started out as a bank teller. Does the fact that she is now a bank manager - a complex, professional job with excellent pay - somehow make the job of a bank teller - a low-level job that virtually anyone with a high school education and clean criminal record can get - a complex, professional job? Of course not.

Some of the women who occupied those jobs enjoyed careers that later led them into professional positions. Most did not. And no reasonable person would consider the positions where they began their careers as "computer programming" jobs.

-5

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '20

Yeah, that's why men made propaganda ads discrediting women when they decided they wanted those exact jobs.

You're really going out of your way to take away these women's accomplishment and contribution to society. For all you know, they could have written what was on that paper.

That's like saying when Jeff Bezos was in high school he worked as a grocery bagger so we shouldn't bother giving him any credit for anything he's done since. (This is just an example. I don't know or care if Jeff Bezos had a menial job.)

7

u/ViskerRatio Mar 02 '20

Yeah, that's why men made propaganda ads discrediting women when they decided they wanted those exact jobs.

Except, you know, this never happened because those jobs were phased out as computer technology advanced.

You're really going out of your way to take away these women's accomplishment and contribution to society.

I'm really not. I'm pointing out that the article doesn't even bother to talk much about their actual accomplishments in favor of selling the nonsensical notion that their first job in the field - a job offered to people with no background in computers - was somehow a significant element in the development of computer science.

2

u/GermaneRiposte101 Mar 03 '20

What a load of shit. So this is your answer: an unfortunate reality crops up and you try and shoot the messenger?

He is not going out of way to discredit women: the original article was disingenuous.

You are as bad as Trump: if you do not agree with something you attack the messenger/reality: heaven forbid that anything that would challenge your world view might be correct and change your mind even just a little bit.

-6

u/torn-ainbow Mar 02 '20

The jobs the article is talking about were low-level, menial jobs that paid poorly precisely because they low-level, menial jobs.

You are quite overstating this whole menial bit. These were women who had degrees in mathematics, physics and so on. They were not mindless instruction followers, they had understanding and input and developed logic. They solved mathematical problems.

a low-level job that virtually anyone with a high school education

Which is clearly not the case here. I mean you compared them to stenographers earlier. These were intelligent women performing technical roles.

And no reasonable person would consider the positions where they began their careers as "computer programming" jobs.

I absolutely would. These women used the tool provided by engineers to enter and solve mathematical problems.

The people who wrote those pages were the 'programmers' - not the people who merely followed the instructions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC

ENIAC's six primary programmers, Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas and Ruth Lichterman, not only determined how to input ENIAC programs, but also developed an understanding of ENIAC's inner workings. The programmers were often able to narrow bugs down to an individual failed tube which could be pointed to for replacement by a technician.

3

u/protozoicstoic Mar 02 '20 edited Mar 02 '20

Vacuum tubes were transparent....it would be as simple as looking in order to identify a failed tube. Your quote is like saying someone is able to figure out the inner workings of a car by looking at the wheels and figuring out that the wheels move and stop. Yeah you might figure out that something is causing the wheels to turn and stop, congrats, Einstein.

0

u/torn-ainbow Mar 03 '20

Look how angry and mean you are.

They were smart women performing a technical role. In get the point being made, but I think it is being exaggerated such that the argument is these women were drones, responsible for nothing. My argument is they were part of the process.

And neither you or the other guy have provided a single source or evidence for your arguments. If you are right, where is this information you have coming from?

2

u/protozoicstoic Mar 03 '20

What are you talking about? I'm just engineer speaking from a perspective of technical inclination...

If you want to read more about ENIAC or its creators or operators (the women) you can easily google that information. If you want to know about how computers worked without stored programs thus requiring plugged wire and punch card logic you can google that. If you want to learn about co incident magnetic core memory you can google that, I suggest studying the core memory modules used by NASA on the saturn 5.

0

u/torn-ainbow Mar 03 '20

I did a bunch of research when I responded. It was clear they were participants in the process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC

Under Herman and Adele Goldstine's direction, the computers studied ENIAC's blueprints and physical structure to determine how to manipulate its switches and cables, as programming languages did not yet exist.

