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DOI:10.1145/2804228 Thomas Haigh and Mark Priestley VHistorical Reflections Innovators Assemble: , , and the Superheroines of Can computing history be both inspiring and accurate?

ONSIDER TWO RECENT block- cated narrative through a vast number none have yet inspired a full-length biog- buster sequels. Avengers: Age of required plot points. Both highlight raphy, a statue, or a museum. Even John of Ultron, a superhero movie, origin stories, as if understanding the von Neumann has largely slipped from enjoyed the second strongest moments at which individuals received general awareness in the decades since opening weekend of all time, their special powers or the circumstanc- his death. Perhaps scientists Cbehind only its predecessor, Avengers es in which particular technologies were feel their discipline is doing pretty well Assemble. The fastest-selling history first coaxed into operation will always without devoting significant energy to of computing book ever published is explain their subsequent trajectories. the construction and celebration of Walter Isaacson’s : How Isaacson’s geek revolutionaries are, male heroes. is the excep- a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks for the most part, entrepreneurs rather tion that proves the rule here, given his Created the . Its sales than academics. People are interested gripping personal story, significant con- fall short only in comparison to his pre- in the men behind the companies be- tribution to the Second World War, and vious book, Steve Jobs, which reported- hind the gizmos of daily life, particu- crossover appeal as a gay martyr. ly broke all records for a biography. larly if those men became spectacularly Isaacson, who has headed both Avenging and innovating turn out to rich while exhibiting captivating flaws. CNN and Time Magazine, is one of the have a surprising amount in common. Hence the wealth of books and films world’s most successful and best-con- Both require one to assemble a team of about Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuck- nected journalists. His titular promises superheroes who must work together erberg, and the early days of Google. of “geeks” and “genius” signal this is a to defy daunting odds and change the Most of the students fairly conservative retelling of computer course of human history. Both deploy a featured in these stories dropped out history, discussing the invention of tech- cast of characters who have been written part way through their degrees. Com- nologies rather than their commercial- about for decades but are now reaching puter science has invested little effort ization or use. He arranges a series of vi- massive audiences. Both feel somewhat in building and celebrating its own set gnettes along a familiar arc, leading from overstuffed, as their hugely experienced of heroic role models. Individuals such the Victorian dreams of creators struggle to maintain a light as Edsger Dijkstra, , and through the various computer inventors touch while maneuvering a compli- Alan Kay all have their followings but of the 1940s to the networking pioneers

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of the 1960s, the home computer hack- ers of the 1970s, and a variety of entrepreneurs. Isaacson interviewed fa- mous people to enliven the more recent history, but in his earlier chapters he mines the work of historians. There are two areas in which Isaac- son departs from the classic storyline of popular computing history. Like the Avengers movies, his book suggests su- perheroes need to collaborate to get the job done. We historians of science and technology often complain that nobody reads our scholarly tomes. Usually we blame this on the unshak- able attachment of the public to books about “the lone genius who revolution- ized” something or other. Isaacson’s subtitle confirms he has no problem with the “genius” part of that, but is rightly critical of the silly idea that his “hackers, geniuses, and geeks” are most innovative when deprived of resources V and forced to work alone. The other distinctive feature of Isaa- cson’s book is his stress on the con- tribution of women to innovation in computing. He foregrounds a trio of coding superwomen, and centered the promotional campaign for the book on the claim that he was avenging brilliant but defenseless women who had been unjustly erased from history. Aveng- ing is less hospitable to women. Age of Ultron was criticized for marginalizing its female characters, despite being di- rected by Joss Whedon whose Buffy the Vampire Slayer broke new ground with its stake-happy heroine and her les- bian witch sidekick. Disney’s failure to produce an action figure of Black Wid- ow, the only female Avenger, provoked a chorus of angry tweets. According to Isaacson, men were Ada Lovelace. good at hardware, but only women were smart enough to appreciate the view with Isaacson on NPR’s flagship heard of Lovelace, but she was already need for . The idea that women “Morning Edition” radio program in more famous than any Turing Award invented programming is not entirely which he hits the trifecta. winner, having inspired at least a doz- novel, having been repeated widely en biographers, a major computer lan- enough in recent years to have become Ada Lovelace guage, several novels, a Google Doo- the new conventional wisdom. As we One might reasonably question wheth- dle, a comic book series, and a movie. write, each of the top 10 hits returned er Lovelace needed Isaacson to rescue Launched in 2009 by social media con- by Googling “first - her from obscurity. He first learned sultant Suw Charman-Anderson, Ada mer” relates to one of three topics. Hits of Lovelace in 2007 when his teenage Lovelace Day has spread quickly to en- number 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 are about daughter wrote a college essay about compass a host of worldwide events in- Ada Lovelace. Number 2 is about Grace her as the family summered in Aspen, tended to celebrate “the achievements Hopper, while number 3 is about the apparently inspired by a “Batman of , technology, engi- “women of ENIAC.” Number 5 is “The comic book.”a Isaacson might not have neering, and maths.” Lovelace has be- Forgotten Female Who come a superhero for all of STEM, not

PAINTING BY ALFRED EDWARD CHALON (1840) CHALON ALFRED EDWARD BY PAINTING Created Modern Tech,” a lengthy inter- a http://nyti.ms/1vAolLZ just for computing.

