Changing Images of Computers and Its Users since 1980

Abstract

Before World War II, the term ‘computer’ was not the name of a machine, but referred to a human calculating mathematical tables, and many of these human computers were women (Campbell-Kelly and Aspray, 2004; Grier 2005). The first electronic computing machine, ENIAC, built for ballistic calculations during World War II, was programmed by six women who were pioneers in the field of programming (Gürer, 2002; Misa, 2010a). Computer programming was not considered a real profession at that time. It had not yet morphed into the risk sport of young computer-fascinated men, which we know from later descriptions (Weizenbaum, 1976; Turkle, 1984). Instead, women ‘were often stereotyped as being good candidates for programming’, Denise Gürer writes, linked to abilities such as patience, persistence and an eye for detail (Gürer, 1995, p. 47). The ENIAC women enjoyed their work, but did not see themselves as pioneers, according to Gürer (2002, p. 119). They were simply doing a job, as Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli recalls: ‘We just thought we were doing the job we had been hired to do’ (Mauchly Antonelli quoted in Gürer, 2002, p. 119). And women could perform this, Jennifer Light claims, because it was seen as a job ‘at the intersection of scientific and clerical labor’ (Light, 1999, p. 457), ‘scientific’ associated with men, ‘clerical’ with women. Also in the following decades, women were important in the computer industry, as pointed out by Marlaine Lockheed, claiming that when this industry ‘was young and there were only 2,000 computer operators, 65% of them were women’ (Lockheed, 1985, p. 117).