Susan kathy kleiman, your new book began with the photograph. We are going to look at that photograph. Tell me what it was that intrigued you. Kathy i was in Computer Science courses. The early courses mixed men and women, but the upper courses were almost all men, sometimes completely men. This photograph was intriguing because it has men and women in the picture. I thought that is interesting. Who are the women . The two in the front the visionary of eniac led the construction of building it. Who are the women . I wanted to know, because if they did something technical, i wanted to know. I took the photographs to my professor, he sent me to the cofounder of the Computer History Museum and she told me they were models. That they were not in the captions because they were just models. I did not think that was right. I went looking for the people in the picture and found them, all six of the original programmers were young women hired by the army during world war ii. Susan what era . Kathy this was taken in january of 1946, about six months after the war, the army decides to reveal the existence eniac of, so they took press pictures. The team got ready for demonstration day in february. Most of the poses show the height of the computer, it was eight feet tall, 30 tons, huge machine. They are positioning people around it. Susan what does the name eniac stand for . Kathy electronic integrator and computer. This was the worlds first generalpurpose, electronic computer. The first modern computer. Its the grandmother of everything we use today. Susan in your book, you say not only were women missing from i. T. History, but most of it focused on hardware. Kathy i wrote my junior and senior paper on these women. The subtitle was men are hard, women are soft. Men seem to be involved in the hardware. There seems to be a missing piece of computer history that had to do with software, and that seemed to be women. I was discovering the tip of the iceberg. There seemed to be dismissing history. Susan before we learn more, tell me about your life and career. How did a progress . How did it progress . Kathy i majored in social and political theory, and took Computer Science. My mother said study anything you want, but computing is where the jobs are. Of course, she was right. I was interested in computers. After college, i went to wall street and help manage on wall street, and i was responsible for making sure data flowed to the new york offices of morgan stanley. That was a lot of fun. I dont know if it was a mistake, but i asked i started studying for law school, i went to law school and came out and did Telecommunications Law which was wonderful. I came to washington, d. C. In my law firm works with the federal communications division. It was fascinating. In early net an early internet dispute came across my desk. It was the electronic frontier, there was nothing there. There were also no women there. I remember calling some eniac programmers that i wanted to go into this field, and they said of course. They were pioneers, supported me. It turns out i was one of the first people and women into internet law and policy. I helped create we oversee and manage the global Domain Name System. Its been a fascinating career. Now, i teach Internet Technology and governance for lawyers and i try to bring in young men and women to the field of technology policy. Susan your story and the story of eniacs one of not many women in the field. Kathy computing in general is still having problems. We see it all over the place. There is a pipeline problem. Kindergarten through 12th grade, it is still boys taking the classes. There are huge groups, wonderful groups that are working to break the stereotypes of men only in computing and encourage girls and anyone who does not fit the traditional stereotype to take the courses, and there are mentorship groups. They want you to finish the program. That is great. In technology policy, we found that women of the Domain Name System and try to encourage women in technology policy. There are lots of other initiatives. Susan on the pipeline question. There is an emphasis on stem education. What is it going to take to encourage girls to pursue this course . Kathy its going to take breaking the stereotypes while they are still reinforced. How do i know that . My own children, my daughter in middle school came home and said i cant do math in computing. She had done well in mathematics before that. What was happening . Its the stereotypes. You dont see women in stem, or did not at the time on television. Maybe that had something to do with it. Its also a stereotype many of us have implicated. We keep resharing the same stereotypes. I think it would help to break them and show women in computing who exist. Susan turning to the eniac women. When they went to college, how frequently did women go to college, these women were all math oriented. How unusual was that . Kathy everything was unusual. Most of them went to college during the depression. 5 of men went to college at the time. These women are coming from immigrant backgrounds. They got full scholarships, almost all of them. Most of the traditional jobs, mathematicians, accounting, they majored in what they wanted but had support from families. Susan lets learn about the first two of them. Kathy k mcnulty came from ireland when she was three years old. Her father was a mason and doing construction in philadelphia at the time. He brought his family, there is a long story about how they left. Susan did you show an interest in method early age . Kathy math and technology. She fixed and iron when the blood got unplugged. She rode a bicycle through the neighborhood. She said she was the first woman to get her license in the area. She was always doing math. She would go to the corner store and the women at the store added up she could do would fester in her head than she could do on paperback. Susan introduce me to francis. What was her life story . Kathy she was living in a philadelphia suburb. Her parents came from eastern europe. Susan both of them graduated in 1942. I was interested in your description of what philadelphia and other cities were like during the war. The rest of us have never had that in this country. You said the war felt very