One thought on “Betty Snyder/Holberton, Kay McNulty/Antonelli, Marlyn Wescoff/Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman/Teitelbaum, Betty Jean Jennings/Bartik, Fran Bila/Spence”
During World War II while the men were fighting, the Army needed the women to compute ballistics trajectories.
Betty Snyder (Holberton), Kay McNulty (Antonelli), Marlyn Wescoff (Wescoff), Ruth Lichterman (Teitelbaum), Betty Jean Jennings (Bartik) and Fran Bila (Spence) were chosen to do the work.
Classified as “subprofessionals”, the six women programmed the ENIAC to perform calculations for ballistics trajectories electronically for the Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL), US Army.
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ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first electronic general-purpose computer. It was Turing-complete, digital, and capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.
ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory. When ENIAC was announced in 1946 it was heralded in the press as a “Giant Brain”. It had a speed of one thousand times that of electro-mechanical machines. This mathematical power, coupled with general-purpose programmability, excited scientists and industrialists. The inventors promoted the spread of these new ideas by conducting a series of lectures on computer architecture.
During World War II while the men were fighting, the Army needed the women to compute ballistics trajectories.
Betty Snyder (Holberton), Kay McNulty (Antonelli), Marlyn Wescoff (Wescoff), Ruth Lichterman (Teitelbaum), Betty Jean Jennings (Bartik) and Fran Bila (Spence) were chosen to do the work.
Classified as “subprofessionals”, the six women programmed the ENIAC to perform calculations for ballistics trajectories electronically for the Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL), US Army.
___________________________
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first electronic general-purpose computer. It was Turing-complete, digital, and capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.
ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory. When ENIAC was announced in 1946 it was heralded in the press as a “Giant Brain”. It had a speed of one thousand times that of electro-mechanical machines. This mathematical power, coupled with general-purpose programmability, excited scientists and industrialists. The inventors promoted the spread of these new ideas by conducting a series of lectures on computer architecture.