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July 06, 2001 Women Were The First Computers

I enjoyed Roger Chang's top five list of historically significant computers, which included the ENIAC, the computer built to calculate ballistic trajectory tables during WWII. While the notion of women being better than men at surfing the net may be controversial, did you know that women actually were the first computers? Before the term was applied to machines, "computer" referred to the mathematicians who calculated the ballistic trajectory tables before ENIAC. Because most of the men were away fighting the war, this job was mostly performed by women. Women were also the first ENIAC programmers because "the engineers were slow to realize that programming was interesting and challenging."

Posted by Christy on July 06, 2001 11:36 PM

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