close to home. Can you describe that . Kathy it felt close to home in two ways. Everyone knew someone who was going off to war. Uncles, brothers and fathers. Everyone who was going to the atlantic or pacific. Everyone wanted to help, everyone wanted to get involved. Summaries are coming closer and closer. Ive never experienced this. You had to buy special blinds for your windows. So the lights wouldnt shine onto the streets. Street lights were dimmed, this was making it hard to target the city of philadelphia should somebody be trying to bomb it. Susan the german uboats were right off the coast of philadelphia. One of the reasons it is so interesting was the Philadelphia Naval yard. Kathy it was building a lot of ships, had a lot of supplies going in and out. Some were requisite in helping building the eniac. Susan when they graduated, the army was running ads in Philadelphia Newspapers looking specifically for women math majors. Why were they looking for women . Kathy because they did not have enough men. They needed someone to calculate trajectories. It was a different calculus equation created during world war i. If you had a weather unit on the battlefield and plug that in, then you calculated it for 30 or 40 hours, could calculate what angle to aim the gun to hit the target. You never know the stuff ahead of time. All of these had to be precalculated. There were no computers so they hired people. It made a lot of noise. Susan each calculation would take 30 to 40 hours. The young women were hired on the spot by the army. What was their title, what was their starting salary . Kathy they interviewed, they were not told what they were going to be doing. They would be computing ballistics trajectories. The salary was about 1200 a year, would go up to about 1600. Susan todays dollars . Somewhere around 30,000. For College Graduates who were hard to find math majors. Kathy believe it or not, much more than a secretary. Susan lets introduce a couple more of the women. Betty snyder. Kathy betty, i got to know very well. She grew up in a suburb of philadelphia. Her father and grandfathers were math teachers and astronomy teachers. She went to the university of pennsylvania. She was really disappointed. The classes were not coed, it was a big deal. She loved mathematics. She had an old professor who opened with every class saying women should be home raising children. She found out he was the only professor and became she studied journalism, history and english. Susan marilyn joined the group. Kathy she was already at the university of pennsylvania. She did not major in mathematics. When she was getting close to graduating, the dean of the school said if you were jewish, should not bother to apply. She thought, what do i do . She went over and helped army radar projects at the university of pennsylvania, she was using the adding machine and when that project closed up, he said you should apply to this group of computers down the hall and i think you will get a job. Susan two more. Both joined later. Ruth. Kathy she is also a math major, comes down from hunter college. She is the only one who does not graduate college. Its incredible, she leaves after her second year because she wants to help the war effort. She moves from new york city to philadelphia and becomes part of the third floor computing group. Susan the last one was the last to join. I want to get them on the map. Jean jennings. Kathy she comes from a farm in missouri. She comes along this way, but had gone to northwest Missouri State teachers college. That was about half an hour down the road. She sees and head, she graduates in december, 1944, is trying to figure out what to do, a mathematics professor shows her a posting that says the army is looking for math majors. She said im going to apply for that job in philadelphia. When she is accepted, she hops on a train and comes to philadelphia. She stays in philadelphia for the rest of her life. Susan the Computing Program was all based at the university of pennsylvania. What was the relationship . Kathy we are talking about the aberdeen proving ground. Northern maryland, very rural and thats where the army has tested artillery including heavy artillery. They tested, this is where the calculations have taken place during world war i. If you are the army and you want to recruit young women, you probably are not going to want to put them into rural maryland. If you want to relocate to philadelphia, the proving ground has radar projects. They are cochairing the space with the school where enrollment has gone down. It makes sense, with physicists and engineers. It provides more people to work for army projects. Susan you tell the story, at its height, how many young women were working on various projects related to military issues . Kathy 80 to 100 computers and working two shifts a day. Susan you explain because of blackout that they would walk home in total darkness. Kathy the nighttime air warden coming to meet from the trolley. It was pretty dark in the streets. Susan by 1943, you write it was apparent the analyses were not coming us enough. What happened . Kathy there were too many trajectories. The army is introducing major improvements and new artillery. The army decides to fund this experimental idea, this generalpurpose programmable. The army said we are in the dark day of the war. When them to be accurate, we need them for new guns. There is any chance the new technology speeds up the calculations, they will throw the money at it. In spring of 1943, they Start Building the eniac on the first floor. By spring of 1945, its ready to go. Susan what was kathy they wanted men with electronics aptitude. He took a lab or stew introduce people course to introduce people. He realized he already taught the course. He sat in the back of the room. He is a lab instructor. They are sitting there and talking about his vision for the modern computer, and is saying i think i can build that. Kathy susan the army said yes, began work there in 1943. They called it project x at the time. How aware where the computer women of what was going on behind closed doors . Kathy loose lips sink ships. People do not talk about the projects. They knew there were other projects going on. They were radar experiments