In 1945, six women pulled off a computing miracle.
They programmed the world’s first computer—with no manuals, no training.
Then, a SINGLE assumption erased them from tech history for decades.
The story of how ONE photo nearly deleted computing’s female founders: 🧵
Jeremy Keeshin
5,942 posts
CEO & Cofounder @CodeHS, author @ReadWriteCode, founder @flipsideupdate. Improving CS education #ReadWriteCode - @boolcom @gotynker @codehop_ @csaiready
- Replying to @jkeeshBy making stories like ENIAC’s part of the canon—not the footnotes. By teaching that the first coders weren’t just women—they were visionaries. By showing every girl in tech: you’re not an exception... You’re part of a legacy...
- Replying to @jkeeshBecause for decades, their names were forgotten. It wasn’t until the 1980s when Kleiman found them and recorded their stories. By the time they were publicly honored in 1997... Most were in their seventies.
- Replying to @jkeeshThey kept building. Betty Holberton wrote the first software application. Jean Bartik worked on memory systems. Kay McNulty helped invent reusable code, or “subroutines”... So why don’t we learn about them in school?
- Replying to @jkeeshThat job fell to six women: Betty Holberton, Jean Bartik, Kay McNulty, Ruth Teitelbaum, Marlyn Meltzer, and Frances Spence. But there was a problem... They weren’t even allowed to touch the machine:
- Replying to @jkeeshKathy Kleiman, a young programmer, found old photos of women standing beside ENIAC—the first general-purpose computer. When she asked who they were, curators said: “Probably just models”... But Kleiman had a feeling they were something more:
00:00 - Replying to @jkeeshThe six women who made ENIAC work weren’t invited to the demo. Photos of the machine appeared in newspapers... But the people who programmed it? Not even named:
00:00 - Replying to @jkeeshThey weren’t models. They were the world’s first programmers. First, they were hired as “human computers” to calculate missile trajectories during WWII. Then chosen for a top-secret project unlike anything before:
00:00 - Replying to @jkeeshSince women were doing it, people assumed it was secretarial—just “wiring” or “filing.” Even though it required complex math and problem-solving... Soon, the field of programming would be rewritten entirely:
- Replying to @jkeeshThere was no keyboard. Programming meant plugging thousands of cables into the right configuration—by hand. It was almost impossible to program. But they pulled it off anyway:
00:00 - Replying to @jkeeshThe credit went to the engineers who built the hardware. Why were the programmers ignored? Because back then, programming wasn’t seen as valuable work... And that perception had lasting consequences:
00:00 - Replying to @jkeeshBy inventing the process from scratch. They built algorithms, flowcharts, and step-by-step routines—on paper. Then, once granted access, they programmed ENIAC by physically rewiring it... And that’s where things got even harder:
00:00 - Replying to @jkeeshSecurity restrictions kept them out of the ENIAC lab. They had to write programs using only blueprints and logic diagrams. No manuals. No programming languages... So how do you code something no one’s ever coded before?
- Replying to @jkeeshIn that gap, tech culture had completely changed. A field launched by women had become a boys’ club... But what if we hadn’t erased the founders?






