Do you recall
the pictures of ENIAC programmers at work: moving plugs and setting switches while standing up and keeping track of the program on sheets of papers?
In a recent issue of Communications of the ACM (vol. 52, no. 1, p. 17) a one-page article A Pioneer Woman by Michael Ross appeared, featuring a very interesting project ENIAC Programmers Project run by Kathy Kleiman. Abeit short, the aticle is really interesting as it brings this famous chapter of computing history to (more) life.
Regarding user interfaces, the article discloses that there were no manuals available for the for the ENIAC programmers. So the programmers, among these Jean Bartik, “pored over its logical and electrical block diagrams and discussed design details with the male engineers and physicists who had created ENIAC.”
