1

Breaking Codes and Finding tajectories:

Women at the Dawn of the Digital Age

I was a Colossus operator, which we considered to be the cröme de la cröme.

\üe felt we were "at the sharp end," where there was a great tension and flow of
adrenaline . . . operating those incredible machines.
Beech, Colossus operatorl
-Jean
I don't know if you can picture how exciting the ENIAC was to all of us. And we
didn't talk socially or any other time about anything else. It was-we discussed
it almost all the time.
ENIAC programmer'
-Jean Jennings,

During the Second World'W'ar, women like Jean Beech and Jean Jennings
ventured into a wholly new field-digital computing. They were neither
intimidated by the noisy, room-sized machines that they encountered nor
deterred by any sense that they were entering a masculine domain. In-
stead, the accounts of women who worked on wartime computer projects
convey a sense of exaitement, fun, and pride at mastering a challenging
task and contributing to the Allies' eventual victory.
This sense of the importance, high status, and sheer joy of working
with computers still motivates women to choose careers in software or
computer science today. Yet throughout the history of computing, the
ability of women (and men) to enter and flourish in these careers has
been strongly influenced by gender stereotypes and unequal structures
of opportunity. This chapter uses examples from the'\X/orld'War II era
to demonstrate how assumptions about the gendered nature of techni-
cal skill, about women's place in the workforce, and about the nature of
computing could constrain women's options and lead to an undervalua-
tion of their contributions. Over time, however, both gender roles and the
 12 Cbapter 1
meaning of computing itself-what computers are good for and what it
takes to make them useful-have changed, and women have played an
active role in defining both. These twin themes are explored throughout
this book.
Wartime Missions: Colossus and ENIAC
The pressures of !7orld
'Süar
II drove a wave of technical innovation. Lives
were saved or lost by developments such as radar, the atomic bomb, and
the mass production of penicillin. Less known among these wartime proj-
ects are the first electronic digital computers.3 Before the 1950s, the tasks
that we associate today with computers were done by an array of special-
ized machines. Mechanical desk calculators were used to perform arith-
metic, and the people who did these calculations-often women-were
called computers; this term did not yet refer to a machine.a For business
and government record keeping, there were electromechanical tabulators
that sorted and tallied information that was stored on punched paper
cards. Punched-card machines had been invented by Hermann Hollerith
to tabulate the 1890 U.S. Census'in 1911, Hollerith's firm became the
core of a new company called IBM, which quickly dominated the busi-
ness.s Scientists sometimes did complex calculations using analog com-
puters, which used physical motion, such as the rotation of a cylinder,
to represent mathematical functions or model physical processes. Analog
computers had been introduced in the 1930s, most notably the Differen-
tial Analyzer invented by Vannevar Bush at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. A general-purpose computer that could handle all of these
diverse applications did not exist.6 In addition, the prewar machines op-
erated relatively slowly because they relied on mechanical or electrome-
chanical components. Not until the wartime emergency did computer de-
signers dare to build machines whose circuits used thousands of vacuum
tubes-components that were considered unreliable and impractical-to
operate at electronic speed.
A brief survey of the invention of the digital computer shows how a
series of experimental rnachines gradually advanced the state of the art,
eventually producing a modern computer that was fully electronic (rather
than electromechanical) and general-purpose (programmable). One of
the first digital computers was built in Germany by Konrad Zuse;his Z3
Breaking Codes and FindingTrajectories 13
machine, completed in 194L, was a program-controlled electromechani-
cal computer.T Zuse's work was little known outside of his immediate
circle, however, and the Z3 was destroyed in the war. Most subsequent
developments were made in the United States and Great Britain. John
Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State University built an operational
computer in 1942,which was a special-purpose (nonprogrammable) elec-
tronic machine. In the UK, a series of ten electronic computers called "Co-
lossus" were built at the top-secret codebreaking facility at Bletchley Park
near London, with the first one operating in February 1944.The Colossi
were theoretically programmable, but in practice they were configured
for a single codebreaking task. In March 1944, the IBM Automatic se-
quence controlled calculator, also known as the Mark I, came online at
Harvard University. Designed by Howard Aiken, the Mark I's program-
ming staff included Grace Murray Hopper, soon to become a major figure
in computing. The first fully electronic programmable digital computer
was built at the university of Pennsylvaniaby J. Presper Eckert and John
Mauchly beginning in 1943.This machine, the Electronic Numerical Inte-
grator and Computer (ENIAC), was completed in November 1945.8 After
the war, computer designers took the final step to a truly general-purpose
computer by creating machines that stored their programs in software,
resulting in a processor that was functionally similar to those used today.
The first operational stored-program computer was the EDSAC, built at
Cambridge University in 1949.e
This chapter focuses on two of these pioneering projects, Colossus in
Britain and ENIAC in America. Both made important technical advances,
both influenced the development of computers after the war, and both
employed teams of women to operate the machines. After introducing
each machine, I examine how and why women were drawn into these
projects, what the perceptions and realities were of the jobs they per-
formed, and what women's options were for pursuing a postwar career
in computing. These historical episodes illustrate how technical innova-
tions and social expectations framed opportunities in the new computing
field. I also highlight women's agency-their motivations and constraints
in choosing computer work and their accomplishments and pleasures on
the lob. Programming and operating computers was hard and important
work, but it was not always recognized or rewarded as such when the
workers were women.
 14 Chapter 1
Breaking Codes and Pinding Traiectories 15

Colossus wheels. Flowers built this machine, which used 2,500 electronic valves
It is regretted that it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the fascination of (vacuum tubes), with a team of engineers at the Post Office research sta-
a colossus at work: its sheer bulk and apparent complexity; the fantastic speed tion at Dollis Hill. Coded messages were input using punched paper tape
of thin paper tape round the glittering pulleys, . . . the wizardry of purely mechan-
at a rapid rate of 5,000 characters per second. The room-filling com-
ical decoding.
puter was dubbed Colossus, and eventually a series of ten Colossi were
Report on Tunny, 194510
-General produced, differing mainly in size (figure 1.1). The first Colossus was
assembled at Bletchley Park in December 'l'943 and began decoding mes-
colossus was part of the Allied effort to read secret communications sent
sages in January 1944.
by Germany and Japan. Codebreaking w-as an essential element of war-
Like hundreds of other workers at Bletchley Park, the Colossus oper-
time intelligence: if the Allies could decode Axis messages, then they could 'Women's
ators were chosen from members of the Royal Naval Service,
anticipate attacks and take appropriate measures. Such eavesdropping
known as'Wrens. New S7rens recruits were given assignments based on
also gave the Allies feedback on whether their own plans had become
immediate needs and interviewers' assessments of their abilities. Those sent
known to the enemy. one of the mosr importanr Allied codebreaking op-
to Bletchley Park were not told the nature of the work until they arrived;
erations was located at Bletchley Park, about i0 miles north of London.l1
to maintain secrecy, the Bletchley Park'S7rens were officially assigned to
The challenge for Bletchley Park was that the Germans used a series
of highly sophisticated encryption devices that defied the usual methods the fictitious ship HMS Pembroke V. At the peak of Colossus opera-
tions, there were approximately sixfy operators, working in three shifts or
of decoding. The first of these German decoding devices was called the
"watches."13
Enigma machine. rn 1940, the brilliant mathematician Alan Turing built
an electromechanical device called the bombe that could decode messages
prepared by Enigma. By that time, however, Hitler and his high command
had adopted an even more advanced technology, the Lorenz machine. This
machine had ten wheels, each of which had the letters of the alphabet ar-
ranged around the rims. By changing the positions of these wheels at the
start of each message, the sender could vary the way that the messages were
encrypted. To reverse engineer this process, the codebreakers at Bletchley
Park had to work out the logic of the machine and then derermine, for each
individual message, the starting positions of the ten wheels. The first step
in mechanizing this process was a special-purpose electromechanical com- ,!

puter, built in 1942, that could simulate the actions of the Lorenz machine. I

Since the German cipher was code-na med Fish,the Bletchley park machine
that mimicked it was whimsically named Tunny. Given correct starting
positions for the ten wheels, Tunny could take an encoded message as input
and quickly produce unencrypted German rext as output. The question
now was how to figure out the initial wheel settings.l2
Mathematician Max Newman, drawing on the ideas of Aran Turing,
worked with British Post office electrical engineer Tommy Flowers to de- Figure 1.1
Colossus operated by Dorothy Du Boisson (left) and an unidentified Wren. Photo
sign a computer that could search for the starting positions of the Lorenz
courtesy of the National Archives, United Kingdom.
 16 Breaking Codes and FindingTraiectories 17
Chapter 1