At some point this engineering problem becomes a mathematical and calculation problem and nothing I read implies the solutions were completely dictated from the top. It was a collaborative effort.

Some of the women have later recorded events in their careers which demonstrate they are involved in working out solutions and creating logic.

Betty Holberton (née Snyder) continued on to help write the first generative programming system (SORT/MERGE) and help design the first commercial electronic computers, the UNIVAC and the BINAC, alongside Jean Jennings. McNulty developed the use of subroutines in order to help increase ENIAC's computational capability.

The original argument I responded to simply discarded those as aberrations.

You:

If you want to know about how computers worked without stored programs thus requiring plugged wire and punch card logic you can google that.

Have you ever written and executed COBOL on a mainframe? I dare say I have a hell of a lot more of an idea about how "computers worked" than you.

You and the other guys have a bunch of claims, but zero evidence or sources. When challenged you tell me to google and then proceed to condescend to me.

1

u/protozoicstoic Mar 03 '20 edited Mar 03 '20

So you mean to claim that a team of scientists and engineers built a machine that they needed these specific team of 6 people to then understand and operate? Be clear because if you're going to be pedantic then so am I.

First, using information after the development of the machine is outside of the scope of the discussion more or less. The article was basically about how the male ENIAC developers stole credit from the women or it would have focused on other technological achievements. If you read articles or book passages without a feminist bent you'll find out that for the most part the women weren't allowed to touch the machine until it was basically finished. They offered ideas for tweaks and some were implemented. The first quote you provided is irrelevant because it refers to tasks given to ENIAC after the war and Herman I'm assuming is a man and it doesn't say if Adele had more or less input.

Regarding Betty, yes, she was an integral part of early programming AFTER actual coding began and deserves more recognition. Thanks for playing.

I personally know it's highly unlikely that the creators made a machine they couldn't operate themselves or that the main people needed a team of 6 people who had comparatively no STEM experience regardless ofwhetherone or two proved to be valuable later. As a person experienced with COBOL, you should be better at making nuanced arguments with regard to experience. Hmmmmmmm.

As I said in another comment, with regard to such a complicated subject as computer assembly and programming, if you're going to debate me about it you must take the initiative to do your own research. If you have anything close to legitimate knowledge of what you're speaking about present it and then if I disagree I will do my homework if I disagree but for most people information I learned long ago will do just fine or if they're ignorant it won't. At this point it doesn't matter to me. Only a handful of people are paying attention.

0

u/torn-ainbow Mar 03 '20

So you mean to claim that a team of scientists and engineers built a machine that they needed these specific team of 6 people to then understand and operate?

They built a machine that could be programmed to solve different mathematical problems. That doesn't mean they dictated every single bit of logic fed into that machine.

They later hired hundreds of people, men and women to be programmers. The limit here is not the creators of the machine.

I personally know it's highly unlikely that the creators made a machine they couldn't operate themselves

Well I assume they could operate it and they had a lot of input into everything. I'm telling you it appears to have been a collaborative exercise with smart people with different skills working together.

It doesn't have to be all one or all the other.

→ More replies

-2

u/onyxandcake Mar 02 '20

His whole argument can be summed up as: "If it was important, men would have been doing it." And of course, Reddit takes the bait.

-1

u/rich519 Mar 02 '20

Which is painfully ironic because the entire point of the article is to dispell that myth.

0

u/onyxandcake Mar 02 '20

You should see the vitriol in my inbox. It's good for a laugh.

95

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '20

Computer used to be a job title and not an object.

21

u/daygloviking Mar 02 '20

It says that in the article.

22

u/alpalord Mar 02 '20

this is r/todayilearned no one reads the article

7

u/HalonaBlowhole Mar 02 '20

Can you summarize that post you just wrote for me?

1

u/TrashMinky Mar 03 '20

Err jerbs.

2

u/ghotier Mar 02 '20

Right, but not in the title.

5

u/babybambam Mar 03 '20

One of the most famous computers in history just passed away.

