WHEN COMPUTERS WERE FEMALE

THE PIONEERS OF PROGRAMMING WERE SIX WOMEN

- BY Roland Schulz

THE ORDER WAS given to select six computers that were neither pregnant nor married. Their task: secret. Their work: crucial to the war effort. Everything else would be revealed after they had been selected.

At that time, there were more than 200 computers in the service of the US Army, i.e., women and men who did calculations. Rumours immediately spread among them about the secret project involving a mysterious machine so new that it did not even have a name yet. Every one of the computers wanted to get their hands on it, including Jean Jennings.

Jennings, a 20-year-old brunette beauty, was a typical computer of those days at the end of World War II: she was fast, precise, and so proficient that she worked exclusively on third-order nonlinear differential equations. No one was surprised that she was a woman. Back then, when the digital revolution was just beginning, almost all computers were women.

When Jennings spoke to the officer who was selecting candidates for the secret project, he asked her what she knew about electricity. “R = V/I,” said Jennings. Ohm's law, she thought, should be enough to prove her knowledge. No, no, said the officer, that’s not what he meant—was she afraid of electricity? Jennings looked at him. Afraid? Of a physical phenomenon? “I’m not afraid,” she said.

Soon after, she received the news. Jennings had been chosen—one of six women who would become legends in the history of computer science: they programmed the world's first electronic computer.