Proving ground : the untold story of the six women who programmed the world's first modern computer / Kathy Kleiman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kleiman, Kathy, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women computer programmers--United States--Biography.

Women computer programmers.

Computer programmers--United States--Biography.

Computer programmers.

ENIAC (Computer).

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xix, 296 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Proving ground : the untold story of the 6 women who programmed the world's 1st modern computer

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group, 2022.

Summary:

"After the end of World War II, top-secret research continued across the United States as engineers and programmers rushed to complete their confidential assignments. Among them were six pioneering women, tasked with figuring out how to program the world's first general-purpose, programmable, all-electronic computer - a machine built to calculate a single ballistic trajectory in twenty seconds rather than forty hours by human hand - even though there were no instruction codes or programming languages in existence. But their story, never told to the reporters and scientists who thronged the huge computer after it became public, was lost. Kathy Kleiman, through meticulous research and vivid prose, brings these women back to life, and back into the historical record. For more than two decades, she met with four of the original six ENIAC Programmers, poured over documentation and images, and recorded extensive oral histories with the women about their work. She found stories that had been relegated and dismissed by even computer history experts, who had assumed the women in the old black-and-white pictures with ENIAC were nothing more than models. PROVING GROUND is a character-driven narrative that restores these women to their rightful place as technological revolutionaries. As the tech world continues to struggle with gender imbalance and its far-reaching consequences, the story of the ENIAC Programmers' groundbreaking work is more urgently necessary than ever before, and PROVING GROUND is the celebration they deserve"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

The double doors open

Looking for women math majors

We were strangers there

Nestled in a corner of the base

Give other people as much credit as you give yourself

We found things in a not very good state

Adding machines and radar

3436 Walnut Street

The monster in the basement

The lost memo

"Give Goldstine the money"

Dark days of the war

"All that machinery just to do one little thing like that"

The kissing bridge

Are you scared of electricity?

Learning it her way

Surrounded by vultures

The dean's antechamber

A new project

Divide and conquer

A sequencing of the problem

A tremendously big thing

Programs and pedaling sheets

Bench tests and best friends

Parallel programming

Sines and cosines

The ENIAC room is theirs!

The last bugs before demonstration day

Demonstration day, February 15, 1946

A strange afterparty

Hundred-year problems and programmers needed

The Moore school lectures

Their own adventures

ENIAC 5 in and around Aberdeen

A new life

Epilogue.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Scott fund bookplate.

ISBN:

9781538718285

1538718286

OCLC:

1257293187

Publisher Number:

40031299594