Comment by tovej
They were heavily involved, computing was seen as a female profession. The human computers we had before digital ones were women, and they were very heavily involved until computers became profitable.
They were heavily involved, computing was seen as a female profession. The human computers we had before digital ones were women, and they were very heavily involved until computers became profitable.
Betty Snyder, Betty Jennings, Kathleen McNulty, and Grace Hopper were not doing calculations by hand.
I am obviously not saying that the human computers are the same as digital computers, that's your misinterpretation. I was explaining the context that digital computers grew out of, it was a female field. E.g. Mauchley and Eckert designed the ENIAC to be used for the same tasks as human computers were (firing table calculations), and as digital computers were used in this context, the workforce in the eventual digital computer industry reflected that of the human computer context. If you are interested in learning more, there are many books on the ENIAC project. Just pick one, it will mention the women involved. "ENIAC, the triumphs and tragedies of the world's first computer" is a good general overview which you can read in a day, free online at https://archive.org/details/eniac00scot
If you're particularly interested in the women involved, there is a shorter text available here: https://web.archive.org/web/20151122025204/http://pcfly.info...
Please read a post before you reply to it. Your reply is emotional and not constructive. Nobody is out to get you, I am only interested in weeding out misconceptions about computing history.
Sure, if you don't use the standard definitions of common words you can argue false things. Children know that. It has no intellectual merit and you should stop playing silly word games to try and "win" an incorrect argument.
The computing industry does not refer to people sitting in rows doing calculations by hand.