vacuum tubes-18,000 of them-to perform calculations, making

it the
Colossus was a boon to the Allies, allorving 13,508 messages to be de-
coded by war's end. The second Colossus machine was built in a rush to first fully electronic computer in the united States (figure 1.2).To program
pro-
have ready in time for D-Day. Put in operarion on June 1, I944,it allowed the ENIAC, the army recruited a team of six women' The original
Fran-
Bletchley Park staff to decode Adolf Hitler's battle orders to Field Marshall grammers were Jean Jennings (Bartik), Betty Snyder (Holberton)'
Erwin Rommel. These revealed that Hitler had been fooled by the Allied ces Bilas (Spence), Kay McNulty (Mauchly Antonelli), Marlyn'Wescoff
ruse to draw attention away from their planned Normandy invasion. Hit- (Meltzer), and Ruth Lichterman (Teitelbaum).17 several additional wom-
en worked on the ENIAC after it was transferred to Aberdeen
in 1947 '
Ier ordered Rommel not to shift his forces to Normandy, leaving the way
open for General Dwight D. Eisenhower to attack on June 6. As the battle The ENIAC was completed and ran its first program in November
progressed, further details of Hitler's plans were revealed through Colos- 1945-too late to help in the war effort but just in time to influence
the postwar computer industry. one of its major tasks while still
at the
sus, hastening the Allied defeat of the German army. Eisenhower is said to
have estimated that the intelligence from Bietchley Park shortened the war Moore School was a set of calculations that modeled thermonuclear
by at least two years and saved hundreds of thousands of lives.la bombs in 1946.It was then moved to Aberdeen, where it began opera-
tion again in July 7947 and,continued to be used until 1955.18 Eckert and
ENIAC tvtao.hly left Penn after the war to start their own company, developing
'!7ell, a series of government and commercial computers including the highly
how d'you like this new knick-knack,
The Süonderful Answer:ing ENIAC? successful UNIVAC.
!7ith thirty tons of mechanical brains,
It multiplies, adds, divides, explains.
to the ENIAC,' 79461s
-"Ode
On the other side of the Atlantic, the U.S. Army was exploring the use
of machines to tackle a very different problem-ballistics calculations.
Faculty at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical En-
gineering had been assisting the army's Ballistics Research Laboratory, at
Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, to determine the traiectories of
projectiles fired from various weapons. Some calculations were done on
the Moore School's Differential Analyze4'ryhile others were done by two
hundred female computers who were trained in mathematics and used
desk calculators. The goal was to compure firing tables, which showed
gunners how to aim their weapons to hit a target at a particular range.
The calculations needed for such a table were complex. To create a single
firing table required a month of continuous work for either the Differen-
tial Analyzer or a team of a hundred women.16
Moore School professor.|ohn Mauchly proposed to speed up rhis pro-
cess by building an electronic digital compurer to do the calculations. In
1943, Mauchly and his colleague John Presper Eckert received a con- Figure 1.2
tract from the army to build the ENIAC. Like Colossus, the ENIAC used firreC compurer, 7946.photo courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Archives
 18 Chapter I
F
i
Computer Work and the Gendered Division of Labor
81'the time I reached ny third year of college, I started looking around for some
type of occupation that could usc a math major. I dicn't want teaching. Insurance
comparries' actuarial positions required a master's degree (and they seldom hired
women, I later found out). . . . .Just after graduation, I happened to see an ad in
the daily paper. The Army was looking for wc,men with a degree in mathemat-
ics-right here in Philadelphia.
McNulty', ENIAC progranrmerl'
-Kay
How did won'ren come to staff the world's first electronic digital com-
puters, a seemingly masculine engineering domain? The short answer is
that tl,ey u.ere actively recruited during a time of urgent need and scarce
nrale labor. The contributions of Rosie the Riveter and her like are well
known: the Americarr and British governments exhorted women to take
wartime productiorr jobs, and millions of women filled blue-collar f actory
positions that formerly were tlre do'-rain of men.l0 Just as women were
recruited for jobs in the aircraft indusrry, so they were also channeled into
computer jobs that might otherwise have gone to men.
But invoking wartime labor scarcity begs the question because labor
scarcity is not a giverr fact, it is a social construction that depends on
assumptions about what types of people are suitable to fill which
rypes
of positions. c)ther solutions ro the problem of supplying both fighters
and workers were certairrly possible.'$fhy not allow women ro serve in
combat so thar men could keep their existing jobs? vhy not recruit black
men for skilled wartinre jobs instead of confining them to the lowest-
paid work? These alternatives would have been unappealing, even un-
thinkable, to most political and business leaders (and wornen themselves)
because the sanre cultural attitudes, priorities, and power relations that
had excluded women and minorities from certain occupations before the
war were still in play.2l As hisrorian Jennifer s. Light has argued, .,the
meaning of 'wartime labor sl.rortage' was circumscribed even as it came
into being"; it did not lcad to having large of women promoted
into the "mc)re 'important' technical and 'umbers
classified work', reserved for
men.22 At midcentury, the segregation of labor markets by sex was an
open, legal, and ubiquitous fact of Iife in the united States and united
Kingdom. x7omen wlro wanted to join tl-re military were shunted into
auxiliary noncombat groups such as the'wAC (\7omen's Army corps of
Breaking Codes and FindingTraiectories 19
the U.S. Army), the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency
Service of the U.S. Navy), and the \7RNS (Süomen's Royal Naval Service
of the UK Navy, popularly known as "'Wrens").'Sfomen were accepted
in "men's" production yobs only with the understanding that they would
vacate these positions after the war to restore the accustomed gendered
division of labor.
Yet the many constraints on women's options did not prevent some
from actively choosing computer jobs, whether as a career path, a brief
adventure, or a patriotic duty. It is worth asking what made computer
work seem possible and desirable for these women. In other words' what
defined this type of work as a good opportunity rather than something
unimaginable or unappealing? This question resonates with today's ef-
forts to recruit more women into computing, as it has become clear that
the mere existence of computer jobs and the lack of explicit gender bar-
riers do not automatically translate into having women regard these jobs
as attractive opportunities. The historical cases suggest that important
factors include whether the skills that women already possess are seen
as relevant for computing and how computer jobs compare to more fa-
miliar alternatives for women. In the'S7orld \War II context' one factor that
encouraged women to consider technical work was government efforts
to recruit them into factory jobs. Billboards and slogans recast techni-
cal work-formerly off-limits as a masculine area-as appropriate and
manageable for women, assuring them, "If you've used an electric mixer
in your kitchen, you can learn to run a drill press."23 At the same time,
the limited careers that were open to women in more traditional fields
made computing säem a promising alternative. Before the war, American
and British women with a college degree or other advanced preparation
in math found themselves tracked into low-paid jobs with little hope of
advancement. Typically, they were hired either to teach math in secondary
school or to do tedious repetitive calculations for insurance companies
or other information-intensive businesses. Many women, like McNulty
quoted above, found neither choice appealing. For them, a job in scientific
computing presented one of the more exciting and well-paid opportunities
that a mathematically inclined woman could hope for in the mid-1940s.
As in other areas, women's roles in wartime computing projects were
circumscribed by the existing gendered division of labor. Designing com-
puter hardware was done solely by men, since women were excluded
 20 Chapter 1 Breaking Codes and FindingTrajectories
from gaining the engineering education, experience, and authority
that
might have allowed rhem ro participate. v/omen's only i*volvement in
building the ENIAC hardware was pertbrming factory-like assembly of
conrponents.2aorr the other hand, operating and programming compur-
ers could more easily be constructed as women'swork. since the jobs of
con.lputer operator and programmer did not exist before the war, they
were not alreadl, stereotyped as masculne. Moreover, women had their
olvn prewar history in conrputing that gave them entry-within limits-
to ncw compurer projects.
In the scierrtific world, worlren had b,een employed in large numbers
to do calculations by hand. These human ccmputers generally, although
not always, had sorne training in mathematics, and it was fron-r
the ranks
of such mathemarically trarned women that the ENIAC project drew its
first corps of progranrmers. However, e'en women with college degrees
were relegared to subprofessional job classificarions. As Kay
McNulty
recalled, "Tlre girls were told that only 'men' could get professio
nal rat-
The ENIAC programmers were not promoted from computer
ir.rgs."25
to
mathematician-a professional rating-until 1946.26
January
In the separate world of administrative data processing, women
typically held the low-level job of key-punch operaror (the person
who
punched holes in the paper cards used fo: input) or: the
slightry more ad-
vanced job of tabulating machine operarcrr (the person who
loaded decks
of cards into the machine and initrated its operation). The existence
of
female tabulator operators may have pror-ided a precedent
for employing
women as computer operators at Bletchley park. Because
of the particular
role that the computer played at Bretchley park, the \7rens
were not cailed
on to become programmers as rhe ENIAC women were. Although
the
Colossi could, in theory, be programmed for a variety
of tasks, in practice
they were devoted to codebreaking, and Bletchley park
had no prog."--
mers as such' Instead, the work of programming was
divided between a
mathematician, who decided what operations the machine
srrourd per-
form to solve a given decoding probrem, and an operator,
who used the
matl-rematician's instrucrions to set up and run these
operations on the
computer. Dividing the task this way was meant
to conserve the scarce
labor of trained mathernaticians. It also reproduced
a gender hierarchy:
all of the cryptographers working with Colossus were men,
and all of
the operators were worren'2t As B.
Jack copeland notes in his history
21
of Colossus, "ln those deeply sexist times no woman rose to a senlor
management position in the Newmanry [the Colossus area, named after
Max Newmanl, and none achieved the status of cryptographer, despite
the fact that nine per cent of Newmanry Wrens had received a university
education" (and this at a time when only 4 percent of British men had
earned college degrees).2s The wartime computing environment presented
women with a complex mixture of new opportunities and old gender
boundaries.
Women's Entry into Wartime Computer Proiects: Motivations and
Experiences
The Bletchley Park '$7rens were not necessarily looking for technical
work. Indeed, they had no way of knowing about the computers' whose
existence was kept secret. The women had volunteered for a variety of
personal reasons, including a desire to help with the war effort or a wish
to leave the confines of home or a dull 1ob. Yet becoming a'wren was
still a significant choice. .|oining up meant committing oneself to leave
familiar surroundings, submit to military discipline, and work under gru-
I eling conditions.2n For women already willing to take on these challenges,
masterin€l an unfamiliar machine may have seemed more intriguing than
I
intimidating. Eleanor Ireland, a newly recruited Wren in September 1943,
,
recalled being eager for a chance to operate Colossus after she caught a
!
glimpse of one: "l was transfixed by it. All these whirring tapes ' ' ' and
I
the noise of it all. . . .I was fascinated by it' . . .I thought,now that's
where I'd like to be, not doing the other things. I wanted to be on that
machine."3o As ä Wren, however, she had no real say in her assignment'
other than by doing her best on the placement test that was used to pick
which women would operate the most complex machines.
The work environment at Bletchley Park was both exciting and harsh.
Material conditions were often unpleasant due to wartime shortages;
many rü/rens complained about the sweltering heat of the machine rooms
in summer and the bitter cold of the dormitories in winter. "The food was
prerty grim," recalls Ireland; "To be faced with cold congealed liver and
prunes in the middle of a night watch was not very good." The workers
were also subjected to military discipline-although as with many aspects
of life at Bletchley Park, there was a gendered double standard. Male
mathematicians recruited for the project from Oxford or Cambridge
 22 Chaptcr 'l
"remained in civvies, independent of the demands of army life, thus hav-
ing freedorn for conscientious research and overtime, a deciding factor
in favor of original thought and good w,frk."31 While men's supposedly
more creative work excused them from military exercises, Colossus op-
erator Catherine Caughey described hovr the \X/rens were forced to do
drills and marches after worl<ing all night on the machine: "They made us
do an hour's squad-drill on the gravel in front of the Abbey every morn-
ing. . . .We were all being killed by the consrant changes of shift. Church
Parade on a Sunday was compulsory. On my first Sunday, wl-ren I was on
nights, I had to assemble with the others. We had to march two miles each
way to the village church, along an icy r,tad."32 The arduous and seem-
ingly unnecessary demands placed on the Colossus operarors reveal their
superiors' unspokerr presumption that women's work is by nature mun-
dane and does not require one's full energies. Such gender stereotyping
can be destructively self-fulfilling. \X/ith their work seen as less imporrant,
women are loaded down with extra chores such as military drills (or in
the present day, housework or low-level a,iministrative tasks). These bur-
dens, in turn, make it harder for women t,t perform up to their potential,
reinforcing the idea that they are less capable rhan men. In the Bletchley
Park case, there was a somewhat lrappier ending: those in charge of the
Colossi eventually noticed the exlraustion of their operators, and tl.rey
told the Wrerr officers to stop requiring the two-mile march to church..r3
Like all personnel at Bletchley Park, the Wrens had to observe strict
secrecy, given the highly sensitive nature of their work. New recruits to
Bletchley Park had to sign the official secrers Ac and were threatened
with dire consequences should they ever L'treathe a word about the code-
breaking operation. All personnel were forbidden to talk about their
work, to keep diaries, or to tell their families what they were doing-
either during the war or lorrg afterward. Despite all tl.ris, many women
fou'd the social environment one of freedom, adventure, and indepe'-
dence. They had a chance ro escape parental supervision, go to London
on their days off, mingle with people of other social classes, and find
romance; many women married men they met ar Bletchley park. And the
work, however tedious, was made meaningful by their awareness that
thel' were performine a vital (if .rysterious) service for their country. For
the colossus operators, there was also the thrill of working with cutting-
edge machines.
Breaking Codes and Fmding Trajectories 23
In contrast to the'sürens, the ENIAC women in Philadelphia made an
explicit choice to work with a computer-although neither they nor any-
one else at that time had a clear idea of what that would involve. Some of
them had already been working for tl're military doing hand calculations;
others came straight from school, having found out about the openings
at the university of Pennsylvania through college advisers or friends. one
thing that they had in common was a dearth of better options. Kay Mc-
Nulty (quoted above) was painfully aware of the limited prospects for
female mathematicians. Marlyn'lrescoff, one of two ENIAC women with
a nonmathematical college degree, found the job market even worse. she
had graduated from Temple university in June 1942 as an education ma-
jor specializing in social studies, English, and business but could find no
teaching jobs in rhose areas. Hoping to make the most of what skills she
had,'$Tescoff sought out a position at the Moore school: "Late in August
of that year a friend told me they were hiring at the Moore School and
if I knew how to run a calculator, that would stand me in good stead. I
made an appointment for an interview with John Mauchly, but he quickly
turned me over to his wife, Mary, who hired me when informed that I
could operate an adding machine,"3a Jean Jennings, who had been doing
desk calculations for the army at the Moore School, recalled how she
jumped at the chance to train as an ENIAC programmer instead: "It was
something new! I mean, I didn't know what it was, but I knew that it
was boring sitting there and pounding the calculator, and [ENIACI was
something new. And I always believed that I could do anything as well as
anybody else, if I were on an even footing."is Jennings's reaction reflects
an awareness tha't the "computer" positions traditionally held by women
were dead-end lobs with little chance for promotion. Since she planned to
continue working after the war, she hoped to get in on the ground floor
of a new profession where she could be "on an even footing" with men.
The ENIAC project had a much more relaxed atmosphere than Bletch-
ley Park. Security was still a factor: there were restricted areas, and ap-
plications such as the hydrogen bomb calculations were kept secret from
the women. But the programmers were allowed to talk about their work
among themselves and with the engineers, and they were encouraged to
learn as much about the machine as possible and to devise new techniques
for programming it. Like the colossus women, the ENIAC women also
found adventure and independence in their wartime work. vomen from
 24 Chapter 1 Breaking Codes and Pinding Traiectories 25

