Jean Bartik facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Jean Bartik
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| Born |
Betty Jean Jennings
December 27, 1924 |
| Died | March 23, 2011 (aged 86) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Northwest Missouri State Teachers College (B.S., 1945; honorary D. Sc., 2002), University of Pennsylvania (Master's 1967) |
| Spouse(s) | William Bartik |
| Awards | Computer Pioneer Award of the IEEE Computer Society (2008) |
| Engineering career | |
| Employer(s) | University of Pennsylvania, Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, Auerbach Publishers, Data Decisions |
| Projects | ENIAC |
| Awards | WITI Hall of Fame Computer History Museum Fellow (2008) |
Jean Jennings Bartik (born Betty Jean Jennings, December 27, 1924 – March 23, 2011) was a very important American computer programmer. She was one of the first people to program the ENIAC computer. The ENIAC was one of the world's first electronic computers.
Jean Bartik studied math in college. She then started working at the University of Pennsylvania. Her job was to calculate how far bullets would travel. First, she did this by hand. Later, she used the ENIAC computer.
Jean and five other women were the first ENIAC programmers. These women were Betty Holberton, Ruth Teitelbaum, Kathleen Antonelli, Marlyn Meltzer, and Frances Spence. They created many basic ideas for computer programming. This was because the ENIAC was a brand new type of machine.
After the ENIAC, Jean Bartik worked on other early computers. These included the BINAC and UNIVAC. She also worked for different tech companies. She was a writer, manager, engineer, and programmer. Later in her life, she became a real estate agent. She passed away in 2011.
The popular website building tool Drupal has a main design theme called Bartik. It is named in her honor.
Contents
Early Life and School
Growing Up in Missouri
Jean Bartik was born Betty Jean Jennings in Gentry County, Missouri, in 1924. She was the sixth of seven children in her family. Her father, William Smith Jennings, was a farmer and a schoolteacher. Her mother, Lula May Spainhower, was also from Alanthus Grove, Missouri.
As a child, Jean would ride her horse to visit her grandmother. Her grandmother bought her a newspaper every day. This helped Jean learn and grow. Her grandmother became a role model for her.
Education and Learning
Jean started school in a local one-room schoolhouse. She was also known for her skill in softball. To go to high school, she lived with her older sister in a nearby town. Later, she drove herself to school every day, even at age 14. She finished high school in 1941 when she was 16.
She went to Northwest Missouri State Teachers College. Today, this school is called Northwest Missouri State University. She studied mathematics and also took English classes. In 1945, she was the only student in her class to earn a math degree.
Later, Jean continued her education. She earned a master's degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. In 2002, she received an honorary doctorate degree from Northwest Missouri State University.
Career in Computing
Joining the War Effort
In 1945, the Army was looking for mathematicians. They needed help with the war. Jean Bartik, then known as Betty Jennings, decided to join. She wanted to be a "human computer". This meant she would do calculations by hand.
She applied to the University of Pennsylvania. She was hired to work for the Army. Her job was to calculate ballistics trajectories. These were the paths that bullets would follow. While working there, she met William Bartik, an engineer. They got married in December 1946.
Programming the ENIAC
The ENIAC (Electronic Numeric Integrator and Computer) was built to do these calculations much faster. Jean applied to work on this new computer. She was chosen as one of its first programmers.
Six women were chosen to be the main programmers for the ENIAC. These were Jean Jennings Bartik, Betty Holberton, Marlyn Wescoff, Kathleen McNulty, Ruth Teitelbaum, and Frances Spence. Many other women also helped with the ENIAC during the war.
Jean Bartik became a co-lead programmer with Betty Holberton. The team had no instruction manual. They studied diagrams of the machine. They also talked to the engineers who built it. This is how they taught themselves how to program the ENIAC. At first, they couldn't even see the computer's hardware. They had to learn everything from diagrams.
Pioneering Programming Techniques
While working on the ENIAC, these six women created new ways to program. They developed ideas like subroutines and nesting. These are basic techniques used in programming today. They physically changed the ENIAC by moving switches and cables to program it.
