Jean Jennings Bartik 1924-2011
CHANGE THE WORLD
"For many years in the computing industry, the hardware was it, the software was
considered an auxiliary thing."
- Jean Bartik
A blog by Tim Bartik
on early childhood programs and local economic development policies
Jean Jennings Bartik, 1924-2011 Posted on March 25, 2011 by timbartik
Jean Jennings Bartik, my mother, died on March 23, 2011. She was 86.
My mom lived a life full of determination, integrity, a sense of humor, and a positive philosophy. Those of us who knew her and loved her, and who were loved by her, will be forever shaped by her forceful nature. <snip>
For more than 50 years, the women of Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer
(ENIAC) were forgotten, and their role in programming the first all-electronic programmable computer and
creating the software industry lost. But this fall, old met young, and a great computer pioneer met
today's Internet pioneers. It happened in Silicon Valley and it happened at Google.
A little over a month ago, the Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mountain View honored Jean Bartik
with
its Fellows Award. This lifetime achievement award recognized her work as a programmer of the ENIAC and
leader
of the team to convert ENIAC to a stored program machine.
The Fellows Award was a rousing celebration of Bartik, Bob Metcalfe and Linus Torvalds. The next
night, Bartik returned to CHM to discuss her life story
in An Evening with Jean Jennings Bartik, ENIAC Pioneer. More than 400 people
attended.
They laughed at Bartik's descriptions of the ENIAC Programmers' exploits and enjoyed her stories of
“Technical Camelot,” Bartik's description of her days at Eckert and Mauchly Computer Corporation in the
1950s. This video captures the evening:
From a one room school house.
[Recorded Oct 22, 2008]
Born on a farm in Missouri, the sixth of seven children, Jean Jennings Bartik always went in search of
adventure. Bartik majored in mathematics at Northwest Missouri State Teachers College (now Northwest
Missouri
State University). During her college years, WWII broke out, and in 1945, at age 20, Bartik answered the
government's call for women math majors to join a project in Philadelphia calculating ballistics firing
tables for the artillery developed for the war effort. A new employee of the Army's Ballistics Research
Labs, she joined over 80 women calculating ballistics trajectories (differential calculus equations) by hand
-
her job title: "Computer".
Later in 1945, the Army circulated a call for computers for a new job with a secret machine. Bartik jumped
at
the chance and was hired as one of the original six programmers of ENIAC, the first all-electronic,
programmable computer. She joined Frances "Betty" Snyder Holberton, Kathleen McNulty Mauchly
Antonelli, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum and Frances Bilas Spence on this unknown
journey.
With ENIAC's 40 panels still under construction, and its 18,000 vacuum tube technology uncertain, the
engineers had no time for programming manuals or classes. Bartik and the other women taught themselves
ENIAC's operation from its logical and electrical block diagrams, and then figured out how to program
it.
They created their own flow charts, programming sheets, wrote the programs and entered them on the ENIAC
using
a challenging physical interface, which had hundreds of wires and 3,000 switches. It was an unforgettable,
wonderful experience.
On February 15, 1946, the Army revealed the existence of ENIAC to the public. In a special ceremony, the
Army
introduced ENIAC and its hardware inventors Dr. John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. The presentation
featured
its trajectory ballistics program, operating at a speed thousands of time faster than any prior
calculations.
The ENIAC women's programming worked perfectly - and conveyed the immense calculating power of ENIAC and
its ability to tackle the millennium problems that had previously taken a man 100 years to do. ENIAC
calculated in 20 seconds the trajectory of a shell that took 30 seconds to reach its target: literally
faster
than a speeding bullet!
But the Army never introduced the ENIAC women.
No one gave them any credit or discussed that day their critical role in this groundbreaking project. Their
faces, but not their names, became part of the beautiful press pictures of the ENIAC. For forty years, their
roles and their pioneering work were forgotten and their story lost to history. Bartik discusses what it
meant
to be overlooked, despite unique and pioneering work, and what it means to be discovered again.
In conversation with Linda O'Bryon, Bartik also discusses:
- Leading the programming team to convert ENIAC to one of the first stored-program machines (and working
with
Dr. John von Neumann on ENIAC's first instruction set)
- Working in "Technical Camelot" at the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, as programmer of
BINAC
and logic designer of UNIVAC
- Sexism and stereotypes at Remington Rand and her first-hand experience with the abuse of women and the
misuse of technology
- Friends and pioneers computing history should not forget, including tributes to Betty Holberton, Kay
Mauchly
Antonelli, the other ENIAC programmers, Dr. John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert
- and lastly, Some pieces of advice to live by...
Erickson's mission to recover the past became "Top Secret Rosies: The Female Computers of World War II," a documentary that debuted last year and was released on DVD last month.
"There were lots and lots of women, thousands of women doing this kind of work all across the United States," Erickson said. "We just don't know it."
Erickson's documentary focused on women plucked from high schools and colleges to work at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1940s. They moved into dorms and apartments and went through a rigorous introduction to ballistics calculations in order to do the job. It paid well, and the women were close. They played bridge, shared dinners and danced together in the university gardens when the war in Europe ended.
Personal Memories
She came to Google after being inducted as a fellow at the computer history museum around the
corner.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/jean-bartik-untold-story-of-remarkable.html
Ellen Spertus was Jean's host that day, and did this post here
http://ellenspertus.blogspot.com/2008/12/jean-bartik-visit-to-google.html
Jean's obituary on the CNN web site 3/25/11:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/03/23/computers.bartik.obit/
Jean Bartik dies at 86 Obituary in a Missouri newspaper:
http://www.maryvilledailyforum.com/features/x911071605/Pioneering-programmer
Here
is a great oral history recorded just a few years ago PDF