small towns got ro see Philadelphia, New York, and Sfashington, and Initial Assumptions about Computing Work
several of them married men they met at Penn or Aberdeen. In addition, The selection criteria and lob training for Colossus and ENIAC indicate
they enjoyed the intellectual challenge of the project, which gave them a that these tasks were believed to require at least some mathematical abil-
chance to use their mathematical and logical ingenuity to the fullest. ity and that the best available female workers were assigned to the com-
puters.'Wrens were placed in Max Newman's mechanical codebreaking
Constructions of Skill in Women's Wartime Computing Work section based on an eclectic mix of technical and social qualifications:
"'Wrens were chosen by interview. . . . No fixed qualifications were re-
occasionally, the six of us programmers all got together to discuss how we quired, though a pass in mathematics in School Certificate or apparently
thought the machine worked. If this sounds haphazard,it was. The biggest advan- 'good social recommendations' was normally considered essential. . . .
tage of learning the ENIAC from the diagrams ''vas :har we began to understand
what it could and what it could not do. As a r:sulr we could diagnose troubles None had studied mathematics at the university."3T Newman gave pro-
almost down to the individual vacuum tube. Sirrce r,r'e knew both the application spective operators a two-week course covering binary math, the teletype
and the machine, we learned to diagnose troubles as well as, if not betier than, alphabet code, and machine operation, after which they were given a
the engineer.
written exam. Those with the highest scores were given the most chal-
ENIAC ptogrammer3o
-.fean .fennings, lenging assignments, including Colossus.38 The first Colossus operators
were presumably trained by Newman himself to use the machines, but
unlike prior women's work, such as hand calcuiations, programming and
after that experienced operators took on the responsibility of training
operating computers were completely new tasks with unknown demands.
new recruits, adding another dimension to their duties.
No one had ever operated an electronic digital computer before colossus.
Qualifications were higher for ENIAC. The six programmers all had
Although programming of the Harvard university Mark I had started in
college degrees, four of them in mathematics, and the women passed
May 1 944, the ENIAC women had no knowledge of this project, and in
through two levels of selection-first as hand computers and then as pro-
any case the procedures for programming ENIAC were completely dif-
grammers. The level of skill involved in hand computing can be gleaned
ferent. Even the men who built and oversaw the computers did not have
from a description of the Moore School's 1.942 training course for those
a clear idea of what would be involved in using them. since the role of
who were working on ballistics problems. Students were expected to
programmers and operators was not well understood in the early years of
begin at a fairly high level: the course was aimed at college graduates
computing, gender stereotypes partially filled this vacuum, leading many
with at least a year,of college math (although later this requirement was
people to downplay the skill level of women's work and its inrportance to
dropped), and prospective students had to pass an aptitude test and go
the computing enterprise.
through an interview. The course ran for thirteen weeks, forry hours a
A review of the colossus and ENIAC projects reveals that in both cases,
week, including three lectures per day as well as five hours of "super-
project leaders underesrimated the level of training needed and skill exer-
vised study, the latter to include 4 hours per week of supervised labora-
cised by their female staffs. But even though gender bias played a large role
tory work with computing machines." Topics covered included algebra,
in shaping women's responsibilities and rewards in the workplace, this role
trigonometry, analytical geometry, calculus, interpolation, exterior bal-
was mediated by the open-endedness of the technology itself. computers
listics, and least squares.3e Much of the teaching was handled by Adele
were new and complex enough that the work of programming them could
Goldstine, a trained mathematician and the wife of Herman Goldstine,
be organized in many possible ways and their personnel could extend the
the army liaison to the ENIAC project. Marlyn Wescoff (who, as noted
boundaries of their jobs to incorporate new skills. The interaction of evolv-
above, had been hired on the strength of her familiarity with adding
ing cultural constructions of both computing work and gender could result
machines) described the class as challenging but rewarding: "I had not
in either a familiar patern of sex-typing (as happened at Bletchley park) or
taken mathematics in college, so all of this was wonderful, strange, dif-
an unexpeced opportunity (for the ENIAC women).
ficrrlt- end ercifins."40 There rvas e second rnrrnd nf qelertinn for FNTAC

