Who wrote the first bit of computer code? That honor arguably belongs to Ada Lovelace, the controversial daughter of the poet Lord Byron. When the English mathematician Charles Babbage designed a forerunner of the modern computer that he dubbed an “Analytical Engine,” Lovelace recognized that the all-powerful machine could do more than calculate; it could be programmed to run a self-contained series of actions, with the results of each step determining the next step. Her notes on this are widely considered to be the first computer program.
This division of labor -- the man in charge of the hardware, the woman playing with software -- remained the norm for the founding generation of real computers. In 1943, an all-male team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania began building ENIAC, the first general-purpose computer in the U.S. When it came time to hire programmers, they selected six people, all women. Men worked with machines; women programmed them.
“We didn’t think we should spend our time worrying about figuring out programming methods,” one of ENIAC’s architects later recalled. “There would be time enough to worry about those things later.” It fell to the women to worry about them, and this original team of women made many signal contributions, effectively inventing the field of computer programming. But programming had no cachet or notoriety; it certainly wasn’t seen as inspiring work, as historian Janet Abbate’s account of this era makes clear.
Sexist stereotypes are used today to justify not hiring women programmers, but in the early years of the computer revolution, it was precisely the opposite -- and not without the encouragement of women as well. Early managers became convinced that women alone had the skills to succeed as programmers. Still, it was considered glorified clerical work.