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Lovelace is remembered for her col- Figure 1. Google’s N-gram tool view: Howard Aiken, Presper Eckert, , laboration with Charles Babbage to Ada Lovelace, and Alan Turing. publicize the mechanical calculators he designed and attempted to build from the onward. Babbage relied sub- stantially on the writings of others to pro- mote his . The first publication describing the , intend- ed to automatically execute a sequence of mathematical operations, was an 1842 article by the Italian Luigi Menabrea, written after Babbage’s visit to Turin in 1840. Lovelace translated Menabrea’s French-language original, adding seven explanatory “Notes” that were more than twice the length of Menabrea’s original text.b These included a detailed discus- sion of how to use the Analytical Engine to calculate the Bernoulli numbers. This work, summarized in a large table de- scribing the calculation, has long been outstripped those of computer-builders digital age,” arguing with a wave that understood as a computer program such as Presper Eckert and Howard Aik- seemed to “encompass all of Silicon avant la lettre.c That made Lovelace “the en. Alan Turing, whose story is similarly Valley and the techies sitting around first ,” an identification ce- romantic, enjoyed a still sharper climb us” that “If it wasn’t for Ada Lovelace, mented in the 1980s when the language in public awareness (see Figure 1). there’s a chance that none of this ADA was named in her honor. Lovelace has been celebrated as would even exist.” This hand wav- Google’s N-gram tool, based on a much for her visionary asides as her ing is not untypical, as is the failure massive full-text database of English- mathematical accomplishments. She to distinguish between imagining language books, suggests that by the imagined a version of the Analytical something and causing that thing to mid-1990s Lovelace’s fame had already Engine that would allow mechanical come about. representation of “the fundamen- Isaacson acknowledges that the tal relations of pitched sounds in extent of Lovelace’s contribution to b “Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by the science of harmony” and “com- Babbage’s overall project has been Charles Babbage Esq. By L.F. Menabrea, of pose elaborate and scientific pieces energetically debated. Researchers Turin, officer of the Military Engineers, with notes upon the memoir by the translator,” of music.” These remarks carry an have minutely parsed the surviving Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 3 (1843). Me- undeniable frisson of prescience, records to build or challenge the case nabrea’s original article is reprinted along- leading science writer and television for Lovelace as a mathematical genius side Lovelace’s translation and notes in The presenter Steven Johnson to the idea or as an essential contributor to Bab- Works of Charles Babbage, Volume 3: The Ana- lytical Engine and Mechanical Notation, M. that Lovelace was a “time travelling” bage’s project. The progress of work Campbell-Kelly, Ed. (William Pickering, Lon- inventor who, like Leonardo da Vinci on the Bernoulli example can be fol- don, 1989); see http://bit.ly/18FbNZL. and , somehow exist- lowed in the correspondence between c For example, in one of the earliest popular ed outside her own time. According the pair, complicating the popular idea accounts of , Faster Than Thought to Johnson, “her footnote opened up of a neat division of labor in which (B.V. Bowden, Ed., Pitman, 1953). This book included a reprint of the text of the a conceptual space” eventually filled Lovelace worked out how to use the Notes, and its frontispiece was a portrait of by “Google queries, electronic mu- hardware Babbage invented. Isaac- Lovelace herself. In 1984, Dorothy Stein re- sic, iTunes, hypertext, Pixar.”d One son steers a middle course here, and produced part of the table with the caption recent book, A Female Genius: How as a result has been criticized for sug- “The diagram or program for the computa- Ada Lovelace, Lord ’s Daugh- gesting Lovelace was “never the great tion of the first seven Bernoulli numbers” (D.K. Stein, “Lady Lovelace’s Notes: Tech- ter, Started the Computer Age, claims mathematician that her canonizers nical Text and Cultural Context,” Victorian that Lovelace “foresaw the digitiza- claim,” thus denying her admittance Studies 28, 1 (1984)), and according to Ben- tion of music as CDs.”8 In a promo- to the club of “genius” promised in his jamin Woolley, “It is this table which is used tional interview for the fashion sec- subtitle and perhaps undercutting his to justify the claim that Ada was the world’s tion of , Isaacson own vague claims for her significance.e first computer programmer” (B. Woolley, The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason and claimed “Ada Lovelace defined the We feel this squabbling over au- Byron’s Daughter (Macmillan, 1999)). Isaa- thorship misses the bigger point. cson tells us that Lovelace “figure[d] out in d Johnson, S. The Tech Innovators of the Vic- What does it mean for Isaacson to call step-by-step detail the workings of what we torian Age: What the Victorian Computing Lovelace an essential precondition to now call a computer program or Pioneers Can Teach Us About Invention— … described a sequence of operations and and Time Travelling. Financial Times, (Oct. the existence of today’s tech world? then made a chart showing how each would 17, 2014), showcasing material from his 2014 be coded into the .” book How We Got to Now (Riverhead Books). e http://bit.ly/1J4hHSh