26 Chapter 1
programmers, with Hernran Goldstine picking "six of the best comput-
ers" for thc job.al Tlrose chosen were seni to Aberdeen in June 1945 to
he trained on the IBM inputloutput equipment to be used with ENIAC
("tabulator, sorter, reader, reproducer; and punch").42
Despite all this preparation, the ENIAC women were not given any
specific training in programming-a telling omission. As noted earlier,
gender bias was certainly at work in the official classification of the
ENIAC women's jobs as "sub-professional." However, I suggest that
Mauchl,v and Eckert themselves did not devalue programming so much
as overlool< it, consumed as they were with the challenge of building a
working machine in time to aid the war efJort. Rather than having a clear
image of programming as merely clerical, as some historians have argued,
the ENIAC designers seem to havc had only the vaguest notion of what
prograrnming might involve.a3 As Mauchly explained in a 1973 inter-
view, programming was an afterthought: "!7e didn't think that we should
spend our tinre worrying about figurir-rg out programming methods and
programmine aids and all that. We felt that if rn'e had the machine capable
of doing all these things . . . there would be time enough to worry about
those things later."44 For the ENIAC women, the undefined nature of their
jol"r was challengirrg, but it also gave them the freedom to define program-
ming-through their actions and achievements-as a wide-ranging and
intellectually fulfil ling task.
Actual Challenges of Operating and Programming the First Computers
Colossus was used for a sinelc purpose-to iiscover the starting wheel
patterns that the Germans used to encode particular messages on the Lo-
renz machine. To start a decoding cycle, the male cryptographer (seated at
a desk) proposed a wlreel pattern to try, and the female operator (standing
at the n.rachine) prograrnmed that patter:t into the machine by insert-
ing pins into a grid on the l"rack. Slre then prepared to run the machine
b1'threading a tape containing an encoded message onto the computer's
tape reader, whiclr was mounted on a large metal frame nicknamed "the
bedstead"a5 (see figure l.1). Thc tape reacer had multiple pulleys to en-
able it to handle message tapes of different lengths, and the operator had
to adjust the tension on these pulleys to keep the tape running smoothly.
Once the computer was turned on, rhe tape sped through the reader at
40 feet per second-which meant that if the tape broke, ir went whipping
Breaking Codes and FhtdingTraiectories 27
across the room, endangering the unfortunate operator and bringing
op-
I erations to a halt.
j'
Keeping the decoding process on track therefore depended on the
I Wrens' mechanical ingenuity' and as Ireland noted, they keenly felt this
.,That was a tricky operation, getting the tape to the right
I
L
responsibility:
tension. . . .'Sre were terrified of the tape breaking should the tension
be
wrong. Breaks meant that valuable time was lost. . . . It was instilled into
{
us that time was of the very essence. \7e knew we were working against
The
the clock and that people's lives depended on what we were doing."a6
r
I operators also had to devise methods for keeping the tapes in good repair'
as Dorothy Du Boisson recalled: "Each tape . . . had to be
joined into a
t.
loop. It was difficult to get the join right, and if we didn't the tape might
i
I
up to the speed of the machine. After many experiments, we
I
not stand
found that special glue, a warm clamp, and French chalk produced a good
joint-the art was using iust the right amount of glue.''47
The operators did not need advanced mathematics, but they had to
be able to do basic arithmetic quickly and accurately in their heads. To
check whether the decoding was successful, the operator set switches on
the front of the machine to program it to count the frequency of certain
letters. These counts were printed out on a nearby typewriter. If the cryp-
i
l tographer chose the wrong wheel pattern, the results had no particular
pattern of letter usage, but if the correct wheel pattern had been found,
the output lrad a nonrandom pattern that was characteristic of the lan-
i
guage being used (in rhis case, German military language).as The operator
might be asked to check whether the letter frequencies that were recorded
on the typewritei deviated significantly from a given norm, signaling a
i
I possible SucceSS. Ireland recalled, "sometimes I was given a nofm' and as
each figure came up on the typewriter, I did a calculation and wrote down
i, against the figure how much above or below the norm it was' I became
i very good at mental arithmetic."ae
I
To be a successful Colossus operator therefore required physical endur-
i
ance, mechanical aptitude, attention to detail, and the ability to memorize
I
I
! codes and do mental arithmetic. Female operators were also entrusted
I
I
with a certain amount of initiative. They did some runs without supervi-
i sion, evaluating the results to determine if the correct wheel setting had
been found.50 They were also trained by the engineers to do routine test-
I
ing of the machines, and they solved some minor mechanical problems,
I
 28 Chapter 1
Breaking Codes and Findhg Traiectories 29

