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Sheriff Jim Kaelin - Did you know?
(Sheriff Jim Kaelin pictured below. Photo courtesy: Gary Blum, DDS, MS)
Sheriff Jim Kaelin -
In honor of Women's History Month, Sheriff Kaelin gave us a
"Did you know" narrative, which was a little longer than those
he normally gives weekly.
"The year was 1945. ...dozens of women calculated trajectories to help
wartime artillery gunners take aim. Men, the Army reasoned, lacked the
patience for such tedium - a single problem might require months of work.
The Army called the women "computers." One of them, Jean Bartik, was
a 20-year-old math prodigy recruited from the farms of Missouri. Another,
Betty Holberton, was the granddaughter of an astronomer, who spent her
childhood steeped in classical literature and language.
The women formed a tight fellowship, drawn together by youth, brains and the war effort...
THE COMPUTER AGE
One day word spread that the brightest "computers" were needed to work on a new machine called the Electronic
Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC - a steel behemoth, 100 feet long and 10 feet high, build of 17,480
tubes in an engineering building at the University of Pennsylvania. It was the first electronic computer, intended
to automate the trajectory calculations the female computers performed by hand.
Running the ENIA required setting dozens of dials and plugging a ganglia of heavy black cables into the face of the
machine, a different configuration for every problem. It was this job of "programing," they came to call it - to which
just six of the six young women were assigned.
...Yet despite this complexity, the Army brass considered the programming to be clerical work; that it was women
stringing the cables only reinforced this notion. Their government job rating was SP, as in "subprofessional."
...Finally in February 1946, the scientists were ready for the ENIAC official unveiling. A test problem involving the
trajectory of a 155-millimeter shell was handed to Jean Bartik and Betty Holberton for programming. The machine
performed flawlessly, calculating the trajectory in less time than it would take the bullet to land. After the
demonstration the men went out for a celebratory dinner. The programmers went home.
LIFE ISN'T FAIR.
In the 50 years since, their legacy is confined mainly to Movietone footage and sepia photos - Women standing along-
side the machine, as if modeling a Frigidaire. Why was history so ungenerous? Partly because in the awe surrounding
the machine itself, the hardware was seen as the whole story. In addition, three of the programmers married engineers
with top jobs on the ENIA, making them wives first in the eyes of the history makers and history writers."
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