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Logically, it means those who created tion of a calculation in a form detailed and in the Notes she applied and ex- later technologies drew directly on her enough to be processed directly by the tended those ideas in the context of the work with Babbage, and indeed that Analytical Engine. Babbage intended Analytical Engine, in detailed analyses without them nobody would ever have his computer to read and execute in- and also in more general discussion. thought of programming a computer. structions one at a time from a deck Lovelace was particularly interested in For example, Isaacson explained dur- of “operation cards.” The famous “cycles” of repeated operations, and ing his NPR interview that “Babbage’s table is not a specification for a card the Bernoulli example involved two machine was never built. But his de- deck to compute the Bernoulli num- nested loops. In her Note E she reused signs and Lovelace’s notes were read bers. Instead, as Lovelace explained, “some of the notation of the integral by people building the first computer a it “presents a complete simultaneous calculus” to express loops symboli- century later.” However, expert histori- view of all the successive changes” the cally, including ones with bounds set ans have been unable to find any sub- various storage units of the Analytical by computed values rather than con- stantial influence of Babbage on the Engine would “pass through” in com- stants.15 This notation enabled her designers of early computers. puting the specific number 7B . When to write a one-line expression she de- Isaccson’s claim most likely refers computing other Bernoulli numbers scribed as “represent[ing] the total to Howard Aiken, a the engine would carry out different operations for computing every [Ber- computer pioneer who rhetorically en- sequences of operations, leading to noulli] number in succession”; see listed Babbage as kind of patron saint tables with more or fewer rows. The Figure 2.f This expression provides the for his project, since to the best of our control to produce these varia- missing control structure and, with knowledge no claim has ever been tions is not present in the table itself. cross-reference to the table, it could be made that Babbage or Lovelace influ- In modern terminology, the table used to generate the deck of operation enced others such as , might best be described as a trace of cards needed to run the full calcula- Tommy Flowers, John V. Atanasoff, J. the machine’s expected operation. tion. It is not a complete program for Presper Eckert, or John W. Mauchly. Considerable further work would the Analytical Engine as an additional I. Bernard Cohen, who looked more be required to turn the calculation de- expression, not provided by Lovelace, closely than any other historian at scribed by the table into a set of cards would be required to define the struc- Aiken’s work, concluded he became the Analytical Engine could read to ture of the deck of variable cards. In aware of Babbage only after propos- calculate all the Bernoulli numbers. fact the idea of a program as we now ing to build his computer and did not As well as the operation cards them- understand it did not yet exist (an idea learn of Lovelace’s work or appreciate selves, the control deck would have we will return to in a later column). It the importance of conditional branch- to include special cards to tell the does, however, provide an interesting ing for some years later. Cohen discov- machine when to “back up” the deck and neglected parallel to later efforts ered that “Aiken was generally ignorant to repeat a sequence of operations. to develop abstract notions to specify of Babbage’s machines” when writing Babbage had not settled on a format computational processes. his 1937 proposal to construct what for these cards, or even on a mecha- Similarly, her suggestion that the became the , having nism for reading backward. A separate Analytical Engine might be applied to seen only brief accounts, and includ- deck of “variable cards” specifying the the analysis and production of music ing “summary (and somewhat errone- numbers to be operated on would also was not a proposal for digital audio ous) statements about Babbage’s ma- be needed, as an operation card could recording. One of the first topics she chines.” “Aiken,” wrote Cohen, “praised be reused at different stages of a cal- had discussed with de Morgan was the Babbage to enhance his own stature” culation to process different data. relationship between mathematics even though “Babbage did not play a Lovelace was part of her own time, and music, an object of investigation major role in the development of Aiken’s not a visitor from the future or a lone since the time of Plato.17 She had ob- ideas.” Cohen quotes Grace Hopper, who superhero who invented program- served the Analytical Engine was “an worked closely with Aiken to oversee ming and created the modern world. embodying of the science of operations, programming of his computer, as say- Through Babbage and her math tutor constructed with peculiar reference ing she was unaware of Lovelace’s work , she was connect- to abstract number as the subject of “until 10 or 15 years later.”5 ed to contemporary thinking about Turning to the specifics of mathematics, algebra in particular, f Lovelace’s Note G. Lovelace’s notes, we challenge the common characterization of Figure 2. Lovelace’s one-line summary of the Bernoulli computation as a set of nested loops, using a novel mathematical notion of her own devising. The numbers 1–25 refer to Lovelace’s tabular presentation of the the operations listed in the second column of her celebrated table. Bernoulli calculation as a “program.” It is not clear what would constitute a program for a computer that was never fully designed, still less built, (1…7), (24, 25), Σ(+ 1)n{(1…7), (8…12), Σ(n + 2)(13…23), (24, 25)} but neither Lovelace nor Menabrea limits 1 to n limits 0 to (n + 2) (whose paper included several smaller examples reportedly supplied to him by Babbage16) ever produced a descrip-

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those operations.”g Her musical pro- them is Jean Sammett, who made the paign. ENIAC, the Electronic Nu- posal raised the prospect of embody- largest single contribution to the de- merical Integrator and Computer, is ing the abstract science in other ar- sign of COBOL.h Sammet has stated remembered by historians as the first eas, as was shortly to that Hopper was “not the mother, general-purpose electronic digital do in the case of logic. Her instincts, creator, or developer of COBOL,” an computer. It was planned and built at and her tragic personal story, were idea Hopper reportedly endorsed by the University of Pennsylvania from similarly emblematic of their time. calling herself the “grandmother of 1943 to 1945, under contract to the She was Romantic with a capital “R,” COBOL” rather than its creator.10 United States Army, which justified befitting her status as a daughter of Sammet’s remarkable career be- its support for the rather bold foray Byron and echoing the era’s belief in gan with work on programming lan- into the technological unknown by centrality of tortured genius and cre- guages for computer builders UNI- pointing to an accumulating backlog ative passion to greatness in both arts VAC, Sylvania, and IBM.3 She was of trajectory calculations needed to and natural science. the first woman to lead ACM, from deliver accurate firing tables along 1974 to 1976, and was active in its with new artillery pieces. ENIAC Grace Hopper special interest groups for decades. missed the war, but when completed The second of Isaacson’s “forgot- She pioneered the comparative and it tackled those calculations thou- ten women” is Grace Hopper. Unlike historical study of programming sands of times faster than the women Lovelace she was well known for her languages. Sammet has not been who had been working with desk cal- computing work during her lifetime, forgotten, as a fellow of the Comput- culators and was configured to tackle spending decades as a popular keynote er History Museum and a winner of a range of other problems, including speaker and appearing frequently on the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award, the first computerized Monte Carlo national television. Since her death in but sits on the wrong side of a grow- simulations and the first numerical 1992 a guided missile destroyer and ing chasm separating the handful of weather calculations.i the Grace Hopper Celebration of Wom- women chosen for public veneration ENIAC has always been the most en in Computing (the leading annual from those whose names are known famous of the early computers, event of its kind) have been named only to specialists. but what it has been known for has after her, as have a bridge and several This is an example of what sociolo- changed over time. After finding buildings. She has been the subject of gist of science Robert K. Merton called fame as a scientific marvel and “giant several full-length biographies and a the “Matthew Effect,” the tendency electronic brain,” it quickly became documentary movie on her life is re- for the most famous person involved a yardstick against which the size, portedly in progress. in any collaborative project, however weight, and speed of newer comput- Isaacson’s treatment of Hopper peripherally, to be remembered by ers could be flatteringly compared. In in The Innovators is generally clear the public as the key contributor. He the early 1970s it was at the center of and accurate, lauding her for her named it after a passage in Matthew’s the longest trial ever held in Federal collaboration with Aiken and for the Gospel, noting that “unto every one Court, during which a great deal of pioneering work on and that hath shall be given, and he shall expensive expert and legal attention design she have abundance: but from him that was focused on its claims to be the directed at Univac during the 1950s. hath not shall be taken away even that “first computer.” However, a close reading hints at the which he hath.” Over time the famous In recent years, however, it has ways in which inspirational super- become more famous, while the mod- been best known as a computer pro- hero stories can hide the variety of erately well known are forgotten.12 grammed by women. So here, too, contributions women have made to This is particularly true of those hold- the notion that Isaacson’s characters the . On page