such as keeping the typewriter from shaking out of position due .When
to the work and that of a \7ren was overdone. . . . the section grew to such an
machinet vibrations.s I
extent that there was a shortage of males[,] some of the '!ürens did wheelbreak-
Despite rhe various physical and menral abilities that they ing jobs and other tasks requiring technical knowledge which were previously
emplol,ed,
thought possible only by a man. A programme of training Wrens in theory and the
\vrens were not treated as skilled workers or expected to understand the
work began in earnest fin Ianuary 1945,] but if this change in policy had started
logic behind the machine's operations-at least at first. The organization earlier greater dividends would have been noticed in the results.sa
of work at Bletchley Park made a sharp distinction between men, who
Vergine's forthright critique highlights how security concerns rein-
were rotated among tasks to give them a broad knowledge of the code-
forced a social hierarchy based on gender to restrict women's roles to a
breaking operation, and women, who -were confined to narrow tasks
on degree that even their male supervisors found detrimental. It also high-
the assumption that they had only limited technical abilities. As
tlie official lights the difference in approach between the Colossus and ENIAC proj-
1945 report nored, "wrens (unlike men) were organised in fixed watches
ects. Perhaps the Colossus operators could have developed a comparable
and given fixed jobs in which they could become technicalry proficient.,,52
level of autonomy and expertise as the ENIAC programmers if they had
But the assumption thar women's work was by definition
unskilled did received similar encouragement to learn about the machine and to experi-
not reflect the reality of the work . By 1944, it had become evident
that ment with programming techniques.
tl-re colossus operators' tasks were more challenging
than their male su- Like Colossus, ENIAC was set up by plugging in wires and setting
pervisors had originally thought. As trre \üy'rens were asked
to perform switches (figure 1.3). The various components of ENIAC had to be labo-
more complex operations and to work unsupervised, they
needed more riously reconfigured for each calculation, in effect building a new special-
theoretical knowledge, and in.fanuary 1945 Newman's section
set up an purpose computer each time. As with Colossus, operating the machine
Education comrnittee (composed mainry of Nfrens) to arrange
technical was very much a hands-on, physical activity-but unlike Colossus, this
seminars. The report conceded, "rn practice it became increasingly hard was only the last stage of the women's programming process. It began
for wrerrs to ger a comprete picture of an organisation i' which
they with numerical analysis-taking a mathematical problem and converting
might have only done one job. Moreo'er the mathematical styre
of the it to a form that could be solved using the arithmetical and logical capa-
Research Logs made them unreadable fc,r Wrens, and
before they (or new bilities of the computer. Then the program had to be broken down into
men) undertook chi-breaking and col.ssus-setting on rheir
own, some a sequence of detailed steps, and finally these steps had to be converted
other introduction to tlre tlreoretical side was needed." The
colossus op- into instructions for setting up the machine. Only then did the women do
erators' seminars were evidently fairly advanced, as the report
contrasts the physical setting up and finally run the program. Since most programs
them with "the less rnathematical general lectures.',i.]
do not run perfectly the first time, the programmers usually needed to
At least one conrenlporary wit'ess berieved that gender bias had
red to debug the instructions and repeat the cycle until they achieved the desired
an underestimarion of the comprexity of the women's
work. several u.S. results.
Army signal intelligence officers were srationed at Bretchley park,
and the The first problem run on the machine was a calculation for the hy-
first of them to worl< in Newman,s section, George H. Vergine,
wrote a drogen bomb. It was devised by physicists Stanley Frankel and Nicholas
section of the 1 945 report. Vergine explicitry critiqued
the gendered divi- Metropolis, who came to Philadelphia from Los Alamos for this purpose.
sion of labor on colossus, arguing that stereotyped
assumptions about For this problem, Herman Goldstine taught Frankel and Metropolis how
skill had delayed making full use of the \frens, talenrs:
to specify a program for ENIAC, and the female programmers used these
The structure of the organisation was built o' the
concept that the male members specifications to set up the program on the machine. For subsequent proj-
should carry the responsibirity for any decisic,ns and
the *ork shorlJ ü" r.au..a ects, however-including the ballistics trajectory calculations for which
to a routine so that the wrens were able to do it. . . . perhaps
the rnain faurt of
the organisation was that the primary principle the machine had been built-the women performed the mathematical
of thedifferen.. u.r*..n
".nn,, analysis and logical design of the programs as well as the physical setup
30 Chapter 'l
Figure 1.3
ENIAC with Frances Bilas and Jean fennings. Photo courtesy of University of
Pennsylvania Archives.
and subsequent debugging. This diverse set of tasks required advanced
mathematics and a detailed mastery of the machine's logical design and
its physical layout, as well as creativity, initiative, and physical endurance.
As noted above, the ENIAC women were offered no instruction in pro-
gramming (indeed, no one was qualified to teach it), and no manuals were
available until Adele Goldstine produced one in June 1946, well after the
original programmers had trained themselves.ss The women learned by
trial and error, discussing ideas among themselves with little more than
engineering drawings to guide them.56 Jean Jennings recalled that only
after she and Betty Snyder had met Mauchly by accident were they able
to enlist his help:
\üe were sitting there, trying to figure out how the accumulator worked, and this
man walked in. . . . He said, "I'm John Mauchly." We said, "Oh my God, are we
glad to meet you!" [She laughs.] 'We'd never met him before.. . . So he came over
and helped us figure it out. He said, "\üüell, look, my office is right next door.
'!7hen
you have any problems, you can come in, and I'11 help you." So we began to
save up our problems, and in the afternoon, if he was there, we would go in and
ask him all our questions. So that's how we learned how to program the ENIAC.TT
Breaking Codes and Finding Traiectories 31
In Jennings's account, the women continued to take the initiative in for-
mulating programming methods' with Mauchly simply answering ques-
tions that they brought to him'
As noted earlier, the intellectual sophistication of programming was
belatedly recognized in early 1'946,when the ENIAC women were pro-
moted to professional status in the u.S. civil service. Yet the assumption
that women,s work must be less scientific or complex persisted for many
years afterward. In 7971., as part of a patent dispute between the ENIAC
creators and rival inventor John Atanasoff, the ENIAC women gave de-
positions in which they were asked to characterize their work as pro-
grammers. These documents provide a valuable glimpse into the women's
own understanding of their technical role at a time when the ENIAC was
still fairly obscure and its programmers were not self-consciously claim-
ing a place for themselves in history. Their experience of the work as
novel and intellectually demanding contrasts with the male interviewer's
evident assumption that the women had merely been rote operators.
Asked to define their iob, the ENIAC women's responses made a clear
distinction between the physical "setting up" or "plugging in" (what we
would now call operating) and the more intellectual work of numerical
analysis and program design. Kay McNulty replied, "I should say that the
programmer's principal job is to reduce the equations to forms that can
ENIAC and to plan the setup. By virtue of the nature of
be used by the
the ENIAC itself-no other machine is like this-we had to do this physi-
cal labor, which certainly wasn't programming, the physical setting up."58
Y/hen the interviewer tried to characterize the work as merely plugging in
cords, Ruth Lichterman was quick to correct him:
'When you say you programmed the machine, did that mean physically that
Q:
ylo,, took these plugs from otte place and plugged them into another place?
You got a
[Ruth Licbterman]: \üell, now, Program means several things' ' ' '
problem, and you started with pencil and paper, and you decided how you were
going to do this problem and which numbers went where. . . . [Y]ou drew a dia-
i."-".rf all this stuff and then you actually went on the machine, and we call that
;plugging in" rather than "program."5e
Lichterman's response describes the programmer handling the entire
spectrum of tasks that were required to go from a problem statement to
a logically worked out program that was ready to be "plugged in" to the
machine. This work was complex and varied enough that the women spe-
c'ralized i n,dj ff erent area s, accord t"*.,: t"*:
? i:-:::t Y l.:ll:1"::::'
 .i2 Chapter 1
Kay was often more creative, suggesting clever ways to reuse and reduce
the total size of the program. Marlyn and Ruth agreed to generate a test
trajectory, calculating itexactly the way the ENIAC was to do it so we
could check the detailed steps once it was on the ENIAC."60
Designing programs for the ENIAC to,tk considerable creativity, since
every prograrnming technique had to be worked out for the first time.
The women made a number of innovations in programming methods.
Betty Snyder is credited with inventing break points, a debugging tech-
nique that involves stopping the machine in the middle of a program ro
check intermediate results.6l Break points ha'ze since become a standard
debugging tool. The women also developed a sysrem of programming
notation tl-rat allowed them to visualize the multiple simultaneous opera-
tions that the computer perfonned at each step of executing a program.
\Xiith this notation, according to .|ennings, "rve could keep track of the
timing of program pulses and digital operations. The ENIAC was a paral-
lel machine, so the programmer had to keep track of everything, whether
interdependent or independent."62 The programmers also developed new
methods in numerical analysis.6s For examplg a fundamental concern in
applied mathematics is that for many problems, the computer calculates
an approximate rather than exact solution, which can lead to significant
errors. The ENIAC women responded to this challenge by creating ex-
perimental programs to generate knowledge about the magnitude of these
errors and ways to minimize them. As Je:rnings described in L971,,,Ve
ran a number of problems to find out how to use the machine, to test
what interval of integration gave us the most accuracy if you considered
round-off error and truncation error, and we were trying to determine
what interval we could use in order to minimize the effects of trunca-
tion error without building up the round-off error. . . . The view was to
establish sorne procedure that gave us the most overall accuracy."6a As
this example illustrates, the ENIAC women took the initiative to creare
pr:ogramming tools as well as programs.
In addition to the various programming methods that the women in-
vented, Snyder and.|ennings created an important software product-the
program to calculate ballistics trajectories, which had been the original
goal of the ENIAC and would be the cenrerpiece of its public debut in
1946. .lennings described the excitement of being responsible for such
a high-stakes project: "\7e worked nights and weekends. . . . Betty and
Breaking Codes and FindingTraiectories 33
I felt the tremendous pressure to make this thing work. Everybody was
counting on us: the BRL, the Moore School, the ENIAC design group'
the Goldstines. \fle both loved the attention and knew we could do it!"6'
By the night before the demonstration, there was only one major bug
left, but it was an embarrassing one: the trajectory program kept going
after the projectile was supposed to have hit the ground. As Jennings re-
called, "During the night it came to Betty what was wrong. She came in
the next morning and flipped one switch on the master programmer and
the problem was solved. Actually, Betty could do more logical reasoning
while she was asleep than most people can do awake."66 But when it came
to getting credit for their accomplishment, the women were in for a rude
awakening.
Constructing Opportunities for Women in Computing at War's End
We had to sign the Secrets Act when we left, and we had to take all these ma-
chines down. My parents never knew what I did, and neither did my husband. I
never told anybody at all. None of us ever did.
Ireland, Colossus operatort-
-Eleanor
What opportunities were open to women in computing after the extraor-
dinary circumstances of war gave way to the social norms of peacetime?
Historians such as Alice Kessler-Harris, Ruth Milkman, and Penny Sum-
merfield have described how British and American women who took
"male" jobs in factories during the war were expected to give them up af-
terward to men u.dro were returning from military service.6s Many defense
projects-including hand-computing tasks that employed hundreds of
women-were closed down at the end of the war, so the jobs themselves
vanished.6e This was not unexpected. Sühen the Moore School recruited
women to do ballistics calculations in 1.942, its advertisements warned,
"lt should be understood by each prospective employee that the appoint-
ment is an emergency war service appointment, which in all probability
will terminate with the end of hostilities."t0 Compared with most women
in wartime industries, however, the ENIAC programmers had consider-
ably more opportunity to stay in the field after the war. There was no
preexisting male workforce to push them out, and as digital comput-
ers became commercialized after the war, the demand for programmers
 34 Chapter 1
Breaking Codes and Finding Trajectories 3.t

increased. In this labor market, women with computer experience could

potentially find well-paid and interesting jobs.
women in both the ENIAC and colossus projects demonsrrated that
they had the interest and ability ro excel in computing work, but their
outcomes were very different. The wrens' jobs abruptly ceased with the
end of hostilities, and none of the colossus women seem to have pursued
postwar civilian computing careers.Tl In contrast, the ENIAC women had
the option to continue working, and some of them went on to have distin-
guished and influential careers in computing. Äs these different outcomes
suggest, gender bias was one only factor affecting women's postwar op-
portunities. several other characteristics of the American and British
projects-including secrecy, divisions of labor, and training practices-af-
fected women's chances for making their wartime work the basis for a
long-term career in computing.
For all its importance, colossus and the rest of the Bretchley park op-
erations remained unknown to the public for many decades. At war's end,
winston churchill-fearing that the technology could be used by an en- Figure 1.4
emy in a future war-ordered the colossus computers to be destroyed.T2 Former operator Eleanor Ireland with rebuilt Colossus at Bletchley Park, 2001
Photo by author.
only many years later, when the publication of some declassified docu-
ments revealed the secrers of Bletchley Park, did the machines and their
inventors and operators begin to receive credit for their crucial wartime with Colossus. Newman went to Manchester University, where he helped
role. Today Bletchley Park is a museum and features a rebuilt, working design the first Manchester computer, known as the "Baby."7s As noted
Colossus (figure "l .4).7i academics, these men possessed the intellectual authority to lead comput-

The extreme secrecy of the colossus p:oject hindered both men and ing projects even without credit for their wartime work, and they were
women from reaping the full benefits of their work. The wrens were pro- able to apply knowledge that they had acquired from the Colossus proj-
hibited from even mentioning ro a prospective emproyer that they had ect without having to specify the source of their inspiration.

