Proving Ground

The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World’s First Modern Computer

Hardcover, 320 pages

English language

Published July 25, 2022 by Grand Central Publishing.

ISBN:
978-1-5387-1828-5
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4 stars (3 reviews)

For fans of Code Girls and Hidden Figures, PROVING GROUND is the untold, World War II-era story of the six American women who programmed the world's first modern computer.

After the end of World War II, the race for technological supremacy sped on. Top-secret research into ballistics and computing, begun during the war to aid those on the front lines, continued across the United States as engineers and programmers rushed to complete their confidential assignments. Among them were six pioneering women, tasked with figuring out how to program the world's first general-purpose, programmable, all-electronic computer--better known as the ENIAC— even though there were no instruction codes or programming languages in existence. While most students of computer history are aware of this innovative machine, the great contributions of the women who programmed it were never told -- until now.

Over the course of a decade, Kathy Kleiman met with four of …

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Proving Ground

4 stars

I'm glad I read this. The ENIAC 6 deserve more respect and more awareness of how much they brought to programming. I expected the quiet sexism of having their work accepted but not their value as people. I wasn't expecting modern jackasses to try to erase their contributions and deny their importance.

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