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Kathleen Rita Antonelli ( McNulty; formerly Mauchly; 12 February 1921 – 20 April 2006), known as Kay McNulty, was an Irish-born American computer programmer and one of the six original programmers of the
ENIAC ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. There were other computers that had these features, but the ENIAC had all of them in one pac ...
, one of the first general-purpose electronic digital computers. The other five ENIAC programmers were
Betty Holberton Frances Elizabeth Holberton (March 7, 1917 – December 8, 2001) was an American computer scientist who was one of the six original programmers of the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, ENIAC. The other five ENIAC programmers wer ...
, Ruth Teitelbaum,
Frances Spence Frances V. Spence ( Bilas; March 2, 1922 – July 18, 2012) was one of the original programmers for the ENIAC (the first electronic digital computer). She is considered one of the first computer programmers in history. The other five ENIAC progr ...
, Marlyn Meltzer, and Jean Bartik.


Early life and education

She was born Kathleen Rita McNulty in Feymore, part of the small village of
Creeslough Creeslough ( , locally ; ga, An Craoslach ) is a village in County Donegal County Donegal ( ; ga, Contae Dhún na nGall) is a county of Ireland in the province of Ulster and in the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the t ...
in what was then a ''
Gaeltacht ( , , ) are the districts of Ireland, individually or collectively, where the Irish government recognises that the Irish language is the predominant vernacular, or language of the home. The ''Gaeltacht'' districts were first officially reco ...
'' area (Irish-speaking region) of
County Donegal County Donegal ( ; ga, Contae Dhún na nGall) is a county of Ireland in the province of Ulster and in the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the town of Donegal in the south of the county. It has also been known as County Tyrcon ...
in
Ulster Ulster (; ga, Ulaidh or ''Cúige Uladh'' ; sco, label= Ulster Scots, Ulstèr or ''Ulster'') is one of the four traditional Irish provinces. It is made up of nine counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kin ...
, the northern
province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions out ...
in
Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...
, on February 12, 1921, during the
Irish War of Independence The Irish War of Independence () or Anglo-Irish War was a guerrilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army (IRA, the army of the Irish Republic) and British forces: the British Army, along with the quasi-mil ...
. She was the third of six children of James and Anne (née Nelis) McNulty. On the night of her birth, her father, an
Irish Republican Army The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various paramilitary organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Organisations by this name have been dedicated to irredentism through Irish republicanism, the belief th ...
training officer, was arrested and imprisoned in Derry Gaol for two years as he was a suspected member of the IRA. On his release, the family emigrated to the United States in October 1924 and settled in the Chestnut Hill section of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...
where he found work as a stonemason. At the time, Kathleen McNulty was unable to speak any English, only Irish; she would remember prayers in Irish for the rest of her life. She attended
parochial Parochial is an adjective which may refer to: * Parishes, in religion ** Parish churches, also called parochial churches * Parochial schools, primary or secondary schools affiliated to a religious organisation * Parochialism Parochialism is the ...
grade school in Chestnut Hill (1927 – 1933) and
J. W. Hallahan Catholic Girls High School John W. Hallahan Catholic Girls' High School was an all-girls Roman Catholic high school located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. It is the country's first all-girls diocesan Catholic high scho ...
(1933 – 1938) in Philadelphia. In high school, she had taken a year of algebra, a year of plane geometry, a second year of algebra, and a year of trigonometry and solid geometry. After graduating high school, she enrolled in
Chestnut Hill College Chestnut Hill College is a private Catholic college in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The college was founded in 1924 as a women's college by the Sisters of St. Joseph. It was originally named Mount Saint Joseph College ...
for Women. During her studies, she took every mathematics course offered, including spherical trigonometry, differential calculus, projective geometry, partial differential equations, and statistics. She graduated with a degree in mathematics in June 1942, one of only a few mathematics majors out of a class of 92 women. During her third year of college, McNulty was looking for relevant jobs, knowing that she wanted to work in mathematics but did not want to be a school teacher. She learned that insurance companies' actuarial positions required a master's degree; therefore, feeling that business training would make her more employable, she took as many business courses as her college schedule would permit: accounting, money and banking, business law, economics, and statistics.


