Refrigerator Ladies

Benvenuti, Silvia ; Pagli, Linda

Matematica, cultura e società, Série 1, Tome 1 (2016) no. 1, pp. 51-64

Résumé

The ENIAC, the first electronic, digital, general purpose, computer, was part of a secret project of the US defense during World War II. Six young women mathematicians planned its software, while programming languages, or even manuals and operating systems, were not available; without knowing the architecture of the new computer, they became familiar with it and they performed complicated calculations of ballistic trajectories, founding this way the modern programming. In 1946, with the execution of the first program, the project became public and had enormous reverberations in the press, but the ENIAC's success was attributed only to the engineers who built it. The history of its programmer girls got lost. For a long time the young women photographed together with the huge machinery full of plugs and wires were confused with models posing next to an electrical appliance! Eventually, in the eighties, an Harvard programmer rebuilt the story, interviewing some of them directly and highlighting the incredible work they were able to carry on.