Volume 1, Issue 7
Women in Computing
In celebration of March: Women's History Month, CS Bits & Bytes is featuring stories of contributions by women to computing.
Women have significantly impacted computing throughout history!
Ada Lovelace.
Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.
The very first computer programmer was a woman born in the 1800s! In 1842, Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician, wrote notes on a newly invented machine by Charles Babbage called the Difference Engine and later the Analytical Engine. The engine is now recognized as an early model for a computer, so early that it was entirely mechanical and used no electricity. The notes included a method for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers. Her method is recognized as the world’s first computer program. To see a video of the Difference Engine in action, go to: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/05/exclusive-video/.
The ENIAC and some of it's "programmers."
Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.
During World War II, six women were hired to “program” the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), the first general purpose electronic digital computer developed to compute tactical trajectories. Previously, these trajectories were computed by hand and required doing thousands of mathematical calculations. These “Women of ENIAC” were the first professional programmers. Programming then was very different than it is now as the machine was controlled by electrical cables that were plugged into boards in different configurations.
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper.
Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.
By the 1960s, computers were controlled not by changing their wiring, but by changing software, that is instructions stored within a computer itself. These instructions were very detailed and difficult for humans to use. Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (1906-1992) is credited for inventing the first compiler, a computer program that translates programming language (something easy for humans to understand) into machine language (instructions the computer understands). She also co-invented the computer programming language COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language). In 1973, she became the first person from the U.S. and the first woman of any nationality to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. She is believed to have coined the term “debugging” after she removed a moth that was caught in her computer. Rear Admiral Hopper was the oldest commissioned Officer in the Navy when she retired in 1986.
Frances Allen.
Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.
Frances Allen was the first female recipient of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)’s Turing Award (often considered the Nobel Prize of computing) in 2006. She was a pioneer in the field of optimizing compilers, compilers that translate programming languages to machine languages for really fast, efficient programs. Her work established the feasibility of modern machine and language independent optimizers that enable computer code to run on multiple platforms. Allen worked at IBM for 45 years and was the first female IBM Fellow. She also was involved in intelligence work on programming languages and security codes for the National Security Agency.