ing distinctions where the supply is were “forgotten” seems rather fanci- 117 Isaacson credits Hopper as “the deliberately limited, such as Merton’s ful. Unlike Lovelace and Hopper, who technical lead in coordinating the examples of the 40 “immortals” ad- were already well known in the 1980s, creation of COBOL,” a hugely im- mitted to the French Academy or the the six “Women of ENIAC” became portant standard language for busi- winners of the Nobel Prize. It seems famous more recently. However, Jean ness programming that was defined to us that a process of natural selec- Bartik—the best known—has been jointly by several computer compa- tion, in which a large pool of eligible inducted as a fellow of the Computer nies. Standards committee work is a pioneers compete for a handful of po- History Museum and has won the difficult thing to dramatize, which is sitions as female role models, is creat- IEEE Computer Pioneer Award. Her presumably why Isaacson gives CO- ing a similar dynamic. obituary appeared in the New York BOL no more than a passing men- Times. The women’s work has been tion, but as historian of technol- The Women of ENIAC celebrated in countless blogs, books, ogy Janet Abbate recently noted, his Isaacson writes at length on “The omission slights several women who, Women of ENIAC,” and excerpted unlike Hopper, were on the techni- this part of The Innovators in Fortune i Material on ENIAC here is sourced from our forthcoming book T. Haigh, M. Priestley, and cal committee in question. Among magazine as part of his launch cam- C. Rope, ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer. MIT Press, , g Lovelace’s Note A, her italics. h http://bit.ly/1go319Y MA, 2016.

24 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM | SEPTEMBER 2015 | VOL. 58 | NO. 9 viewpoints and scholarly articles and in two docu- capturing the actual work of Bartik which involved many hours of plug- mentary films. and her colleagues. When program- ging cables and setting switches, and Isaacson’s retelling of their story ming developed as a distinct job, in monitor its progress. Because of this is sourced primarily from Bartik’s en- the mid-1950s, it was generally sepa- expertise they also played an impor- gaging memoir, Pioneer Programmer rated from the work of operating the tant preparatory role in many of the and from a number of oral history computer or any ancillary punched applications run on ENIAC, partner- interviews.2 He observed that while card units. Programmers sat with ing with scientific and mathematical “the boys with their toys thought pencils and coding pads, writing in- users to figure out the “set-up” needed that assembling the hardware was structions. These were punched onto to configure the machine to carry out the most important task, and thus a cards by keypunch women, the data the appropriate series of mathemati- man’s job” in fact “all the program- entry clerks of their day. Operators cal operations. These set-ups imple- mers who created the first general- tended to the machine itself, prepar- mented loops, subroutines, and the purpose computer were women.” ing the computer and its peripher- other elements we now associate with This odd verbal flourish suggests that als for a job, loading the appropriate programs (although they were re- Isaacson, despite his love of innova- card and tape media, and extracting corded visually, as a schematic of the tion, does not have a very clear idea printed output. switch and wiring settings needed on of what creating a computer involves. The women of ENIAC combined ENIAC’s various units, rather than as Programmers, however gifted, do not elements of all three roles, but op- textual instruction codes). usually design computers and design erations work was what they were It is this preparatory work that has work was already finished when the hired to do and it occupied most of caused them to be remembered as women in question were chosen for their time with the computer. They programmers, though their contribu- ENIAC work in the summer of 1945. were chosen for their skill as hu- tions here are frequently exaggerated. We are struck that Isaacson rhetori- man computers, carrying out manu- For example, it is often claimed ENIAC cally downgrades the contribution of ally the tasks ENIAC would process programming was an afterthought the designers and engineers to “as- electronically. Their initial training that received no attention from the sembling the hardware.” Elsewhere was in machine opera- engineering team. The women’s re- he spins a statement from J. Presper tion. ENIAC’s tiny writable electronic alization, when planning trajectory Eckert, the project’s lead engineer, memory (just 200 decimal digits) computations, that ENIAC’s “master that he double-checked the calcu- meant running a reasonably ambi- programmer” unit could be used to im- lations of his subordinates into an tious job involved interleaving com- plement loops is sometimes taken as assertion that Eckert would “hover puter steps, in which decks of cards a breakthrough moment in program- over the other engineers and tell were run though ENIAC for automat- ming history. them where to solder a joint or twist ic computations, with manual steps In fact, ENIAC’s designers had a wire.” He seems to have no sense of in which the cards were punched with paid considerable attention to the computer engineering