The role played by women in the history of computers and how the arrival of personal computers in the ’80s impacted their participation in the technology industries up until now. History of women’s participation i the programming computers history, normally forgotten by the history, but an important contribution indeed.
1. The Secret History of
Women in Coding.
Published by: The New York Times Magazine on
02/13/2019.
Author: Clive Thompson.
2.
3. Lady Ada Lovelace.
(10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852).
Augusta Ada King, Countess of
Lovelace.
English mathematician and writer.
She is often regarded as the first to
recognize the full potential of a
"computing machine" and one of the
first computer programmers.
Source: Wikipedia
“This brain of mine is something
more than merely mortal; as
time will show.”
Portrait of Ada Lovelace at age 20 (from The New York Public
Library)
4. Charles Babbage.
( 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871).
English polymath.
Mathematician, philosopher,
inventor and mechanical
engineer.
Considered by some to be a
"father of the computer".
Source: Wikipedia
“ Another age must be
the judge.”
5. The Analytical Engine.
The first automatic
general purpose
computing machine,
able to execute if /
then commands and
store information in
memory.
6. Ada’s Program for Computing the Bernoulli
Numbers.
Image from : Ada and the First Computer, by Eugene Eric Kim
and Betty Alexandra Toole
7. Ada’s notes: the first pioneer to
realise the true versatility of
computers.
The significance of Jacquard
Punched card method.
The computational importance of
the engine’s ability to branch to
different instructions.
The distinction between what was
theoretically possible to compute
and what was, in reality,
impractical.
Benefits of the Analytical Engine’s
ability to reuse code.
Image from : Wikipedia
8. During the World War II.
U.S Military hired between
80 and 100 women to
calculate by hand ballistic
trajectories.
Path the missile takes from
the time it leaves the gun
until it hits the target.
The official title of the
women hired to do this
calculation was
“Computers”.
9. The ENIAC.
The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer.
Designed to automate the
ballistics trajectories
calculations.
Huge Machine, weighing more
than 30 tons and including
17.468 vacuum tubes.
Programming required analyzing
differential equations,
determining how to patch the
cables to connect to the correct
electronic circuits, and setting
the thousands of 10-way
switches.
ENIAC in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Glen Beck (background)
and Betty Snyder (foreground) program the ENIAC in building
328 at the Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL).
Image from : Wikipedia
10. The ENIAC Programmers.
Top, from left to right: Marlyn Wescoff - Jean Jennings - Kathleen MacNulty .
Bottom. left to right: Frances Bilas - Betty Snyder - Ruth Lichterman.
11. The ENIAC Programmers
Contributions.
Among the first coders:
To develop concepts like subroutines
and nesting.
To discover that software never works
right the first time.
A programmer main’s job, really, is to
find and fix bugs.
That it would help to debug a program
to have a breakpoint.
The Advantages of Pair Programming.
Programmers Ruth Lichterman (crouching) and Marlyn Wescoff
(standing) wiring the right side of the ENIAC with a new
program.
12. Programmers operate the ENIAC's main control panel at the Moore
School of Electrical Engineering. "U.S. Army Photo" from the archives
of the ARL Technical Library. Left: Betty Jean Jennings; right: Fran
Bilas.
Patsy Simmers, holding ENIAC board Next: Mrs. Gail Taylor, holding
EDVAC board Next: Mrs. Milly Beck, holding ORDVAC board Right:
Mrs. Norma Stec (Gladys Rugh?), holding BRLESC I board.
"U.S. Army Photo" from the archives of the ARL Technical Library.
13. Grace Hopper
(December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992)
American computer scientist
and United States Navy rear
admiral.
She popularized the idea of
machine-independent
programming languages,
which led to the
development of the first
compiler and the
programming language
COBOL.
14. The Computer Girls.
(April 1967, Cosmopolitan magazine).
There were already more than
20,000 women working as computer
programmers in the United States.
A talented “ computer girl ” could
earn as much as $15,000 a year
=> $150,000 today
Anyone with aptitude — male or
female, college educated or not —
could succeed in the field.
The opportunities for women in
computing were “unlimited”.
15. Contradictory messages.
Women did play a critical role in
early computing and Computer
programming was unusually open
to females.
The computer programming
community was also actively
making itself masculine.
16. Why were so many women
at the beginning?
The rapid growth of the commercial Computer
Industry.
The programmer labor shortage of the 60’s.
Employers would train the person to do the job.
Programming was not yet a science.
17. Hewlett-Packard “Personal Computer” (1968)
Intel First Commercial Microprocessor (1971)
Apple Sells its First Homemade Computers (1976)
The first
generation of
electronic
computers .
19. Programming becoming masculine in the
60’s.
The implementation of aptitude and profiling test on
the hiring process, that focuses on masculine
characteristics.
Managers attempts to transform software development
into a controlled, industrial manufacturing process.
The professionalization of programming.
• Increased social status.
• Greater autonomy.
• Improved opportunities for advancement.
• Better pay.
20. Professionalization =
Masculinization during the
60’s.Imposition of formal
educational requirements.
Requirement of
management skills —
characteristics that were
often seen as being
masculine rather than
feminine.
Segmentation and
stratification. Complex
hierarchy of job titles
21. – NATHAN ENSMENGER.
Making Programming Masculine
“To suggest that a discipline has been made
masculine, however, is not to claim that all of its
practitioners are male, but rather that the ideals of
the discipline are masculine ideals.”
22. 80’s : A new cultural fit.
Commodore 64, found their way into
homes.
A Boy’s toy.
Boys were remarkably well prepared
starting college.
Image of the nerd type started to
emerge.
Idea that women didn’t have biologically
what was need it to excel at
programming.
Then women started to doubt their
ability.
23. Biologically fit
The ENIAC programmers.
In India, almost 40% of
students in computer
science are women.
In Malaysia in 2001,
women represented 52%
of the undergraduate
computer-science majors
and 39% of Ph.D
candidates.
24. A look into the future.
Katherine Louise Bouman (April 2019)
(born 1989/1990) is an American computer scientist working in the field of imaging. She was a
member of the Event Horizon Telescope team that captured the first image of a black hole.
26. References
Ada and the First Computer. By Eugene Eric Kim and Betty Alexandra Toole.
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Ada_and_the_First_Computer.pdf.
Making Programming Masculine. By Nathan Ensmenger.
http://homes.sice.indiana.edu/nensmeng/files/Ensmenger2010-MPM.pdf.
The Secret History of Women in Coding. By Clive Thompson:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/magazine/women-coding-computer-
programming.html.
Charles Babbage. https://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/charlesbabbage/.
The Jacquard Machine Video.
The Secret History of The ENIAC Women. (video) Kathy Kleiman |
TEDxBeaconStreet.
The ENIAC Programmers Project.
