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Tech Women: Meet Jean Jennings Bartik, ENIAC Programmer

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Charvi Kathuria
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Jean Jennings Bartik was one of the six women who programmed the ENIAC computer. In her career spanning over decades, she has worked as a a writer, manager, engineer and programmer. Let's know more about this wonder woman.

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Birth and Education

Jean was born in Gentry County, Missouri, in 1924. She had six siblings. Her grandmother would buy a newspaper for her to read every day. Jean idolized her for the rest of her life. She began her education at a one-room school, and gained local attention for her softball skills. She graduated from Stanberry High School in 1941, aged 16.

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Jean attended Northwest Missouri State Teachers College and majored in mathematics with a minor in English. She graduated in 1945. In 1967, she earned a master's degree in English at the University of Pennsylvania in 1967 and was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Northwest Missouri State University in 2002.

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Her advice for women who want to get into technology:

"I just say do what you love. I loved every minute of what I did. If you don't love what you do, what do you have?"

Career

  • Jean was roped in to work on the new machine, called ENIAC. She and the team taught themselves ENIAC's operation and became its first programmers.
  • In 1947, she worked on converting ENIAC into a stored-program computer. She also contributed significantly to the early BINAC and UNIVAC 1 computers.

Read Also: Tech Women: Meet Anuradha TK, Seniormost Woman Scientist At ISRO

  • In 1967, Jean joined the Auerbach Corporation where she would write and edit technical reports on minicomputers.
  • She remained with Auerbach for eight years and moved among positions with a variety of other companies for the rest of her career as a manager, writer, and engineer.
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Death

After spending her last years as a real estate agent, Jean died from congestive heart failure in a nursing home in Poughkeepsie, New York, on March 23, 2011. She was a strong advocate for induction of women in science and technology.

Read Also: Tech Women: Meet ENIAC Programmer Frances V Spence

women in science tech women ENIAC Programmer Jean Jennings Bartik
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