The Computers Who Brought ENIAC to Life (1 Viewer)

[Steve R.]

The Computers Who Brought ENIAC to Life

Internet guru Kathy Kleiman is excavating the stories of early woman programmers

spectrum.ieee.org

This also reminded me of the movie "Hidden Figures".

Hidden Figures | Rotten Tomatoes

Three brilliant African American women at NASA -- Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson -- serve as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation's confidence, turned...

www.rottentomatoes.com

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The "Hidden Figures" movie is quite good as a study of life in a different time. Dorothy Vaughn led a group of "computers" - because back then, the persons who performed calculations on advanced mechanical adding machines had the job title of "computer" - to learn how to program an IBM 7000-series computer for NASA. She figured out how to use it and got her "ladies" a place in history. Plus kept their jobs for them.

In that movie, the "computers" were using Friden Comptometers, which was an add/subtract/multiply/divide mechanical math machine. You could hear it doing its "whirr-chunk-chunk-thunk" if you gave it a good division with lots of digits behind the decimal. My mother used them in the toll accounting department of South Central Bell back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. At the time we didn't know that NASA was using them. But I'm not really surprised.

 

[Pat Hartman]

I recently read a good book called the Rose Code by Kate Quinn. It's about the Enigma code and how it was broken.

 

[KitaYama]

I recently read a good book called the Rose Code by Kate Quinn. It's about the Enigma code and how it was broken.

I don't like movies because I think I can do better with 2 hours of my life.
But this one was worth it :
It's the real story of Alan Turing life and how he developed the first computer to break Enigma and how he ended up..... wow better to stop here.

The Imitation Game (2014) ⭐ 8.0 | Biography, Drama, Thriller

1h 54m | PG-13

www.imdb.com

 

[Steve R.]

I recently read a good book called the Rose Code by Kate Quinn. It's about the Enigma code and how it was broken.

A parallel story, in this case based on the biography of Alan Turing:

The Imitation Game | Rotten Tomatoes

In 1939, newly created British intelligence agency MI6 recruits Cambridge mathematics alumnus Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) to crack Nazi codes, including Enigma -- which cryptanalysts had thought unbreakable. Turing's team, including Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), analyze Enigma messages...

www.rottentomatoes.com

Turning, famously goes on to ponder the question: "Can machines think?"
@KitaYama: Beat me to it!!. Just getting ready to post when your post popped-up.

 

[jdraw]

An interesting tidbit re Grace Hopper and computing.

I met her in the mid-70s, she was in Ottawa talking about standards and her CODASYL work and COBOL .

 

[AngelSpeaks]

I don't like movies because I think I can do better with 2 hours of my life.
But this one was worth it :
It's the real story of Alan Turing life and how he developed the first computer to break Enigma and how he ended up..... wow better to stop here.

The Imitation Game (2014) ⭐ 8.0 | Biography, Drama, Thriller

1h 54m | PG-13

www.imdb.com

Hubby just got done watching this!

 

[jdraw]

He may also like Claude Shannon - a very interesting, often overlooked, "genius".
Here's a youtube link, and there are others.

 

[Pat Hartman]

I met Grace in the early 70's also at a meet and greet at an IBM conference I attended.

 

[Steve R.]

RIP: Kathleen Booth, the inventor of assembly language

Builder and programmer of the ARC and SEC turned 100 this year

www.theregister.com