Career


Computer programmer

A week or two after graduating, she saw a US
Civil Service The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...
ad in ''
The Philadelphia Inquirer ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The newspaper's circulation is the largest in both the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley metropolitan region of Southeastern Pen ...
'' looking for women with degrees in mathematics. During World War II, the US Army was hiring women to calculate bullet and missile trajectories at
Ballistic Research Laboratory The Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) was a leading U.S. Army research establishment situated at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland that specialized in ballistics ( interior, exterior, and terminal) as well as vulnerability and lethality analys ...
, which had been established at the
Aberdeen Proving Ground Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) (sometimes erroneously called Aberdeen Proving ''Grounds'') is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. More than 7,500 civilians and 5,000 military personnel work a ...
in Aberdeen, Maryland, with staff from both the Aberdeen Proving Ground and the Moore School of Engineering at the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...
. She immediately called her two fellow math majors, Frances Bilas and Josephine Benson about the ad. Benson couldn't meet up with them, so Antonelli and Bilas met in Philadelphia one morning in June 1942 for an interview in a building on South Broad Street (likely the
Union League of Philadelphia The Union League of Philadelphia is a private club founded in 1862 by the Old Philadelphians as a patriotic society to support the policies of Abraham Lincoln. As of 2022, the club has over 4,000 members. Its main building was built in 1865 and ...
Building). One week later, they were both hired as human "computers" at a pay grade of SP-4, a subprofessional civil service grade. The starting pay was $1620 annually. Antonelli stated the pay was "very good at the time". They were notified to report to work at the Moore School of Engineering. Their job was to compute
ballistics Ballistics is the field of mechanics concerned with the launching, flight behaviour and impact effects of projectiles, especially ranged weapon munitions such as bullets, unguided bombs, rockets or the like; the science or art of designing a ...
trajectories A trajectory or flight path is the path that an object with mass in motion follows through space as a function of time. In classical mechanics, a trajectory is defined by Hamiltonian mechanics via canonical coordinates; hence, a complete traj ...
used for
artillery Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during si ...
firing tables, mostly using mechanical desk calculators and extremely large sheets of columned paper. The pay was low, but both Antonelli and Bilas were satisfied to have attained employment that used their educations and that served the
war effort In politics and military planning, a war effort is a coordinated mobilization of society's resources—both industrial and human—towards the support of a military force. Depending on the militarization of the culture, the relative si ...
. Her official civil service title, as printed on her employment documentation, was "
computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...
." She and Bilas began work with about 10 other "girls" (as the female computers were called) and 4 men—a group recently brought to the Moore School from Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Antonelli and Bilas conducted their work in a large, former classroom in the Moore School; the same room would later be the one where the
ENIAC ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. There were other computers that had these features, but the ENIAC had all of them in one pac ...
was built and operated until December 1946. Despite all their coursework, their mathematics training had not prepared Antonelli and Bilas for their work calculating trajectories for firing tables: they were both unfamiliar with numerical integration methods used to compute the trajectories, and the textbook lent to them to study from (''Numerical Mathematical Analysis'', 1st Edition by James B. Scarborough, Oxford University Press, 1930) provided little enlightenment. The two newcomers ultimately learned how to perform the steps of their calculations, accurate to ten decimal places, through practice and the advisement of a respected supervisor, Lila Todd. A total of about 75 female computers were employed at the Moore School in this period, many of them taking courses from Adele Goldstine,
Mary Mauchly Mary may refer to: People * Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name) Religious contexts * New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below * Mary, mother of Jesus, also call ...
, and Mildred Kramer. Each gun required its own firing table, which had about 1,800 trajectories. Computing just one trajectory required approximately 30–40 hours of handwork with a calculator. After two or three months, Antonelli and Bilas were moved to work on the
differential analyser The differential analyser is a mechanical analogue computer designed to solve differential equations by integration, using wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration. It was one of the first advanced computing devices to be used operat ...
in the basement of the Moore School, the largest and most sophisticated analogue mechanical calculator of the time, of which there were only three in the United States and five or six in the world (all of the others were in
Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It ...
). The analyser had been lent to the University of Pennsylvania for the duration of the war. Using the analyser (invented by
Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all warti ...
of MIT a decade prior and made more precise with improvements by the Moore School staff), a single trajectory computation—about 40 hours of work on a mechanical desk calculator—could be performed in about 50 minutes. Antonelli was further promoted to supervising calculations on the analyser. The analyser room staff worked six days a week, with their only official holidays as Christmas and the Fourth of July.


