Computers female War
While
filming a documentary about a women's club of Philadelphia, the filmmaker interviewed LeAnn Erickson sisters Shirley Blumberg Melvin and Doris Blumberg Polsky. The twins have long since retired, in passing mentioned a different job they have done during the Second World War were "computers" female U.S. Army.
Computer at that time there was a machine, was a kind of work. Long before they are entrepreneurs, activists, mothers and grandparents, the twins were recruited by the U.S. military to perform ballistics calculations . They worked six days a week, often at double or triple shifts, with dozens of other women.
The trajectories of weapons that they calculated were handed over to soldiers on the battlefield and bombers in the air. Some of his colleagues in the program continued to work on the first computer job overall, the ENIAC .
It was not a factory job, but they also did their part to help the war effort.
The filmmaker was surprised. "What we are talking ? I'ma historian and I never heard of it! Women working with math and science in secret? I did not know! "
memories and witnesses of these things were disappearing, Erickson noted. And the truth about women in technology and the first computer programmer went along.
His mission to redeem the past materialized in the documentary "Top Secret Rosies: The Female of World War II Computers ," which debuted last year on TV and recently came out on DVD.
" There were thousands of women doing this work, by the United States, and we just did not know ," Erickson said.
The documentary focuses on women in selected schools and colleges to work in University of Pennsylvania in 1940. They were placed in collective dormitories and passed through a rigorous introduction to the calculation of ballistics to do the job. They lived together, worked and played together.
Jean Jennings Bartik was one of the computers female. In 1945 she graduated in mathematics, and immediately received a telegram urging him to submit quickly. She took a night train and headed to Philadelphia.
There he learned the manual calculations and operation of the analyzer clumsy that sped up the process - its accuracy depend the service of their colleagues and the mechanic who fed their belts and gears.
The war came in 1945, but only two months after arriving, Bartik was hired for a new project - an electronic computer that could do calculations faster than any human being. The Electronic Numeric Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), created by scientists John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert Jr., weighed over 30 tons and contained 18,000 thermionic valves. Could recognize numbers, add, subtract, multiply, divide and perform other basic functions.
Men built the machine, but Bartik and her colleagues were scheduled to each valve and learned to make it work . Soon after, they have demonstrated to the military as the computer worked with the programmers starting the process and showing how to produce results. The giant machine was instantly calculations that take hours to be handmade.
But none of the programmers was invited to the celebration dinner that followed. Received no certificate or insignia of the military, and passed into oblivion .
His work during the war was not well known, and therefore left out of official history and development of information technology. Researchers say the reason for this is a reflection the culture of the time, which viewed women as temporary substitutes men.
However, since the film premiered, the story has already been shown in several schools and small theaters - and many requests for views appeared. There is always some kind of "veteran" in the audience and the applause is always effusive .
" The most important of these stories is that we can use them to shape the legacy for the next generation of women ," said Carolyn Leighton , founder of Women in Technology International. " We know as certainly as examples can inspire and affect choices. Not only for them but also by young men and women who can inspire .
Source: CNN, February 8, 2011.
Computer at that time there was a machine, was a kind of work. Long before they are entrepreneurs, activists, mothers and grandparents, the twins were recruited by the U.S. military to perform ballistics calculations . They worked six days a week, often at double or triple shifts, with dozens of other women.
The trajectories of weapons that they calculated were handed over to soldiers on the battlefield and bombers in the air. Some of his colleagues in the program continued to work on the first computer job overall, the ENIAC . It was not a factory job, but they also did their part to help the war effort.
The filmmaker was surprised. "What we are talking ? I'ma historian and I never heard of it! Women working with math and science in secret? I did not know! "
memories and witnesses of these things were disappearing, Erickson noted. And the truth about women in technology and the first computer programmer went along.
His mission to redeem the past materialized in the documentary "Top Secret Rosies: The Female of World War II Computers ," which debuted last year on TV and recently came out on DVD.
" There were thousands of women doing this work, by the United States, and we just did not know ," Erickson said.
The documentary focuses on women in selected schools and colleges to work in University of Pennsylvania in 1940. They were placed in collective dormitories and passed through a rigorous introduction to the calculation of ballistics to do the job. They lived together, worked and played together.
Jean Jennings Bartik was one of the computers female. In 1945 she graduated in mathematics, and immediately received a telegram urging him to submit quickly. She took a night train and headed to Philadelphia. There he learned the manual calculations and operation of the analyzer clumsy that sped up the process - its accuracy depend the service of their colleagues and the mechanic who fed their belts and gears.
The war came in 1945, but only two months after arriving, Bartik was hired for a new project - an electronic computer that could do calculations faster than any human being. The Electronic Numeric Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), created by scientists John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert Jr., weighed over 30 tons and contained 18,000 thermionic valves. Could recognize numbers, add, subtract, multiply, divide and perform other basic functions.
Men built the machine, but Bartik and her colleagues were scheduled to each valve and learned to make it work . Soon after, they have demonstrated to the military as the computer worked with the programmers starting the process and showing how to produce results. The giant machine was instantly calculations that take hours to be handmade.
But none of the programmers was invited to the celebration dinner that followed. Received no certificate or insignia of the military, and passed into oblivion .
His work during the war was not well known, and therefore left out of official history and development of information technology. Researchers say the reason for this is a reflection the culture of the time, which viewed women as temporary substitutes men.
However, since the film premiered, the story has already been shown in several schools and small theaters - and many requests for views appeared. There is always some kind of "veteran" in the audience and the applause is always effusive . " The most important of these stories is that we can use them to shape the legacy for the next generation of women ," said Carolyn Leighton , founder of Women in Technology International. " We know as certainly as examples can inspire and affect choices. Not only for them but also by young men and women who can inspire .
Source: CNN, February 8, 2011.
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