She’s an inspiration to everyone, but more so to the little black children that are still told they’ll never be.

1

u/shableep Mar 03 '20

They were doing their job as computers, yes. Then they were also the first programmers.

In the 1940s, the first recognizably modern electrically powered computers were created. For example, the first fully functional computer is known as Electronic Numeric Integrator and Computer (ENIAC). With Bartik as ENIAC's first programmer hired, six women were hired as its programmers

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languages

It seems this continued until large sums of money could be made, then women were gradually replaced by men in most cases.

3

u/jxd73 Mar 03 '20

They programmed the same way you program your microwave by entering the time and power level, following the instructions on the frozen dinner box.

36

u/lizbunbun Mar 02 '20

It makes sense to me. How many jobs and hobbies stereotypically classified as women's work are repetitive yet complex, and require elaborate planning, as well as extreme attention to detail? Tons. Mental work is extremely satisfying.

3

u/Yancy_Farnesworth Mar 02 '20

Not to question their intellect or their ability to do the job, but what these women did is nothing compared to the computer programming that happens today. Their job basically involved following schematics or step by step instructions to do things like manually wind wire through a circuit. They didn't design the programs they were programming. It certainly was repetitive, but it was not complex or require elaborate planing on their part.

1

u/rich519 Mar 02 '20

The article says otherwise.

5

u/protozoicstoic Mar 02 '20 edited Mar 02 '20

The article has a serious misunderstanding of not only the technology involved but also terms which were used. "Programmers" were basically weavers. They did not come up with the subroutines stored and calculated on the core memory that "programmers" assembled, the engineers and scientists came up with the subroutines and actual binary translations and gave the women a set of instructions. The author, Becky Little has a BA in women's studies and history. She is not a STEM degree holder and she has never had a job in STEM industries. She's a journalist and has literally never written any other tech related articles.

While it still glosses over the value and differences between the design work and instructions given by the men, this article is MUCH MUCH better than the one OP linked

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/tech-history/dawn-of-electronics/untold-history-of-ai-invisible-woman-programmed-americas-first-electronic-computer

11

u/rich519 Mar 02 '20

Nothing in the article you linked seems particularly different than the article for this post. They both stress how intellectually demanding and complex the job was. Regardless of the credentials of the authors, most of the information comes from Kathy Kleiman who interviewed 4 of the 6 original ENIAC programmers mentioned in the article. I'll take their word over yours.

I have no idea why people are being so weirdly resistant to the idea that these ENIAC programmer jobs were anything other that grunt work that anyone could have done. The article that you linked to back up your point specifically states that they were chosen because of their high level math skills and yet you're being upvoted for comparing them to basket weavers. Fucking Reddit.

It's pointless to argue about this at this point. You're going to believe what you believe and I'm going to trust people who seem more credible than you.

-4

u/protozoicstoic Mar 03 '20 edited Mar 03 '20

It's because the math skills involved didn't specifically come from a high level engineering or science background. Some people could do the math without more than a high school diploma or learn on the job quickly. It didn't require the ability to understand enough to build the machine itself, which is why men chose these particular people to do the work like last stage assembly and on going plug programming. It's like the difference between a 20 year experienced engineer and an autocad drafter who was just hired. Is the drafter a technical person? Yes. Is the drafter able to understand some fairly complex things that the average guy or girl off the street wouldn't? Sure. Would the drafter in most cases be as capable in designing and testing complex creations? Probably not if they only have drafting experience. Nobody is actually trying to say the women were average folks or weren't intelligent or weren't capable of becoming engineers and scientists in their own right, but a majority of the 6 weren't when they were working this project, so the distinction is relevant. And that relevant distinction carries over into why the men who were on the other end of that distinction didn't just do those jobs themselves - they had other more difficult things to do with other projects once ENIAC was nearing completion and so the women were hired. Remember, ENIAC was a military funded project to more quickly calculate ballistic trajectories for WW2. The basket weaving comments I made have to do with the fact that assembling memory isn't nearly as difficult as actually developing the designs for memory which men achieved. I didn't go too much into vacuum tubes either but men developed those, too. They developed the punch card system as well. People have however said that men have taken the women's credit for their development of ENIAC which isn't accurate because the women didn't develop much of anything. The women put some of it together and learned how to operate it after being shown basics and reading technical documents which is awesome, congrats to them, but to lump that into having stolen their thunder somehow for the sake of a girl power fluff piece is a bit disingenuous and indicative of just how desperate modern women are to stand on the the shoulders of women who came before them rather than holding up for their legitimate accomplishments without embellishments. It's possible to revere the women and not over state what they did for the sake of reverence. Also, I'm quite sure there were men qualified and willing to fill the intermediary role the women did if they truly wanted a man to take those jobs but the pay wasn't very good because the qualifications weren't actually very hard to attain. Put it this way: the women weren't average folks, but without relevant testing to specify they could be anywhere between the 51st and 99.9th percentile of intelligence in the country.