Working with ENIAC

The Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer was developed for the purpose of performing these same ballistics calculations between 1943 and 1946. In June 1945, Antonelli was selected to be one of its first programmers, along with several other women from the computer corps: Betty Snyder,
Marlyn Wescoff Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer (1922 – December 7, 2008) was an American mathematician and computer programmer, and one of the six original programmers of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. Early life Meltzer was born Mar ...
, and
Ruth Lichterman Ruth Teitelbaum ( Lichterman; February 1, 1924 – August 9, 1986) was one of the first computer programmers in the world. Teitelbaum was one of the original programmers for the ENIAC computer. The other five ENIAC programmers were Jean Bar ...
, and a fifth computer named Helen Greenman. When Greenman declined to go to Aberdeen for training and a 1st alternate refused as well, Betty Jean Jennings, the 2nd alternate, got the job, and between June and August 1945 they received training at
Aberdeen Proving Grounds Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) (sometimes erroneously called Aberdeen Proving ''Grounds'') is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. More than 7,500 civilians and 5,000 military personnel work a ...
in the IBM
punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
equipment that was to be used as the I/O for the
ENIAC ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. There were other computers that had these features, but the ENIAC had all of them in one pac ...
. Later, Antonelli's college schoolmate and fellow computer, Bilas, would join the team of ENIAC programmers at the Moore School, though she did not attend the initial training at Aberdeen. The computer could complete the same ballistics calculations described above in about 10 seconds, but it would often take one or two days to set the computer up for a new set of problems, via plugs and switches. It was the computer programmer's responsibility to determine the sequence of steps required to complete the calculations for each problem and set up the ENIAC according; early on, they consulted with ENIAC engineers such as
Arthur Burks Arthur Walter Burks (October 13, 1915 – May 14, 2008) was an American mathematician who worked in the 1940s as a senior engineer on the project that contributed to the design of the ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. ...
to determine how the ENIAC could be programmed. In 1996, Antonelli said that John Mauchly pronounced the name of the computer "EN-ee-ack", unlike the common pronunciation at the time of "EEN-ee-ack". The ENIAC was programmed using subroutines, nested loops, and indirect addressing for both data locations and jump destinations. During her work programming the ENIAC, Antonelli is credited with the invention of the
subroutine In computer programming, a function or subroutine is a sequence of program instructions that performs a specific task, packaged as a unit. This unit can then be used in programs wherever that particular task should be performed. Functions may ...
. Her colleague, Jean Jennings, recalled when Antonelli proposed the idea to solve the problem where the logical circuits did not have enough capacity to compute some trajectories. The team collaborated on the implementation. Because the ENIAC was a classified project, the programmers were not at first allowed into the room to see the machine, but they were given access to blueprints from which to work out programs in an adjacent room. Programming the ENIAC involved discretising the differential equations involved in a trajectory problem to the precision allowed by the
ENIAC ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. There were other computers that had these features, but the ENIAC had all of them in one pac ...
and calculating the route to the appropriate bank of electronics in parallel progression, with each instruction having to reach the correct location in time to within 1/5,000th of a second. Having devised a program on paper, the programmers were allowed into the ENIAC room to physically program the machine. Antonelli would later find out that her team had been testing the conveniency of the H-bomb. Much of the programming time of the ENIAC consisted of setting up and running test programs that assured its operators of the whole system's integrity: every vacuum tube, every electrical connection needed to be verified before running a problem. As the team was preparing for the launch, Antonelli and the other women who had worked on the ENIAC were told to act as hostesses and greet those around them. They were to stand near the machine and "look good." Thus, at the time, they did not receive the recognition they deserved. Antonelli was transferred to
Aberdeen Proving Ground Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) (sometimes erroneously called Aberdeen Proving ''Grounds'') is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. More than 7,500 civilians and 5,000 military personnel work a ...
's
Ballistics Research Laboratory The Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) was a leading U.S. Army research establishment situated at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland that specialized in ballistics (interior, exterior, and terminal) as well as vulnerability and lethality analysis. ...
along with the ENIAC when it was moved there in mid-1947. She was joined by
Ruth Lichterman Ruth Teitelbaum ( Lichterman; February 1, 1924 – August 9, 1986) was one of the first computer programmers in the world. Teitelbaum was one of the original programmers for the ENIAC computer. The other five ENIAC programmers were Jean Bar ...
and Bilas, but the other three programmers preferred to stay in Philadelphia rather than relocate to the remote
Aberdeen Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), a ...
.


