Computer History Museum

So this is me at the Computer History Museum.
Good architecture outside. So I was going to expect
a small part from the women in ENIAC since I read
Jennifer Light's essay "When Computers Were
Women."

First, I walked in CHM and went one of the exhibitions.
This weird looking thing is the first one I saw.
This is Lehmer Sieve and was created by Derrick
Norman Lehmer. It is being said that the design influenced
the design of sieves for software.

Aaah...the Apple computer. Whaat! It's a prototype
of Apple I created by Steve Wozniack. Aaa!
Another male. Where's ENIAC?


This is the stored program from ENIAC. YAY!
ENIAC proposed that the machine should store
instructions within an internal memory but later
they used a plugboard wiring scheme. This was
proposed by John von Neumann.
Then EDVAC came along which stored instructions
in a mercury delay line memory. This was designed
by J. Presper Eckert, John Mauchly, John von
Neumann, and others" Still no women contributed.
Maybe "others" consist of women but who knows.

This huge machine is Electrodata E-205 which
is bought by Burroughs and it was for business
and scientific users. Great! Where's the women
in ENIAC?

This is the magnetic tape which is used to store digital
information. What do you know? It was made by two
males: Eckert and Mauchly.Aargh! Where is the women in ENIAC!


This is WISC (Wisconsin Integrally Synch-
ronized Computer). This is the tool that helps
students in new-fields of computing. The machine
was a rotating drum as it perform 4 arithmetic
operations at once. Again it was devised by
a man: Gene Amdahl which create the ground-
breaking System360 for IBM.

Disappointed. Couldn't find any women in
computers in this exhibition.

So I left and went to see CHM's special exhibition
of Charles Cabbage's Difference Engine. The engine
automatically calculates and tabulates polynomials.
Cabbage died before he even start it but in the late
20th Century, London Science Museum designed
the machine according to Cabbage's notes with a few
exceptions.

After 35 minutes of listening to a war veteran
telling us the information and details of the Cabbage's
machine, I decided to go to other exhibition rooms
for women in ENIAC but I saw some photos on the
hallway.
This is Seymour Cray who is individuals billed him
"father of supercomputing" at the console of his
CDC 6600, 1964. Still no women in ENIAC. :(

This is a UNIX at DEC PDP-11. You guess it.
Both are men: Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie
and no women in ENIAC.

Aarrgghhh!!!!!!!


Whoa! Finally a woman. This is Grace Hopper,
which she was a computer pioneer, in front of UNIVAC.
But still no women from UNIAC. So that was the
end of the hallway pictures.

This device is hard disk. We have come a long
way from this BIG to this small as of today.
This was sought out by a Michigan teacher,
Rey Johnson. But still no women in ENIAC.




This is the PalmPilot. It was purchased by U.S.
Robotics to 3Com to Handspring (the Visor was made)
Handspring chairman was Jeff Hawkins and a woman
CEO, Donna Dubinsky and ED Colligan was Senior VP.

Again no women in ENIAC. My time was up and I left
the Computer History Museum disappointed of not
seeing the women in ENIAC's projects.

After going home, I checked Computer History Museum's
website and checked their Fellow Awards and found out
about Jean Jennings Bartik. She created the ENIAC
computing machine in 1945.

What I don't understand is that there's no picture of her
in the exhibition room but has a picture on their website.

I hope CHM can have something the women in ENIAC did
and display in their museum in the future.