had experience with computers. Tommy Flowers and his engineers at
Dollis Hill received neither credit for their ertraordinary contribution
nor support for building the next generation of computers at the post
office, which they might have been granted had their wartime achieve-
ments been known.Ta In contrast, the men working on the more theoreti-
cal side of computing-Max Newman and Alan Turing-were able to put
their experience to immediate use following the war. Alan Turing went
to work on the Automatic computing Engine (ACE) project at the Na-
tional Physical Laboratory, drawing up plans for a stored-program elec-
tronic computer in late 1945. These plans vrere much more complete and
specific than the largely abstrac EDVAC Report authored by
John von
Neumann a few months earlier, reflecting Turing's firsthand experience
Limited training also blocked women from moving on from Bletchley
Park to computing careers. Few of the women who operated Colossus
had mathematical backgrounds, and the gendered division of labor and
security-driven compartmentalization of knowledge at Bletchley Park
kept them from gaining theoretical knowledge of how the computers
worked. Also, there was no direct commercial spinoff from the Colossus
machines (as there was from ENIAC), so the operators could not translate
their machine-specific hands-on skills to a peacetime job.
For the Moore School women, all of these factors were reversed. They
had been encouraged to learn every aspect of the machine's design and
operation and had been given mathematical training. ENIAC itself was
not destroyed like the Colossi. Instead, it was transferred in January 1947
 .36 Chapter 1
to the Ballistics Research Laboratory at Aberdeen, where it was used until
1955. At least seven additional women became ENIAC programmers at
Aberdeen.'6 Most important,in March 1,946Eckertand Mauchly formed
the Electronic Control Company (soon renamed the Eckert-Mauchly
Computing Corporation) to commercialize their invention. ENIAC pro-
grammers Betty Snyder and Jean Jennings irnmediately joined the new
company, which was bought by Remington Rand in 1950 and produced
the very successful UNIVAC computer.
The ENIAC women who did not stay in programming were constrained
more by social convention than by the job market. Most remained in their
jobs for a year or two after the war but then left voluntarily to marry or
have children. Marlyn Wescoff left the group in December 1,946 to be
married. Frances Bilas, Ruth Lichterman, and Kay McNulty continued to
work with the ENIAC after it was moved ro the Ballistics Research Labo-
ratory. Bilas left in 1948 when she was expecting her first child, McNulty
left the same year to marry John Mauchlg and Lichterman left after two
years to get married. None of the four returned to full-time computing
work, though McNulty assisted informally w-ith her husband's business
ventures. Although women of the 1940s felt some pressure to conform
to the role of full-time wife and mother, marriage was not necessarily a
bar to continued work as a programmer. Snyder married John Holberton
(who had been put in charge of ENIAC operations in June 1945) but
continued to work as a programmer and software researcher until 1983.
Jennings followed a different path, pursuing full-time work and family
serially: she remained a programmer until 1,951,,\eft. to raise a famlly,
returned to computin g in 1967 , and worked until 1985 as a project man-
ager and editor of technical publications.77 Their technical training and
experience gave the ENIAC women some room to negotiate a balance
between traditional gender roles and new opportunities in computing.
One common experience for the Colossus and ENIAC women was
that neither group received public recognition for their work, either dur-
ing the war or for many decades afterward. At Bletchley Park, there was
complete secrecy: not even the'$7rens' families found out what they had
been doing until the 1980s. At Penn, horvever, the ENIAC was given a
showy debut in February 1946 that was rvell covered by the media. The
centerpiece of the event was the ballistics program created by Snyder and
Jennings, and the assembled reporters and VIPs were greatly impressed
that a trajectory could be calculated faster than the flight of the projectile
Breaking Codes and Finding Traiectories 37
78 yet Snyder and Jennings received no attention or official recogni-
tion for their contributions, and the programmers were not mentioned
the publicity for the event-an omission some of them felt keenly^ "I
remember not being invited to the luncheon" for the press,
Jennings recalled in 197'l . Snyder complained, "I
wasn't photogenic' and
wasn't included on any of the pictures of the entire stupid thing." KaY
noted ruefully, "None of us girls were ever introduced [at the
conferencel; we were just programmers."Te It was not until the fifti-
anniversary of the ENIAC that historians rediscovered and began to
the ENIAC women's contribution.s0
Historian Jennifer Light has argued that the erasure of the ENIAC
stemmed from a more general devaluing of women's labor
American sociery concluding that "the press conference and follow up
rendered invisible both the skilled labor required to set up the
and the gender of the skilled workers who did it."81 This
undoubtedly true, but the public image of ENIAC also reflected a view
'of computing that privileged machines over people (of either sex)' As Di-
anne Martin points out, press coverage of ENIAC depicted the computer
an autonomous "brain" that performed calculations with little reliance
humans.82 This distorted image was not simply the fault of ignorant
but also stemmed from the way that ENIAC was presented'
either the female programmers nor the many male engineers who as-
sisted Eckert and Mauchly received credit at the press conference. Yet
emphasized by Barkeley Fritz, who was one of the first male ENIAC
programmers to join Aberdeen in 7948, the machine would have been
worthless without the work of the programmers and engineers who came
before him: "success was achieved during this first time period largely
because of the availability of a dedicated and often brilliant group of men
and women who were available to make use of the new tool. These people
understood the problems they had to solve. They studied and learned the
characteristics of the new tool at their disposal, working around the clock
when necessary. \Tithout these skilled, dedicated people, ENIAC could
not have been the initial success that it was."83
Publicity materials prepared by the Moore school demonstrate how
human labor of both sexes was subtly erased. For example, one of the
"Basic Items for Publicity Concerning ENIAC' stated that ballistics cal-
culations had been reduced from "25 man-months of expert computers'
rime" to two hours on the ENIAC.84 But those two hours included neither
38 Chapter 1

the "feminine" work of preparing programs nor the "masculine" work

of machine maintenance (which was substantial, as component failures Seeking the Perfect Programmer: Gender and
were frequent in the early years of computing). The only work that is
Skill in Early Data Processing
given visibility and value in the press reports is the initial machine design.
Of course, to exalt hardware design as the main site of skill, creativify,
and importance in computing is also to reinforce the status of what was
and remains a male-dominated area. Gender stereotypes and assumptions
about the nature of computers were inextricably entwined.

