
Kay Mauchly and ENIAC: Girl figures out how to program giant computer [video] - quickfox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jh5SCM75Xg
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BWStearns
It's wild to hear the sentence "the divider/square rooter was't up yet",
referring to a physical panel. Then the next sentence basically points out
that there's no documentation or reference work of any kind period. Those were
seriously walking-to-school-uphill-both-ways-in-the-snow times. It's sad that
history didn't give the IAS/Princeton girls more credit on the first pass,
though it's good that that seems to be changing.

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reidman
Why refer to these women as 'girls'? It'd certainly stick out if anyone said
that a bunch of 'boys' had learned to program a computer – it would be
implied/assumed that children were doing the programming.

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sdegutis
I've always associated the word "girl" more with gender than age, so it's very
natural for me to refer to a woman as a "girl" when talking to someone
informally. On the other hand, in my mind "boy" has a strong association with
with age as well as gender, but "guy" doesn't. So "guys" and "girls" are my
generic go-to words when referring to someone's gender without regard to their
age. I'm guessing I'm probably not an oddity, since I acquired these
associations while growing up with mainstream media like most people.

~~~
tamana
The words are ambiguous and overlap with a lot of sexist and even racist
(calling all Black men "boy") behaviors, so it is unclear sometimes if a
particular usage is sexist

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basicplus2
it comes across as pretty patronising to me... it sounds like all women don't
really get any more mature than when they get to something like 13 years
old... I can understand why women get steamed up over things like this.

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gravypod
Since when is any of this news? Almost every early computing project had women
on the staff.

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icebraining
HN is not just for news.

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AlbertoGP
I didn't know about her; the Wikipedia entry is at:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Antonelli](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Antonelli)

In another page she talks at length about her life:
[https://sites.google.com/a/opgate.com/eniac/Home/kay-
mcnulty...](https://sites.google.com/a/opgate.com/eniac/Home/kay-mcnulty-
mauchly-antonelli)

The rest of the comment is quotes from that page because it's quite long but I
found it very interesting:

 _The Differential Analyzer room was marked as a “Restricted” area and the
door to it was kept locked. It was also the only air-conditioned room in the
Moore School. It was air conditioned to maintain a constant temperature so the
Analyzer hardware would not be affected by temperature changes because metal
expands and contracts as the temperature goes up and down._

 _I’m not sure how restricted the analyzer room was the first summer I was
there, the summer of 1942, because it was ungodly hot that summer and the
professors would come down and use the room for meetings. Pres Eckert and a
group of engineers were working on the roof of the Moore School under a
contract with MIT. It was for radar studies. It was hot, they were all in
shorts except Pres, and they would come in the Analyzer room to cool off._

[...]

 _The ENIAC had a feature that helped test a program as well as the hardware.
It could be set to run at full speed, 100,000 cycles /pulses per second. Or it
could be set to run one-add time at a time. There were 20 pulses in an add-
time so it stopped at every 20 pulses. Or it could be set to run one pulse at
a time. This gave the operator the chance to look at the state of the machine
at these various intervals to determine just when an error had occurred. These
controls were mounted on a small unit that could be held in the hand. It was
attached to a flexible cable so it was a remote control. As operators, our job
was to track down where an error had occurred. Once we found out which tube
was malfunctioning it was up to the maintenance man, either Homer Spence or
Goldstein, an army corporal, to replace the failing unit._

[...]

 _The worst thing that happened to John was the security clearance problem. It
started in 1949. That was when they were building the Binac. When the notice
of his denial of clearance came in, Mr. Straus was still alive. He said that
he knew Hoover personally and he would get it cleared up. The company was not
doing any work that involved security devices, they were just building
computers. Straus did get it cleared up._

 _It was strange that each time his security was questioned, it came from the
Philadelphia Ordnance Department. When I got John’s FBI file, it didn’t tell
me where the information came from. But, it always came from Philadelphia. It
was so persistent.._

 _This file shows that John was a subscriber to Consumer Reports which was
declared communist oriented. Also, it shows him as a member of the Association
of Philadelphia Scientists. John declared that he never joined such an
organization The only thing he could figure out was that he may have put his
name on a list for literature at some time and they took that as joining. He
was also accused of hiring security risks, such as Bob Shaw._

 _Bob was a brilliant engineer and an albino with very limited eyesight. Bob
owned a car. He could not see well enough to drive so he had various friends
chauffeur him around. One time, one of his friends asked to borrow the car to
drive to Washington, D. C. The friend drove it to Washington on a weekend when
there was a parade that was considered pinko-oriented. Bob’s car was parked on
the street while the chauffeur visited a friend. The police went along the
street writing down license plate numbers. They traced the car to Bob. Bob
wasn’t even there. Bob was also cited as getting various organization
newsletters._

[...]

 _All the years I gave talks about the ENIAC, I always talked about it as
John’s story, not my story. Although I mentioned that I had been an ENIAC
Programmer, it was just in passing._

[...]

 _The only thing that I really regret is that Pres and I did not write our
book about the ENIAC, EDVAC and Univac. Pres was always very angry about the
lies that were told and copied from one book to the next, He said that they
could go ahead and write their books, but he and I would write one telling the
real story._ [...] _Somehow, we were wrapped up in our lives and never got
around to writing the book._

 _If I am remembered at all, I would like to be remembered as my family
storyteller. It has been a great life._

