SMCharnas wrote:
>
> At 1:17 AM 7/12/97, Pat York wrote:
>
> >Hmm, if engineering becomes a woman-dominated field will the pay go
> >down? (g)
>
> Who's laughing? It will split into two fields, "engineering"
> dominated by women, and a more specialized field requiring an extra de-
> gree to do the same things, called "Brilliantly Designing Modern, Cool,
> and Expensive Ways To Do Things" which will be dominated by males whose
> pay will be approx. 25% more than that of mere "engineers". See
> "Bookkeeping" vs. "Accountant".
>
> Suzy
This was sent to me a few months ago-- a tribute to "the world's first
computer programmers," six women, who were called-- CLERKS!!!! Yes,
folks, these highly trained trailblazers were not even granted
professional status. (Kind of like Hollywood calling many of the first
script-writers "script girls", & treating them like gofers.)
FYI
>----------
>From: Keith Bostic
>Sent: Friday, May 9, 1997 12:05 PM
>To: /dev/null@mongoose.bostic.com
>Subject: First came ENIAC
>
>Forwarded-by: Kevin Dunlap <KevinD@MetaInfo.com>
>
>First came ENIAC
>
>Women recall their work as programmers on world's first computer 50 years
>ago
>
>By Doug Margeson Eastside Journal Reporter
>
>REDMOND -- Jean Bartik and Kay Mauchly-Antonelli don't like to be called
>pioneers, even if that's what they were.
>
>"I was an important part of the computer industry, but only one part,"
>Bartik said. "Everything in science is built on something else."
>
>Bartik is being modest, according to people at Microsoft. They brought
>her and Mauchly-Antonelli to Redmond this week to discuss their work 50
>years ago on Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer -- ENIAC to
>those who worked with it -- a boxcar-sized, enormously complicated machine
>that, according to industry historians, was the first electronic
>general-purpose computer.
>
>That makes Bartik and Mauchly-Antonelli the world's first programmers,
>although they didn't realize it at the time and don't like to make a big
>deal out of it. Both are retired. Mauchly-Antonelli lives in Ambler, Pa.
>Bartik lives in Pennsauken, N.J.
>
>In 1945, Bartik had just graduated with a math degree from Northwest
>Missouri State College and was looking for a job. When the federal
>government recruited her as a member of a team trying to figure how to
>tell ENIAC to compute artillery trajectories, she simply thought it
>sounded like an interesting way to make a living.
>
>"I had always considered mathematics as fun, like solving puzzles, more
>of a game than a matter of serious study," she said.
>
>The importance of ENIAC can't be overstated. The fact it was built at all
>is a monument to American research and engineering and the fact it worked
>as well as it did a testament to the ingenuity of those who operated it,
>according to W. Barkely Fritz, who wrote a history of the ENIAC project.
>
>More than anything else, it was needed. Precision bombing and artillery
>were necessary to win the war and with new guns, planes, bombs and
>conditions popping up seemingly every day, mathematicians were
>hard-pressed to turn out accurate tables.
>
>University of Pennsylvania engineers developed ENIAC to help. Measuring
>100 feet long by 10 feet wide and with more than 17,000 vacuum tubes, it
>required huge amounts of energy just to run the air conditioners that kept
>it from melting.
>
>It was anything but user-friendly. Its programming, for example, was done
>with an elaborate system of switches, dials and a plug-in board similar
>to old-fashioned telephone switching boards.
>
>But it worked, doing in 20 seconds calculations that before took as long
>as 40 hours. That allowed programmers to calculate the position of an
>artillery shell for every tenth of a second of its flight, all the while
>factoring in air density, barrel wear and scores of other variables. The
>result was unparalleled accuracy, Mauchly-Antonelli said.
>
>Figuring out how to make it work was a challenge. The key was numerical
>integration, a rare math specialty Mauchly-Antonelli had not studied in
>her undergraduate days at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. When she
>arrived at ENIAC offices, she was given a textbook and told to figure it
>out. Then she was put to work computing.