work as some- new values, sorted, collated, or run trajectory calculations early in the thing different from tinkering with a through the tabulator for printing. design process, culminating at the soldering iron. The initial cohort of six operators end of 1943 in the creation by Arthur One startling fact was overlooked had to understand how ENIAC worked, Burks of elaborate set-up and timing by Isaacson and almost everyone so they could set it up for a new job, diagrams for this problem. This work else who has written about ENIAC. profoundly shaped ENIAC’s final de- The cliché that the machine was as- sign, particularly its master program- sembled by men but programmed Lovelace was mer, and introduced the diagram- by women is just not true. Dozens of ming and planning techniques later women, employed as “wiremen,” “as- part of her own used by Bartik and her colleagues. semblers,” and “technicians” worked time, not a visitor The delight the women expressed shifts through 1944 and 1945 to in later interviews in grasping tech- build ENIAC, threading miles of wire from the future niques such as looping are familiar through the machine and soldering or lone superhero to later generations of computing approximately half a million joints. students but do not indicate they had Other women drew blueprints and who invented discovered an unanticipated use for helped with administration. While programming the master programmer. Bartik and her colleagues were given Many of the errors and omissions belated recognition for their work on and created in Isaacson’s take on this history ENIAC, more than 50 women worked the modern world. come from the oral histories and ex- on the machine in 1944 alone. Their isting books he relies on, and reflect names are preserved only in the proj- a conventional wisdom that has devel- ect’s accounting records and person- oped over time. His most novel sug- nel forms. They are truly forgotten. gestion, apparently based on a mis- We also believe the word “pro- reading of Bartik’s memoir, is that gramming” does not do a good job of she contributed to discussions on

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computer design held between John Computer technology has been actively von Neumann and the ENIAC project claimed by some men as their exclusive engineers held at the Moore School in domain, as in the recent “Gamergate” We run the risk early 1945.j By April these led to the campaign to deter women from writ- of hiding a rich First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, ing about video games. While most the first statement of the crucial ideas areas of science and engineering are historical tapestry, of modern . gradually becoming more balanced in full of thousands of While the proper balance of credit for their gender representation, computer these ideas has been much disputed, science has slipped backward over the little figures carrying Isaacson is unique in assigning Bar- past 30 years. This has prompted a out many vital tasks. tik, who had not yet been recruited great deal of hand wringing and count- for ENIAC work, a role in formulating less blue ribbon committees, research the new instruction set. This error will reports, proposed interventions, and surely be repeated by others, further volunteer campaigns to recruit and building the superhero myth. retain more women in various areas. Our intent is not to belittle the ACM has been heavily involved in this very real contributions of the ENIAC area. Maria Klawe, ACM president ple with a connection to computing operators to computing history, but from 2002–2004, spearheaded work at encounter history only occasion- to argue that forcing them into the Princeton and, more recently, as Presi- ally as disconnected fragments, for role of the “first programmers,” as is dent of Harvey Mudd College. ACM- the time it takes to read a blog post, commonly done, hides most of the W, which “supports, celebrates, and watch a movie, or walk through a sci- reality of their actual work. Operat- advocates internationally for the full ence museum exhibit. ing ENIAC, and its ancillary punched engagement of women in all aspects We believe good history is not just card machines, was highly skilled of the computing field” is open to all important to specialists, and that it work that was absolutely vital to the members without additional cost. In will ultimately prove more inspiring machine’s success. To this day pro- 2006, ACM ended a 40-year streak for and more relevant than superhero gramming accounts for a fairly small the boys’ team when it presented a Tur- stories. Isaacson’s book has some proportion of overall IT work, and the ing Award to . Women distinctive strengths and weakness- demand for system administrators, won again in 2008 and 2012. es, but we have used it here primar- network technicians, facilities man- History is playing an increasing- ily as an accessible, and influential, agement staff, and other hands-on IT ly visible role in this struggle. One summary of the emerging public un- practitioners is greater than ever. By widely held concern is that girls are derstanding of the contribution of the 1960s, however, computer opera- not exposed to images of female pro- these superhero coders to the inven- tions work was seen as a lower paid and grammers or information technol- tion of the modern world. This