Proving Ground

A fascinating, forgotten story of the six brilliant women who launched modern computing. As the Cold War began, Americas race for tech supremacy was taking off. Experts rushed to complete the top-secret computing research started during World War II, among them six gifted mathematicians: a patriotic Quaker, a Jewish bookworm, a Yugoslav genius, a native Gaelic speaker, a sophomore from the Bronx, and a farmers daughter from Missouri. Their mission? Programming the worlds first and only supercomputerbefore any code or programming languages existed. These pioneers triumphed against sexist attitudes and huge technical challenges to invent computer programming, yet their monumental contribution has never been recogniseduntil now. Over a decade, Kathy Kleiman met with four of the original six ENIAC Programmers and recorded their stories. Here, with a light touch and a serious mind, she exposes the deliberate erasure of their achievements and restores the women to their rightful place as revolutionaries, bringing to life their camaraderie, their determination, and their rapidly changing world. As big tech struggles with gender inequality and momentum builds in restoring women to history, the time has come for this engrossing story to be uncovered and celebrated.