Personal life

ENIAC co-inventor
John Mauchly John William Mauchly (August 30, 1907 – January 8, 1980) was an American physicist who, along with J. Presper Eckert, designed ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, as well as EDVAC, BINAC and UNIVAC I, the first ...
, who had since departed his post as a professor at the Moore School to found his own computer company along with Presper Eckert, made frequent trips to Washington, D.C. during this period, and stopped in to check up on the ENIAC in Aberdeen. Mauchly had already hired Jean Bartik (''née'' Betty Jean Jennings) and
Betty Holberton Frances Elizabeth Holberton (March 7, 1917 – December 8, 2001) was an American computer scientist who was one of the six original programmers of the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, ENIAC. The other five ENIAC programmers wer ...
(''née'' Snyder); and had hoped to attract McNulty as well. Instead, Mauchly married McNulty in 1948 against the wishes of her parents and she resigned her post at Aberdeen. The couple, along with his two children from his first marriage, lived initially in his row house on St. Mark's Street near the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...
. They later moved to a large farmhouse called Little Linden in
Ambler, Pennsylvania Ambler is a borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It is located approximately 16 miles (26 km) north of the Center City Philadelphia. History Lenape The historical territory of the Lenni Lenape was in the Delaware River Valley, in a ...
. With Mauchly, McNulty had five children, Sally (born 1949), Kathy (born 1951), Bill (born 1953), Gini (born 1954) and Eva (born 1958). Mauchly's first wife had died in a September 1946 drowning accident.


Later life

Kay McNulty worked on the software design for later computers including the
BINAC BINAC (Binary Automatic Computer) was an early electronic computer designed for Northrop Aircraft Company by the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) in 1949. Eckert and Mauchly, though they had started the design of EDVAC at the Unive ...
and
UNIVAC I The UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer I) was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer design for business application produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inven ...
computers whose hardware was designed by her husband. John Mauchly died in 1980 following several bouts of illness and recoveries. She then married photographer
Severo Antonelli Severo Antonelli (ca. July 17, 1907 – December 9, 1995) was an Italian-American photographer often associated with the Futurist movement. Early years Born in Fara Filiorum Petri, Chieti, Italy, in 1907, Antonelli arrived in Philadelphia with ...
in 1985. After a long struggle with
Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms beco ...
, her second husband died in 1996; Kay herself had suffered a heart attack while caring for her husband, but made a full recovery. Following Mauchly's death, Kay carried on the legacy of the ENIAC pioneers by authoring articles, giving talks (frequently along with Jean Bartik, with whom she remained lifelong friends), and making herself available for interviews with reporters and researchers. She was inducted into the
Women in Technology International Women in Technology International (WITI) is an organization promoting the achievements of women in technology and extending support, opportunities, and inspiration. It was founded by Carolyn Leighton in 1989 as the International Network of Women in ...
Hall of Fame in 1997 along with the other original ENIAC programmers, and she accepted the induction of John Mauchly into the
National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also oper ...
in
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,
Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...
, in 2002. Kay McNulty died from cancer in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, on April 20, 2006, at the age of 85.