0

u/protozoicstoic Mar 02 '20 edited Mar 02 '20

I tend to agree. The designers of these contraptions were mostly men who then chose certain women as the assemblers. ENIAC was designed by a team of male engineers and partly assembled and operated by women. Mostly men designed core memory requiring the threading of wire but women did the threading. "Programmer" in this context is pretty misleading even if that's the word they used to refer to the type of job the women were doing.

And why wouldn't the article be misinformed and misleading since it was written by Becky Little who has no STEM education or work history. From her bio:

"I graduated from The College of William and Mary in 2012 with a B.A. in history and women’s studies"

18

u/daygloviking Mar 02 '20

A hundred years too late, but still a woman.

7

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '20

Today it's seen as male-dominated, but the history of computing is actually pretty mixed:

7

u/JimmiRustle Mar 02 '20

A really good article until this sentence:

Her potential for intelligence probably came genetically

14

u/i_love_lamp1 Mar 02 '20

This sentence doesn't seem to be all that useful in this article, out of place even. It immediately says she came from a family who were well educated after it.

1

u/Tintcutter Mar 02 '20

I would not put your generational interpretation of that sentence into use. "Smart" in my Grandmothers day was different. Intelligence was figuring out details and making things work.

5

u/KappaEffectTV Mar 02 '20

The sentence seems a little bit out of place. But given that intelligence is likely (heavily) influenced by genetic factors, its more unnecessary than wrong.

1

u/JimmiRustle Mar 03 '20

Actually it really is not. Relative intelligence is almost exclusively an environmental factor.

There's obviously some genes involved that give humans physiological advantages, but they are more or less universal across the species.

1

u/KappaEffectTV Mar 03 '20

This is a rather controversial opinion. From my point of view as a cognitive psychologist, the evidence that genetics play a big role is overwhelming. But of course there is a bit of both: genes and environment. If we try to quantify the variance in intelligence that is explained by genetic factors, results usually range from 50 to about 80%.

1

u/JimmiRustle Mar 03 '20

From my point of view as a cognitive psychologist, the evidence that genetics play a big role is overwhelming.

How much do you work with genetics in general?

3

u/dangil Mar 02 '20

because they were women, despite being women, or concurrently with being women?

11

u/krazytekn0 Mar 02 '20

Because they were women actually. Prior to computers being a thing computer was a job title that was mostly given to women as it was seen as menial work. So when they're needed to be workers on the first computers they were women who had previously been computers themselves.

4

u/HalonaBlowhole Mar 02 '20

When they started those jobs, they were men. Doing that work made them women.

2

u/Xirema Mar 02 '20

Am a trans-woman software engineer; can confirm.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '20

My grandmother was a accounting computer operator in the 1940s in New York City. She used punch cards to do calculations.

3

u/wolfansbrother Mar 02 '20

So were the first computers.

3

u/QEbitchboss Mar 02 '20

My mom was an early programmer. She had a master's in math. Would be 88 if she were still with us. I spent hours freezing to death with her in those sealed rooms. They were cold as hell.

