Free Knowledge Culture Calendar/December 27

Today is the birthday of Jean Bartik. She and did pioneering work on the ENIAC, BINAC and UNIVAC I systems. She assembled and trained the team that converted the ENIAC into a stored-program computer. The ENIAC led to the development of the computer industry. At a time when only the engineering of the hardware of computers was considered prestigious and therefore dominated by men, women were then given the job of debugging and programming these machines – and created the field of programming. She was also one of the first programmers in the U.S. Army and programmed the first missile guidance computer.