Legacy

In 1997, Antonelli was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame, along with the five other ENIAC programmers, for their contributions on programming ballistics trajectories. During the heyday of ENIAC, proper recognition escaped Antonelli and her fellow programmers. The invisibility of the ENIAC programmers (both from being women and the secrecy of their work, especially during the war) kept them from the public eye. In 2010, a documentary called, "'' Top Secret Rosies: The Female "Computers" of WWII''" was released. The film centered around in-depth interviews of three of the six women programmers, focusing on the commendable patriotic contributions they made during World War II. The ENIAC team is also the inspiration behind the award-winning 2013 documentary ''The Computers''. This documentary, created by Kathy Kleiman and the ENIAC Programmers Project, combines actual footage of the ENIAC team from the 1940s with interviews with the female team members as they reflect on their time working together on the ENIAC. It is the first documentary of a series of three, and parts two and three will be entitled ''The Coders'' and ''The Future-Maker'', respectively. In July 2017,
Dublin City University Dublin City University (abbreviated as DCU) ( ga, Ollscoil Chathair Bhaile Átha Cliath) is a university based on the Northside of Dublin, Ireland. Created as the '' National Institute for Higher Education, Dublin'' in 1975, it enrolled its ...
(DCU) honoured Antonelli by naming their computing building after Kathleen (Kay) McNulty. In 2019, the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) at the
National University of Ireland, Galway The University of Galway ( ga, Ollscoil na Gaillimhe) is a public research university located in the city of Galway, Ireland. A tertiary education and research institution, the university was awarded the full five QS stars for excellence in 201 ...
, named its new Waterford-based primary supercomputer, which is to serve as Ireland's national supercomputer for academic researchers, Kay, following a public poll, wherein Antonelli beat out candidates including botanist Ellen Hutchins, scientist and inventor Nicholas Callan, geologist Richard Kirwan, chemist
Eva Philbin Eva Philbin (4 January 1914 – 24 June 2005) was an Irish chemist who became the first woman president of the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland. Born Eva Maria Ryder in Ballina, County Mayo, Ireland, Philbin received her B.Sc with first class h ...
, and hydrographer Sir Francis Beaufort.KayICHEC Announces Naming Competition for new Supercomputer (10 January 2018)
/ref>


See also

*
Timeline of women in science This is a timeline of women in science, spanning from ancient history up to the 21st century. While the timeline primarily focuses on women involved with natural sciences such as astronomy, biology, chemistry and physics, it also includes women f ...


References


External links


WITI Hall of Fame


* ttp://purl.umn.edu/107363 Oral history interview with Frances E. Holberton– Holberton was, with Antonelli, one of the six original ENIAC programmers.
Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...
, University of Minnesota.
Death of Donegal's Computing Pioneer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Antonelli, Kathleen 1921 births 2006 deaths 20th-century Irish people People from County Donegal Chestnut Hill College alumni Irish emigrants to the United States Deaths from cancer in Pennsylvania People from Ambler, Pennsylvania Human computers Irish computer programmers American computer programmers 20th-century American women scientists American women computer scientists American computer scientists 21st-century American women