has lower skilled occupation—blue-collar ogy professionals. Films about Jobs, many parallels with the recent film, shift work against the white-collar work Gates, Turing, and Zuckerberg encap- The Imitation Game, in that both are of programming. Perhaps celebrating sulate the broader tendency of mass designed to flatter their audiences hands-on operations work would mis- media to present computers primar- by making them feel superior to the lead impressionable young women. ily as an object of fascination for sexist, homophobic, or otherwise As Wendy Hui Kyong Chun has not- brilliant but spectacularly awkward flawed characters who conspire un- ed, “reclaiming these women as the men. In their own lives teenage girls successfully to prevent their heroes first programmers…glosses over the are less likely than boys to find peers from reaching their special destinies. hierarchies...among operators, cod- with an interest in programming or Stories of this kind inflate their own ers, and analysts.”4 Remembering the computer technology. They have little importance, by pretending a certain ENIAC operators only as program- reason to assume that software devel- idea, person, or invention has direct mers implies gender matters to his- opment is work they would find inter- and singular responsibility for some tory but social class does not. esting or be good at. hugely complex chain of later events The past has therefore been mined that leads to our modern “digital Conclusion in search of women who might pro- world.” Their authors are fixated on A great deal is at stake here. Women are vide girls with inspiring counter- firsts and origins, and glorify flashes conspicuous by their absence in com- examples. The goal of convincing of abstract insight over slow and in- puter science classrooms and in the women to enter computing might cremental technological change driv- programming teams, data centers, and sometimes seem at odds with the en by the needs of users. computing research labs of America.6 responsibility of historians to pro- The conception of history as the vide accurate and nuanced stories. deeds of a few “great men” has prob- j Isaacson’s discussion, on pages 106–107, is In such a battle the force of numbers lems that are too fundamental to cor- apparently based on pages 118–119 of Bar- would not be with the historians, rect simply by elevating a few “great tik’s memoir. She is discussing work with von Neumann in 1947 to plan a new instruc- who find intrinsic value in the past women” to the pantheon. Indeed, this tion set for ENIAC, rather than 1945 design of a field that is relentlessly focused strategy devalues many of the contri- work on EDVAC. on the future. In contrast, most peo- butions made by women. Nobody has

26 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM | SEPTEMBER 2015 | VOL. 58 | NO. 9 viewpoints chosen to celebrate “The Key Punch time, in a way that misrepresents their Operators Who Invented the Digital accomplishments and squanders the Further Reading Universe” or “The Lone Computer chance to celebrate a broad range of Abbate, Janet. Assembler Who Built the Modern computer-related occupations such Recoding Gender: Women’s Changing Computer.” The obsession with dis- as mathematical analysis, operations Participation in Computing. MIT Press, covering the first coders, intended to work, and management. Cambridge, MA, 2012. This starts with ENIAC and Colossus and moves forward as empower women, has obscured the More generally, we run the risk of far as the 1970s. As a small book on a huge importance of other kinds of com- hiding a complex historical tapestry, topic it focuses on particular examples, but puter-related labor that was carried full of thousands of little figures car- these are well chosen and give a sense for out by women for decades. The quest rying out many vital tasks, behind a broader changes in the IT workplace. for “girls who code” is erasing the his- gaudy poster depicting a small team Bartik, Jean Jennings. tory of “women who operate.” One of of superheroes. The quest for “ge- Pioneer Programmer: Jean Jennings Bartik the reasons such work was seen as nius” devalues the vital contributions and the Computer that Changed the World. Truman State University Press, Kirksville, low status and unimportant is that it of millions who are merely creative, MO, 2013. Bartik’s memoir gives a lively and was carried out by women, and any at- intelligent, hard-working, and lucky idiosyncratic view of the ENIAC story. tempt to challenge historical sexism enough to be in the right place at the Beyer, Kurt W. should dispute that assumption rath- right time. Superhero stories have lit- Grace Hopper and the Invention of the er than tacitly endorsing it. Scholars tle time for ordinary humans, who ex- Information Age. MIT Press, Cambridge, have recently looked more systemati- ist only to be endangered or rescued. MA, 2009. The most detailed account to cally at the historical participation of Reducing the story of women in com- date of Hopper’s work with Aiken at Harvard , most notably puting to the heroics of a handful of and at Univac, putting her achievements into the broader context of early computing. in Janet Abbate’s Recoding Gender,1 magical individuals draws attention which followed the history of women away from real human experience Fritz, W. Barkley. The Women of ENIAC. IEEE Annals of the in computing from the 1940s to the and, counterproductively, suggests History of Computing 18, 3 (Fall 1996), 1970s, and in the collection Gender that only those with superhuman 13–28. Full of material Fritz elicited from Codes edited by Thomas Misa.13 Na- abilities need apply. the women themselves, this article played a than Ensmenger has looked at rheto- crucial role in bringing their contributions to broader awareness. ric around the gendering of program- References ming in the 1960s and 1970s.7 Marie 1. Abbate, J. Recoding Gender: Women’s Changing Padua, Sydney. Participation in Computing. MIT Press, Cambridge, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace Hicks and Ian Martin have both ex- MA, 2012. 