Jean Bartik

Born Betty Jean Jennings in Missouri, she attended Northwest Missouri State Teachers College, receiving her BS in Mathematics. Bartik earned an MS in English from the University of Pennsylvania and an Honorary Dr. of science from Northwest Missouri State University. In 1945, she was hired to compute ballistics firing tables at the Army's Ballistics Research Labs as one of eighty "computers," - people, usually women, hired to calculate ballistics trajectories (differential calculus equations) by hand. Also in 1945, a novel electronic machine to compute firing tables--called ENIAC--was completed. ENIAC was over 700 square feet in size, had 18,000 vacuum tubes, and weighed 30 tons. Bartik became an editor for Auerbach Publishers, an early publisher in high tech sector. In 1981, she joined Data Decisions (a Ziff Davis Company) as a Senior Editor for Communications Services.