short non-fiction · creativity
Programming ENIAC meant rewiring the machine
Six women translated equations into cable routes and switch settings before programming had a settled job description.
ENIAC’s first programmers—Kathleen McNulty, Frances Bilas, Betty Jennings, Elizabeth Snyder, Ruth Lichterman and Marlyn Wescoff—worked from diagrams and the machine itself. To set up a problem, they mapped mathematical steps onto units, switches and cables. Debugging could mean tracing both logic and a physical connection across a room-sized computer.
They were initially classified through the gendered job of “computer,” and their programming work was long under-credited. Yet this should not become another lone-genius correction with six isolated heroines: ENIAC was a large military and engineering project involving many roles. Their particular achievement was to invent working methods at the boundary between calculation and hardware, helping make programming a recognisable craft.
Based on the work of
Claire L. Evans
· 2018
Why this bookRecovers women’s formative work across computing while showing how technical cultures decide whom to remember.
What to keep in view
ENIAC was a large collaborative project; restoring the six programmers should not erase other technical and institutional contributors.