2. Bartik, J.J. Pioneer Programmer: Jean Jennings Bartik and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story plored the work of computer opera- and the Computer that Changed the World. Truman of the First Computer. Pantheon, 2015. tors, looking at the intersection of State University Press, Kirksville, MO, 2013. This charming, funny, and heavily footnoted 3. Bergin, T.J. Jean Sammet: Programming language class and gender during the same contributor and historian, and ACM president. IEEE graphic novel turns Babbage and Lovelace era.9,11 Laine Nooney has been explor- Annals of the History of Computing 31, 1 (Jan.–Mar. into literal superheroes. It is no less ing the career of Roberta Williams, 2009), 76–85. accurate than many other popular retellings 4. Chun, W.H.K. Programmed Visions: Software and of the story but has the good grace to admit cofounder of Sierra On-Line and de- Memory. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011, 34. 5. Cohen, I.B. Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer that much of its action takes place in a signer of the King’s Quest series of Pioneer. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999, 61–72. parallel universe. adventure games, as a different mod- 6. Cohoon, J.M. and Aspray, W., Eds. Women and Information Technology: Research on Stein, Dorothy. 14 el for female success. Underrepresentation. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006. Ada: A Life and Legacy. MIT Press, Stories about superheroes make 7. Ensmenger, N. The Computer Boys Take Over: Cambridge, MA, 1985. Published 30 years Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical great entertainment, as testified to by Expertise. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010. ago, but still the most reliable biography the huge success of the Avengers films 8. Essinger, J. A Female Genius: How Ada Lovelace, Lord of Ada Lovelace. Byron’s Daughter, Started the Computer Age. Gibson and the other movies and licensed Square, London, 2014, 174. Swade, Doron. ` television series based on the Marvel 9. Hicks, M. Only the clothes changed: Women computer The : Charles Babbage operators in British computing and advertising, and the Quest to Build the First Computer. characters. The superhero narrative is 1950–1970. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 32, 4 (Oct.–Dec. 2010), 5–17. Viking Penguin, New York, 2001. not, however, the best way to under- 10. Lohr, S. Go To: The Story of the Math Majors, Bridge This wonderfully engaging book has stand history. Isaacson’s celebration Players, Engineers, Chess Wizards, Maverick Scientists two halves. One describes Babbage’s and Iconoclasts—The Programmers Who Created the own computing career; the other the of Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, and Software Revolution. Basic Books, New York, 2001, 52. the “Women of ENIAC” as the creators 11. Martin, I. Structuring information work: Ferranti and ultimately successful project led Martins Bank, 1952–1968. Information & Culture 47, 3 by Swade to complete his plans to build of is part of (2012), 312–339. the “difference engine,” the earlier a much broader movement to make 12. Merton, R.K. The Matthew effect in science. Science and less complicated of Babbage’s 159, 3810 (1968), 56–63. these women into recruiting sergeants 13. Misa, T.J. Gender Codes. IEEE Computer Society two planned computers. for computer science. The colorful Press, Hoboken, NJ, 2010. 14. Nooney, L. A pedestal, a table, a love letter: feats sometimes attributed to these Archaeologies of gender in videogame history. Game Thomas Haigh ([email protected]) is an associate women can overshadow their actual Studies 13, 2 (2013). professor of information studies at the University 15. Priestley, M. A Science of Operations: Machines, Logic of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and immediate past chair historical contributions, which were and the Invention of Programming. Springer, of the SIGCIS group for historians of computing. 2011, 41–44. Mark Priestley ([email protected]) is rather more nuanced and rather less 16. Stein, D.K. Ada: A Life and a Legacy. MIT Press, 1985, 92. an independent researcher into the history and dependent on superpowers. In partic- 17. Toole, B.A., Ed. Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: A philosophy of computing. Selection from the Letters of ’s Daughter ular, the concept of “programming” and Her Description of the First Computer. Strawberry has been awkwardly projected back in Press, Sausalito, CA, 1992, 245. Copyright held by authors.

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