Conclusion
qualifications for
[Electronic data processing managers'] lack of definition of the
has yet been estab-
The ENIAC and Colossus stories illustrate a number of themes that run irogr"rnnl.r, is iemarkabie. No set standard of prerequisites
iirn.a i" most companies, and the selection of programmers is often based on the
through this book. They explain how and why women became involved
EDP manager's intuition.
in computing from the earliest days, hinting at the appeal and rewards
Russakoff Hoos, "'When the Computer Takes over the Office," 19601
that were offered by these new occupations. They also show how attribu- -Ida
tions of technical expertise and the status and authority that flow from
In the early decades of digital computing, programming was seen as a me-
them have tended to follow social categories-specifically, gender-rath-
thodical process based on scientific principles, yet the practice of hiring
er than necessarily reflecting the demands of the job. At Bletchley Park,
seemed just the opposite. From the 1950s into the 7970s,
the organization of labor reinforced gender stereotypes even when this
employers and industry pundits complained a bout the difficulty of iden-
detracted from the work itself. At the Moore School, assumptions about
talented applicants. The comments quoted above, written by busi-
the nature of computing-the primacy of the machine and relative in-
ness sociologist Ida Russakoff Hoos, scolded the managerial readers of
significance of the humans directing it-obscured the important role of
the Haruard Business Reuiew for their lack of personnel standards for
the programmer and influenced how work and credit would be divided
electronic data processing (EDP), as computing was commonly known in
befween women and men.
the business world. They were echoed by Elmer Kubie, who had cofound-
The pioneering women of Colossus anC ENIAC made the most of the
ed one of the world's first software firms in 1955. In a 1,963 interview,
opportunities that they were given, despite a culture of unequal expecta-
Kubie identified "the principal problem in the industry today" as "the
tions. Some of the obstacles that they faced have since disappeared. Yet
matching of talent with growth," explaining that "The field has grown so
gender as a set of beliefs, roles, and practices has continued to be a factor
rapidly that the problem of selection and training of personnel has been
shaping the computing professions, even though the meanings of mascu-
a rather haphazard process."2 Surveying hiring practices in the United
line and feminine have varied over time and across cultures. Likewise, the
Kingdom, a manager for Rolls-Royce grumbled that "There is not a great
cultural meaning and power of computers, programming, and computer
deal of evidence to suggest that the selection procedures currently in use
science have been constantly in flux, appropriated and contested by vari-
in the majority of organisations in the United Kingdom are particularly
ous actors. This uncertain identity has sometimes been a source of frustra-
effectiver" adding that many managers simply chose staff "on hunch'"3
tion for computer professionals, as the following chapters illustrate. Yet
the fluidity of these two terms, gender and cotnputing,has also left open
L 7969 survey of EDP trade schools-70O of which had sprung up in
the United States to meet the surging demand for personnel-voiced a
a space for women to create their own meanings.
, common complaint among schools that "industry won't spell out exactly
 182 No/es
Chapter 1 ITar
1. Quoted in text accompanying exhibit on 'Wrens, Bletchley Park museum,
viewed September 2001.
2. Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC Papers, box 12, ff 11, De-
position of Jean J. Bartik, May 72, 1971, 32.
3. I am not concerned here with priority claims, bur there is considerable de-
bate in the historical literature about which machine deserves to be called the
first digital computer. The verdict depends on which aspects of the machine are
considered essential to the definition (for example, fully electronic rather than
electromechanical, stored program or reading programs from external media,
general purpose or specialized). Good overviews of the history of computing ma-
chines include Paul E. Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 7998), and Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray, Computer: A
History of the Information Machine, Sloan Technology Series (New Yorkr Basic
Books,1996).
4. David Alan Grier, "The Math Tables Project of the \fork Projects Administra-
tion: The Reluctant Start of the ComputingEra," Annals of the History of Com-
puting 20, no. 3 (1998 ): 33-50; David Alan Grier,When Computers'Were Human
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Mary Croarken, "Mary Edwards:
Computing for a Living in Eighteenth-Century England," Annals of the History
of Computing 25, no. 4 (2003):9-15.
5. Campbell-Kelly and AspraS Computer: A Historl.t of tbe Information Ma-
chine, 47-5'1..
6. rbid.
7. For Konrad Zuse, seeJ. A. N. Lee's history of computing site, http://ei.cs
.vt.edu/-historylZuse.html, which includes the transcript of a talk by Zuse on
computer design, and the site created by computer scientist Horst Zuse (Konrad's
son) at http://user.cs.tu-berlin.del-zuse/konrad-zuse.html.
8. See Raul Rojas and Ulf Hashagen, eds.,The First Computers: History and
Architectures (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), f.or more information on the first-
generation digital computers.
9. The origins of the stored-program concepr are the subject of continuing de-
bate. See rü(/illiam AspraS "The Stored Program Concept," IEEE Spectrum 27
(1,990):51, for an overview.
10. Jack Good, Donald Michie, and Geoffrey Timms, "General Report on Tun-
ny," Bletchley Park, 1945. The Tunny report, which describes Colossus and other
codebreaking machines at Bletchley Park, was ciassified until 2000. It is now
available online at the Alan Turing archive, http://www.alanturing.net/turing_
archive/archive/index/tunnyreportindex. html.
11. Parallel codebreaking activities in the United States included a navy-run oper-
ation at Arlington Hall near \üTashington, D.C., that focused on cracking Japanese
encryption. As at Bletchley Park, women played a key role operaring codebreak-
ing "bombes." Laurie Robertson, "Arlington Hall Station: The U.S. Army's l7orld
Notes 183
II Cryptoanalytic Center," Annals of the History of Computing 26, no. 2
(2004): 86-89.
12. Tony Sale provides a lucid, illustrated explanation of the Lorenz machine at
http://www.codesandciphers.org. uk /virtualbp/fish/fish.htm.
13. Given the limitations of surviving records, I have been unable to determine
the exact number of operators. I arrived at my estimate as follows: There were, at
the peak, twenfy women per shift (two at each of ten Colossus computers). There
were three shifts per day, for a total of sixty women. Because there was some turn-
over of personnel, the total number of women who worked on Colossus over the
course of the war is probably somewhat higher. By April 1945, the total number
'Wrens
of working in Max Newman's section, which included the Colossus and
Tunny operations and a tape registry, was 273. Good' Michie, and Timms, "Gen-
eral Report onTunny," 276.
14. Thomas H, Flowers, "D-Day at Bletchley Park," in Colossus: The Secrets of
Bletchley Park's Code-Breahing Computers, ed. B. Jack Copeland (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press,2005), 81. An assessment of the overall contribution of the
British codebreaking activities can be found in F. H. Hinsleg "The Influence of
Ultra in the Second'$forld War," in Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley
Park,ed. F. H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1.993).
15. "Ode to the Eniac," Chicago Daily Tribune, February '18,1946,72.
15. Campbell-Kelly and Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Ma-
chine, Sl-83.
17. Surnames in parentheses are later married names. For consistencSI refer to
the women throughout by the maiden names they had during the project.
18. Herman H. Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to Von Neumann (Princ-
eton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 234-235.
19. Quoted in uü. Barkley Fritz, "The'Women of ENIAC," Annals of the History
of Computing 18, no. 3 (1996\: 75.
20. David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression
and'War 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press,1.9991,778.
21. I am indebted to Amy Slaton for insights on this point. For the racial division
of technical labor, see Amy Slaton, Race, Rigor, and Selectiuity in U.S. Engineer'
ing: Tbe History of an Occupational Color Line (Cambridge: Harvard Universiry
Press,2010).
'Were 'Women,"
22. Jenniler S. Light, "'When Computers Technology and Cuhure
40, no. 3 (t999\ 461.
23. Quoted in Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Elea'
nor Rooseuelt: The Home Front in World'War II (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1,994),474.
24. Fritz, "The'Women of ENIAC," L4.
25. Quoted in \üü. Barkley Fritz, "ENIAC: A Problem Solver," Annals of the His-
tory of Computing 1.6,no.7 (1,994):28.
 184 Notes
25. Duringmy 2001 interview with Jean Jennings Bartik, she showed me the pro-
motion letter that officially changed her job title from computer (subprofessional
grade 6) to mathematician (professional grade 2) in January 1"946. Ensmenger
states that the ENIAC women were called coders,but this seems to be based solely
on a publication by Goldstine and von Neumann and does not match the usage
that I found in other published sources or interviews. Nathan Ensmenger, The
Computer Boys Take Ouer: Computers, Programnters, and the Politics of Techni-
cal Expertise (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010), 35.
27. There were a few female mathematicians at Bletchley Park, but apparently
none was assigned to the Colossus area, which was a relatively small part of the
mathematicians' work.
28. B. Jack Copeland et al.,"Mr. Newman's Section," in Colossus: The Secrets of
Bletchley Park's Code-Breaking Computers, ed. B. Jack Copeland (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 20061, 159 . About 4 percent of British men received college
degrees in 1950, the first year after 1,939 for which statistics are available. Central
Statistical Office (UK), Annual Abstract of Statistics, vol. 97 (London: Her Maj-
estyt Stationery Office, 1960).
29. My description of the experiences of Bletchley Park'Sürens draws on Gwen-
doline Page, ed., We Kept tbe Secret: Noaa It Can Be Told-Some Memories of
Pembroke V'Wrens (Vymondham, UK: Reeve, 2002); lvlarionHill, Btetchley Park
People: Churchill's " Geese That Neuer Cackled" (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 2OO4); and
B. Jack Copeland, "Colossus and the Rise of the Modern Computer," in Colossus:
The Secrets of Bletchlq Park's Code-Breaking Compuiers, ed. B. Jack Copeland
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 101-115.
30. Eleanor lreland, interview by Janet Abbate, April 23, 2001. The compurer
that Ireland saw was presumably the Heath Robinson, a protorype of the Colos-
sus that had two tape drives instead of one. In the Colossus, the second tape drive
was replaced by a set of vacuum tubes. The Heath Robinson was installed at
Bletchley Park in June 1943, and the Colossus in December 1943.
31. James K. Lively, "Technical History of 6813th Signals Security Detachment,"
1,945, 1 5 . 55. Adele K. Goldstine, "A Report on the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Inte-
32. Copeland, "Colossus and the Rise of the Modern Computer," 156.
