Her name is Jean Jennings Bartik.
Jean graduated high school at a young age of 16 and was the only female student in her degree of Mathematics at Northwest Missouri State University. She was recruited by the US Army in 1945 as a human "computer" to calculate the firing trajectories of artillery during the WWII.
To bring the time into perspective,
- 15 cents for a gallon of gas
- $1000 for a brand new car
- 40 cents = minimum wage
- $200 a month was the average salary of a worker
- There were only 5000 television sets in the entire nation
Jean was assigned to work with another lady named Betty and if they had any questions, they were told to ask their mentor (John) whenever he was in his office and they did so quite a bit. Jean describes Betty as a woman who could analyze and solve problems in her sleep and that often she would show up the next morning with a solution to a former problem and most of the time she'd be right.
The women were not recognized for their many accomplishments for many years. It wasn't until a friend put their story into a Wall Street Journal article that people began to recognize these women and Jean for their contributions to programming.
I don't want to make this too long, but an excerpt from one of Jean's published works The Technical Camelot states the following to illustrate her working situation:
"There once was a congenial spot
where ideas flowed so free-l-ly
and designs were done so speed-l-ly
where all them forgot
frontiers weren't pierced so eas-i-ly
No one believed in not
in Technical Camelot.
If you're interested in watching an hour long presentation/interview with Jean Jennings Bartik taken in 2008, click here to watch this video.
Jean worked with the mentality that nothing is impossible. She's definitely a true pioneer in computer programming.
2 comments:
Hey, great research. Thanks for posting this. It's so cool to hear about people who have worked to make our lives that much cooler.
Thanks for the information! My mother was one of the women who did the math in an adjacent room with the results from the ENIAC.
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