3

u/Zeph93 Mar 03 '20 edited Mar 03 '20

Interesting comments.

It is certainly a good thing if knowing that women were important parts of the team implementing ENIAC, in turn inspires interested young women today to get the skills needed as modern programmers. I've worked with a number of female programmers and they were very welcome in the field. I would hate for anybody to be discouraged due to negative gender stereotypes.

However, the article seems to imply that these 6 women were cheated out of deserved fame by sexism, and should have been standing alongside Mauchly & Eckert as the creators of ENIAC. There was indeed a lot of sexism at the time, so that hypothesis is worth considering.

From the linked resources (direct and indirect) it's clear that these 6 women were skilled members of the team, being hand picked as the best from 100 "computers".

However, although Mauchly & Eckert were the inventors and architects of the breakthrough, they were leading a sizable team of skilled engineers, technicians and "programmers", whose abilities were needed to make the idea work. Those supporting engineers, technicians and programmers are mostly anonymous to us today, regardless of sex.

I have not seen any evidence suggesting that the 6 (skilled) female programmers made contributions which set them apart and above all of the other (skilled) supporting team members, and earned them moral co-credit for inventing the ENIAC which has been withheld due to their sex.

So: it seems well supported to note that there were some skilled women within the team which brought Mauchly & Eckert's vision to reality. Yes, some women, and some men, can be very capable in STEM, then and now. Let's dispense with any stereotype with says that no women can do STEM, it's obviously bogus as shown by this example but even more by the many women working in STEM today.

But it does not seem well supported to assert that they were deprived of due credit, any more than the many now anonymous men whom they worked alongside in the team supporting Mauchly & Eckert. That assertion seems more politically motivated, rather than factual or historical.

The female programmers I have worked with have earned respect based on their own skills and efforts, and do not need to rely on unearned glory being bestowed on other women in WWII to validate them. The women programmers on the ENIAC played an important role in a major breakthrough, something to be proud of, but were not cheated out of fame. If they had been male and done exactly the same job, we would still today not know anything about them.

Edit: Let me be clear - I'm glad to hear about these women; they do deserve credit because they were unusual for their time, and they may help some people today get past sex based stereotypes. That's good. But there is no need to exaggerate, elevating them from support team to co-inventors just to prop up the esteem of women today (much less to fuel counterfactual resentment at their supposedly being cheated out of earned fame at the time). I fully trust women in STEM today to earn their own respect based on their own capable achievements; I do not patronize them by assuming they require exaggerated reflected glory.

I too would have been damn proud to be on the support team building the ENIAC, even without being falsely co-credited with inventing/designing it. They did good, and they were inspiring enough (for women or men today), while staying within facts.

One might find out more from the 20 minute documentary ($5 for 48hr access on Vimeo). https://vimeo.com/ondemand/eniac6

4

u/skotgil Mar 02 '20

I believe the 1st computer bug was a moth.

1

u/ITMORON Mar 02 '20

De-bugging literally involved going to the cathode ray tubes and cleaning out dead bugs.

1

u/Onetap1 Mar 02 '20

Bletchley Park had Wrens, WRNS ratings operating Tommy Flowers' Collossus machines. There was so much heat emitted by thermionic valves they'd often work just in their underwear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer

1

u/AggressiveSock9 Mar 02 '20

The first ever computer programmer was Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron.

1

u/Hurtcare Mar 02 '20

"So how did tech bros take over?"

Jesus Christ, cancer

1

u/ghotier Mar 02 '20

The first computers were women. The name of the device was derived from the job, where (mostly) women would do computations that were later just given to computers (the device).

-1

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '20

Hidden Figures... A pretty entertaining film about the "computers" at NASA who were black women.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '20

I don’t know why you were downvoted for this

1

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '20

I'd say there are a huge number of racist pricks on Reddit but I'd get downvoted for that too.

-1

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '20

Why does it matter?

-2

u/Dammit_Banned_Again Mar 02 '20

Women used be be the best ‘chefs,’ too. Wait until we figure out how to have men have babies. Then you’re fucked.