33. Eleanor Ireland, interview by Ianet Abbate, April 23, 2001. Thanks to an
anonymous reviewer for suggesting the parallel with housework.
34. Quoted in Fritz, "The'Women of ENIAC," 22.The other programmer with-
out a math degree was Betty Snyder.
35. Jean Jennings Bartik, interview by Janet Abbate, August 3,Z0OI.
36. Quoted in Fritz, "The !7omen of ENIAC," 20.
37. Good, Michie, and Timms, "General Report on Tunny,,'278.
38. Eleanor Ireland, interview by Janet Abbate, April 23, 2001; Copeland et al.,
"Mr. Newman's Secrion," 762; Good, Michie, and Timms, ..General Report on
Tunnyr" 278.
39. Archives of the university of Pennsylvania, UPD 8.4, Moore school of Erec-
trical Engineering, Office of the Director Records, 1931-7948,box 46: ENIAC
Notes 185
Material (date approx. 1'940-1950), folder "DAF, Early Computer Aberdeen
Course," "Course in Mathematics for Ballistics Computations."
40. Quoted in Fritz, "The Women of ENIAC," 23.
41. Goldstine, interview with Jennifer Light, t994, quoted in Light, "'When Com-
puters'Were Women," 469.
42. Fritz,"The Women of ENIAC," 19.
43. Ensmenger calls the ENIAC programmers "glorified clerical workers." Ens-
menger, The Computer Boys Take Ouer,35; see also Light, "When Computers
'Were'!(/omen."
44. John R. Mauchlg "Interview by Henry Tropp," January 1'0,1973, Computer
Oral History Collection, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American
History, #796,box 13,f13, n.p. (7th page from end of ms.).
45. Good, Michie, and Timms, "General Report on Tunny," 334.
45. Copeland et al., "Mr. Newman's Section," 763-I64.Ireland pointed out that
when a Colossus was rebuilt in 1,996 for the new Bletchley Park museum, the
male engineers discovered just how tricky it was to thread the tapes: "It took
them three hours to get the tape right, and we all thought that was very amusing!"
Eleanor Ireland, interview by Janet Abbate, April 23, 2001.
47. tbid.,763.
48. Flowers, "D-Day at Bletchley Park," 98.
49. Copeland et al., "Mr. Newman's Section," 164.
50. Ibid., 163,
51. Copeland, "Colossus and the Rise of the Modern Computer," 1.59,164-765.
52. Good, Michie, and Timms, "General Report on Tunng" 278.
53. Ibid., 279. "Chi-breaking" meant discovering the settings of the first five
wheels on the Lorenz machine.
54. Livelg "Technical History of 6813th Signals Security Detachment," 20.
grator and Computer)," University of Philadelphia, Moore School of Electrical
Engineering, Philadelphia, 1 945).
55. Later, both Herman and Adele Goldstine claimed credit for preparing the
ENIAC demonstration program. Light, "'$fhen Computers'Were'Women," 472,
478. But the programmers themselves denied that the Goldstines had either
taught them programming or created the program in question. See Archives of the
University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC Papers, box 15, ff 5, "Deposition of Kathleen
Rita Mauchly," ca. 7977, 322-324; and Jean Jennings Bartik's description of pre-
paring the program in Fritz, "The'Women of ENIAC."
57 . Jean Jennings Bartik, interview by Janet Abbate, August 3,201't.
58. "Deposition of Kathleen Rita Mauchly," 322.
59. Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC Papers, box 16, ff 3, "De-
position of Ruth L. Teitelbaum," ca.797L,54-55.
 186 Notes
60. Quoted in Fritz, "The Women of ENIAC," 20.
61. Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC Papers, box 14, ff 7,,,De-
position of Frances D. Holberton," 1971,70-71: also "Deposition of Kathleen
Rita Mauchly," 144.
52. Quoted in Fritz, "The S7omen of ENIAC," 20.
63. Fritz, "ENIAC: A Problem Solver," 25;Fritz, "The'Süomen of ENIAC," 14.
64. Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC Papers, box 72, ff 1!,
"Deposition of fean J. Bartik," ca. 7977,34.
65. Quoted in Fritz, "The rü(/omen of ENIAC," 21. BRL is the Ballistics Research
Laboratory at Aberdeen.
66. Quoted in Fritz, "The Iü(/omen of ENIAC," 21.
67. Ruth Milkman, Gender at'l(/ork: The Dynamics cf Job Segregation by Sex
during'world-war II (chicago: university of Illinois Press, 1987). Alice Kessler-
Harris (7982) nores that American women's postwar employment level was not
significantly higher than it would have been without the war (277-278).penny
Summerfield, 'women workers in the second world war: Production and patri-
archy in Conflict (London; Routledge, 1989), argues that in the United Kingdom,
"the implementation of official policy [women's mobilization] during the war
did little to alter but rather reinforced the unequal position of women in society"
(185).
58. Eleanor Ireland, interview by Janet Abbate, April 23, 2001.
69. Grier, Vhen Computers Were Human,288; Light. .,When Computers rü7ere
'Women," 479.
70. "Course in Mathematics for Ballistics Computations."
71., Eleanor Ireland suggested rhat some of the'sfrens who worked on colossus
went on to work with computers for the British navy in ceylon, but I have been
unable to verify this.
72. Two colossus machines were kept for the use of Government communica-
tions Headquarters (the newly renamed codebreaking agency). They were actively
used for fifteen more years until 1960, and their exact use is still classified. cope-
land, "Colossus and the Rise of the Modern Computer," 173.
73. For a description of the colossus rebuild, see http://www.codesandciphers
.org.uk/lorenz/rebuild. htm.
74. Harry Fensom, "How Colossus Vas Built ani Operated,', in Colossus: The
secrets of Bletchley Park's code-Breaking computers,ed. B. Jack copeland (ox-
ford: Oxford University Press,2006), 302.
75, Copeland, "Colossus and the Rise of the Modern Compurer,', 10g, 1g6. Co-
peland argues that colossus was the "missing link" that showed Turing and New-
man how to build a stored-program compurer: "In 1936 [the year ihat Turing
wrote on computable Numbersl the universal Turing machine existed only as an
idea. Right from the start Turing was interested in the possibility of building such
a machine, as to some extent was Newman. But it was not until their Bletchley
Park days that the dream of building a miraculously fast ail-purpose compuring
machine took hold of them. Before the war rhey knew of no practical way to
Notes 187
construct a stored-program computer; it was at Bletchley that they learned how
it might be done. Large-scale electronics was the secret." Copeland, "Colossus
and the Rise of the Modern Computer," 105. Copeland claims that Newman
(and later Turing) taught engineers Tom Kilburn and F. C. \üilliams, who built the
Manchester machines, how to design an electronic computer (112).
76. Fritz, "ENIAC: A Problem Solver," mentions Gloria Gordon Bolotsky, Lila
Todd Butler, Ester Gersten, l7inifred (I7ink) Smith Jonas, Marie Malone, Helen
Mark, and Hom6 McAllister Reitwiesner (30).
77. McNulty obituarS May 4, 2006, http:llwww.chestnuthilllocal.com/is-
sues/2006.05.O4/obituaries.html; Fritz, "The'Women of ENIAC"; Jean Jennings
Bartik, interview by Janet Abbate, August 3,207t.
78. C. Dianne Martin, "ENIAC: Press Conference That Shook the Vorld," IEEE
Technology and Society Magazine 14, no.4 (1995): 3-10.
79. "Deposition of Jean f. Bartik," 65; "Deposition of Frances D. Holbenon," 81;
Kathy Kleiman,The Computers:The Untold Story of the RemarkableWomen'Who
P r o grammed tb e EN I AC (Documentary Preview), 20 0 7, http:l I eniacprogrammers
.org. On the other hand, McNulty recalled being invited to the press lunch. "De-
position of Kathleen Rita Mauchly," 707-702. The lack of public acclaim did not
mean that the programmers went completely unrecognized, For example, Jean Jen-
nings and Adele Goldstine created a program ln fall 1.946 to model the reflection
of shock waves for A. H. Täub of the University of rü(/ashington, and Jennings noted
that "I did receive a letter of commendation for the significant help we had given."
"Deposition of Jean J. Bartik," 49; see also Fritz, "The'Women of ENIAC," 21.
80. See Mitchell Marcus and Atsushi Akera, "Exploring the Architecture of an
Early Machine: The Historical Relevance of the ENIAC Machine Architecture,"
Annals of th e History of Computing 1 8, no. 1 (199 6) z t7 -24; Fritz, "The'Women
of ENIAC." Kathy Kleiman wrote one of the first papers on the ENIAC women
in 1986 as an undergraduate in sociology. She later shot documentary footage of
many of the programmers, although a finished documentary has not been pro-
duced as of this writing. See http://eniacprogrammers.org.
81. Light, "Whin Computers Were'$ü'omen," 474.
82. Martin, "ENIAC: Press Conference That Shook the'S7orld."
83. Fritz, "ENIAC: A Problem Solver," 31.
84. Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, UPD 8,4, Moore School of Elec-
trical Engineering, Office of the Director Records, 1937-7948, box 48, folder
"PX - Publiciry - ENIAC," "Basic Items for Publicity Concerning ENIAC," De-
cember 27,7945.
Chapter 2
1. Ida Russakoff Hoos, "\ühen the Computer Takes over the Office," Haruard
Business Reuiew 38 (1950): 1.04. Hoos worked for the Berkeley Insritute for In-
dustrial Relations.
History of Computing Recoding Gender
Villiam Aspray, editor
'Women's Changing Participation in Computing
.Janet Abbate, Recoding Gender: Women's Changing Participation in Computing
John Agar, The Gouernment Machine: A Reuolutionary History of tbe Computer
'William
Aspray and Paul E. Ceruzzi, The Internet anC American Business
'William
Aspray,.lohn uon Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing
Charles J. Bashe, Lyle R. Johnson,.fohn H. Palmer, and Emerson lf. Pugh, lBMt
Ear\,Computers
Martin Campbell-Kelly,From Airline Reseruations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A His-
tory of the Softutare Industry
Janet Abbate
Paul E. Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing
I. Bernard Cohen, Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer
I. Bernard Cohen and Gregory rW. \üelch, editors, Makin' Numbers: Howard Ai-
ken and tbe Computer
John Hendry, lnnouating for Failure: Gouernment Pclicy and tbe Early British
Computer Industry
Michael Lindgren, Glory and Failure: The Difference Engines of Johann Müller,
Charles Babbage, and Georg and Eduard Scbeutz
David E. Lundstrom, A Few Good Men from Uniuac
Ren6 Moreau, The Computer Comes of Age: The People, the Hardtuare, and the
Softu.,are
Arthur L. Norberg, Computers and Commerce: A Study oiTechnology and Man-
agement at Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company, Engineering Research Associ-
ates, and Remington Rand, 1945-19.17
Emerson W. Pugh, Building IBM: Shaping an Industry and lts Technology
Emerson V. Pugh, Memories That Shaped an Industry
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370 Systems
Kent C. Redmond and Thomas M. Smith, From Whirlt,ind to MITRE: The RüD
Story of the SAGE Air Defense Computer
Alex Roland with Philip Shiman, Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for
Mach ine Intelligence, 1 9 8 3-1 9 9 3
Raril Rojas and Ulf Hashagen, editors, The First Computers: History and
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Dorothy Stein, Ada: A Life and a Legacy
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Recoding gender : women's changing participation in computing / Janet Abbate.
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Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Rediscovering Women's History in Computing 1

1 Breaking codes and Finding Tiaiectories: women at the Dawn of

the Digital Age 1l
2 Seeking the Perfect Programmer: Gender and skill in Early Data Pro-
cessing 39

3 Software crisis or Identity crisis? Gender, Labor, and Programming

Methods 73

4 Female Entrepreneurs: Reimagining Software as a Business 113

5 Gender in Academic Computing; Alternative Career Paths and

Norms 145
Appendix: Oral History Interviews Conducted for This Project 777
Notes 1.79
Bibliography 225
Index 243