ENIAC
Once upon a time, there was a gigantic computer called ENIAC. According to Wikipedia, ENIAC, which stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, “was the first large-scale, electronic, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.” Between 1946 and 1955 it worked on the key problem that absorbed a lot of early computer scientists - how to fire guns so that they would hit moving targets - like planes. (There’s a great passage about Norbert Weiner, negative feedback, and artillery trajectories here, from Dark Hero of the Information Age.)
More about ENIAC:
ENIAC was massive. . . . It contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8.5 feet (2.6 m) by 3 feet (0.9 m) by 80 feet (26 m), took up 680 square feet (67.6 m²), and consumed 150 kW of power.
The six people who did most of the programming of ENIAC were women. Their stories are worth knowing, and it’s been a passion of Kathy Kleiman’s for many years to bring these women into public view via a full-length documentary. (I know Kathy as a fellow computer lawyer.)
On Nov. 8, Kathy and one of the original ENIAC programmers (Jean Bartik) and others will be holding a dinner and documentary preview in Mountain View — “Invisible Computers: The Untold Story of the ENIAC Programmers.” Information is here.
People who were adept with mechanical devices that performed calculations were often referred to as “computers” - it took a while for the word to take on its current meaning. So to call the ENIAC programmers “invisible computers” refers to many things - to the machines, to the people, to the lack of understanding of the creativity involved in programming, and to the fact that they were women and thus less visible than they might have been.
We don’t have enough stories about women in technology, and the ENIAC documentary is a very good idea. If you’re curious, and if you’re somewhere near Mountain View CA on Nov. 8th, consider dropping by.
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Note that this event has been proposed…apparently until sometime in January.
See http://eniacprogrammers.org/ for more info.
Sorry, I meant “postponed”, not “proposed”.
Oh, very sorry to hear that. Thanks for letting me know.
Susan