>
>While it may have been primitive compared to today's computers, ENIAC and
>the jobs it was asked to do were anything but unsophisticated,
>Mauchly-Antonelli said.
>
>Working on it was one of the most exciting experiences of their lives,
>the women agreed.
>
>No one thought computers would ever be small enough or cheap enough for
>the average person to use. The point-contact transistor was invented in
>1948 and was superseded by the junction transistor in 1951.
>
>However, it wasn't until the development of the semiconductor integrated
>circuit in 1957 that the true potential of computers began to be
>recognized. Now, ENIAC's functions can be done on a one- centimeter by
>one-centimeter chip.
>
>"No, we never imagined that, "Mauchly-Antonelli said. "But we
>dreamed, and there's more dreaming to be done. Look how far we've come in
>only 50 years."
>
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>Forwarded-by: chuck@Yerkes.com
>Forwarded-by: David HM Spector <spector@zeitgeist.com>
>
>Women Proto-programmers Get Their Just Reward
> -- by Janelle Brown
>
>5:04am 8.May.97.PDT Fifty years after they programmed the unwieldy ENIAC
>computer, the world's first programmers are stepping into the public eye,
>and - surprise - they are women. Long overlooked in the annals of
>computer history, the six women will finally receive group recognition
>for their work at next month's Women in Technology conference.
>
>The women - Kay Mauchley Antonelli, Jean Bartik, Betty Holberton (also
>known for her work with Cobol), Marlyn Meltzer, Frances Spence, and Ruth
>Teitelbaum - will receive the Hall of Fame award from the Women in
>Technology International, an association that promotes the value of women
>in the industry.
>
>The ENIAC, the world's first computer, was invented to calculate
>ballistics trajectories during World War II - a task that until then had
>been done by hand by a group of 80 female mathematicians. The six women
>who were chosen to make the ENIAC work toiled six-day weeks during the
>war, inventing the field of programming as they worked. But although they
>were skilled mathematicians and logicians, the women were classified as
>"sub-professionals" presumably due to their gender and as a cost-saving
>device, and never got the credit due to them for their groundbreaking
>work.
>
>"Somebody else stood up and took credit at the time, and no one looked
>back," explains Anna van Raaphorst-Johnson, a director of WITI. "It's a
>typical problem in a male-dominated industry. And there's still a lot of
>frustration with men taking credit for women's ideas - it doesn't seem to
>have changed much over the last 50 years."
>
>But although the women had been categorized as "clerks," they were
>rediscovered by a Harvard student named Kathryn Kleiman in 1986, during
>her research for a paper on women in computing. When the 50th anniversary
>of the ENIAC computer rolled around last year, Kleiman - now an Internet
>lawyer at Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth - decided that it was time to get
>the women the recognition they deserved.
>
>"I called and asked what they were doing to honor the ENIAC programmers,
>and they said, 'Who?'" says Kleiman.
>
>Although two women were given recognition at the conference, the rest
>weren't even invited to the reception. But Kleiman's ongoing quest to
>reveal the forgotten story of the six women has gotten the ball rolling
>on public awareness: A Wall Street Journal article was written about the
>women last year, and has become a minor Net meme. California
>Congresswoman Anna Eshoo has been working to name a day in honor of the
>ENIAC programmers, although her efforts were delayed when Congress stopped
>allowing commemorative days. And Kleiman herself is coordinating a
>broadcast-quality oral history with the ENIAC women, which will eventually
>be turned into a documentary.
>
>The women's pioneering role in the industry, Kleiman and WITI believe,
>will serve as inspiration for girls, to help them avoid the "math is for
>boys" mentality, as well as to women in the programming industry. And so
>far, their efforts seem to working: The ENIAC women are currently in
>Seattle, where they were invited to give a lecture at Microsoft to its
>Hoppers group of women programmers.
>
>Offers Kleiman, "I hope it provides wonderful role models so that girls
>and women know that they have as much of a right to go into the computer
>industry as men do."
>
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