going on. Project x was behind a closed door down a back hallway on the first floor and they did not go there. They did not ask questions and knew something was happening. The differential analyzer, this huge come along. She was supervising the team. There was another way of calculating, its late at night. It is so quiet. You have to come up, see what we have done. There is a big cage over eight feet tall and has these units and they are wired to each other. Lights flash, something happens. They basically said this just did 5000 divisions. That was extraordinary. They are very excited because this is proof of concept. It meant ideas of how it would work in the electronics that would make these calculations had come to fruition. Susan to the importance door and on kay . Kathy she thought we could do that on calculators or an analyzer. She knew Something Special had happened. She knew she was witness to a historic moment. The whole team congratulated them but they went back to the basement. Susan next step is a small number were chosen to go to the aberdeen proving grounds to begin to learn how to program this. Kathy let me preface it, the engineers build this huge machine. Its almost complete, then the question is, whatsit it supposed to do . Ballistics trajectories. None of them dr. Hermann goldstein is supervising both projects, decides to take Six Computers to be the programmers of the ballistics trajectory. He picks six and says are you amenable to learning something new . They say yes, and the first thing they notice there on this big base, outnumbered thousands to one. What they learned their is how to use the ibm card punch and reader. They learned how to use those. They spend the summer, but i find a special as well each one while each one knew someone, they become close as a team. They grow to know each other. When they come back to philadelphia and said figure out how to make it do the calculus equation. The work begins and continues in august of 1945. Susan what happens with the los alamos scientists . Kathy they cant finish and deliver. The eniac was commissioned to do ballistics trajectories, its just about ready to go, these computers were identified, they will program it. They have been under a lot of pressure. They are told stop. The atomic bomb is the biggest secret of the war. They learn a little more and come back in august of 1945. The atomic bomb has dropped. They say we need the machine for an important calculation. They bring 100,000 ibm punchcards to run through the calculation that we think is the Hydrogen Bomb. Susan it had already dropped. Kathy the atomic bomb had dropped. The Hydrogen Bomb was behind it. Eniac becomes, even in its own test mode, starts running tests for the next generation. Susan when did they figure out what they had been involved in . Kathy years later. Susan they had some idea. Kathy it began to appear in the newspapers. Figuring it out was classified. Susan still today . Kathy that is my understanding. Susan when did they get back to the work . Kathy they help in the los alamos project. Its this project with people they get to me. Its the first sunday get to see the machine. They have been locked out. They do not have the security clearance. I wouldve helped. They did not have interest to the room. When the los alamos problem needed extra people, they invited the women in and now they get to go to the room. Eventually it spins off to the ballistics trajectory program. Susan how complicated was it to program this machine . Kathy it was complicated to figure out how it works. It was complicated. Eniac on its face is understandable, and accumulator. There were 20 of them. The multiplier does highspeed multiplication, square root divider. Keeping track of all of it was one of the key new parts. In programming today, we do not have to keep track. Women were the operating system. They put a number into the accumulator, they put another number for the card, they have to keep track of this. Keep track not just of every logical step, but were every number and Program Pulse is. Susan you told us it took them 30,000 to 40,000 hours to finish one of these equations. How quickly could it do the same amount of work . Kathy 30 or 40 hours to do one of them. Susan sorry. How quickly could eniac to it . Kathy seconds, under 20 seconds. Susan how quickly did they realize it was going to do that . Kathy they realized it that night. How many vacuum tubes . 18,000. Susan you explain the women got so good in understanding this machine. Kathy it might help to layout. They go in, plugging it in, and then have to debug it. It turns out its not just logical, they had to do hardware debugging. The program stopped working. They use software to figure out, this enormous machine, the vacuum tube had blown. That got the women up to program debugging. Susan you write that betty and jean understood eniac was too slow to find acceptance of aberdeen, and they decided to think through parallel calculations. Kathy they want to speed up the ballistics trajectory, they know speed is going to matter, how many seconds the calculation takes is going to matter. One calculation at a time. They could have and accumulator working, highspeed, all at the same time. Betty, a great programming pioneer went on to 40 years at the cutting edge of computing said parallel programming was the hardest thing she ever did. Susan went to the army say yes, we accept this . Kathy demonstration day is 1946, and the army probably has excepted it by then. Its not secret anymore, they invite technologists and scientists from across the east coast, people come down from new york. They come to demonstration day. The big moment is when the lights go out and the ballistics trajectory is run, arthur burks announces it would be faster than a missile leaving the muzzle of a gun to hit a target. I assume by then the army had accepted it. Susan what is the role of the women that they . Kathy one of the beauties of eniacs you could set up a program, and if it works, you just press the button. You did not have to intervene. They are in the room, some of them are teaching code, some are doing printouts, they are in the back of the room watching everything. Susan you said a number of people left confused about what they have