Besides calculating bullet paths, they also worked on nuclear calculations for Los Alamos National Laboratory. Jean Bartik and Betty Holberton worked together on a key program. This program showed that the ENIAC worked perfectly.
On February 15, 1946, the ENIAC was shown to the public. It was a huge success. The ENIAC could do calculations much faster than any machine before it. A job that took a "human computer" 40 hours could be done in 20 seconds by the ENIAC.
Jean Bartik described that day:
The day ENIAC was introduced to the world was one of the most exciting days of my life. The demonstration was fabulous. ENIAC calculated the trajectory faster than it took the bullet to travel. We handed out copies of the calculations as they were run. ENIAC was 1,000 times faster than any machine that existed prior to that time. With its flashing lights, it also was an impressive machine illustrating graphically how fast it was actually computing.
Even though the demonstration was a success, most of the praise went to the engineers who built it.
Transforming the ENIAC
Later, Jean Bartik was asked to lead a team. Their goal was to change the ENIAC into a "stored program computer." This meant the computer could store its instructions inside itself. She worked closely with famous scientists like John von Neumann.
By March 1948, Jean Bartik had successfully changed the ENIAC. This made the ENIAC work faster and more accurately.
Working on BINAC and UNIVAC
After the war, Jean Bartik continued to work with the ENIAC designers. She helped them create the BINAC and UNIVAC I computers. The BINAC was the first computer to use magnetic tape instead of punch cards for data. It also used a "twin unit" idea.
Jean also played a key role in designing the logic circuits for the UNIVAC. She also helped create the first generative programming system for a computer. This was called SORT/MERGE. She worked on this with her friend, Betty Holberton. Jean called their group of computer engineers a "technical Camelot."
In the early 1950s, the Eckert-Mauchly Corporation was sold. Jean Bartik then helped train people how to program and use the UNIVAC. She trained programmers at the United States Census Bureau.
Jean Bartik later left her computer career to raise her family. During this time, she started using the name "Jean" instead of "Betty."
For a long time, Jean Bartik's important work was not well known. But later, her pioneering work was shared in articles and films. The film Top Secret Rosies: The Female "Computers" of WWII helped tell her story.
Later Life and Legacy
New Paths
After getting her master's degree in 1967, Jean Bartik joined the Auerbach Corporation. She wrote and edited technical reports about minicomputers. She stayed there for eight years. Then, she worked for other companies as a manager, writer, and engineer.
Jean Bartik retired from the computer industry in 1986. For the next 25 years, she worked as a real estate agent.
Jean Bartik passed away on March 23, 2011, at age 86. She died from congestive heart failure.
Honoring a Pioneer
Starting in 1996, people began to realize how important Jean Bartik and the other ENIAC programmers were. Jean Bartik and Kathleen Antonelli (another ENIAC programmer) were invited to speak. They shared their experiences working with the ENIAC, BINAC, and UNIVAC.
Jean Bartik received many awards and honors for her pioneering work. She helped launch the commercial computer industry. She also turned the ENIAC into the world's first stored program computer.
In 2010, a documentary called Top Secret Rosies: The Female "Computers" of WWII was released. It focused on three of the six women programmers. It showed their amazing contributions during World War II. Another documentary, The Computers, also tells their story.
Jean Bartik wrote her autobiography before she passed away. It is called "Pioneer Programmer: Jean Jennings Bartik and the Computer that Changed the World". It was published in 2013.
Jean Bartik often shared inspiring advice. She said, "Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't do something because they think you can't. You can do anything, achieve anything, if you think you can and you educate yourself to succeed." She encouraged girls and women to follow their dreams.
The Jean Jennings Bartik Computing Museum is at Northwest Missouri State University. It is dedicated to the history of computing and Jean Bartik's career.
Awards and Honors
- Inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame (1997).
- Fellow of the Computer History Museum (2008).
- Received the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award from the IEEE Computer Society (2008).
- Received the Korenman Award (2009).
Images for kids
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Programmers Betty Jean Jennings (left) and Fran Bilas (right) operate the ENIAC's main control panel.
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See also
In Spanish: Jean Jennings Bartik para niños
