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 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 ...

computer. The other five ENIAC programmers were

Jean Bartik Jean Bartik ( Betty Jean Jennings; December 27, 1924 – March 23, 2011) was one of the original six programmers for the ENIAC computer. Bartik studied mathematics in school then began work at the University of Pennsylvania, first manually ca ...

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 ...

Kathleen Antonelli 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, one of the first general-purp ...

Marlyn Meltzer 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

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 ...

Early life and education

Teitelbaum was born Ruth Lichterman in

The Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

, New York, on February 1, 1924. She was the elder of two children, and the only daughter, of Sarah and Simon Lichterman, a teacher. Her parents were

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

ish immigrants from Russia. She graduated from Hunter College with a

B.Sc. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

in Mathematics.

Career

Teitelbaum was hired by the

Moore School of Electrical Engineering The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania came into existence as a result of an endowment from Alfred Fitler Moore on June 4, 1923. It was granted to Penn's School of Electrical Engineering, located in the Towne ...

at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

to compute ballistics

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 ...

. The Moore School was funded by the US Army during the Second World War. Here a group of about 80 women worked manually calculating ballistic trajectories - complex differential calculations. In June 1943, the Army decided to fund an experimental project - the first all-electronic digital computer called the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (

). The computer was a huge machine with 40 black 8-foot panels. The programmers had to physically program it using 3000 switches, and telephone switching cords in a dozen trays, to route the data, and the program, through the machine. This is the reason why these women were called "computers". Along with

, Teitelbaum was part of a special area of the

project to calculate ballistic trajectory equations using analog technology. They taught themselves and others certain functions of the ENIAC and helped prepare the ballistics software. In 1946, the

computer was unveiled before the public and the press. The seven women were the only generation of programmers to program the

. After the war, Teitelbaum traveled with

to the Ballistics Research Laboratory 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 ...

where she remained for two more years to train the next group of

programmers.

Legacy

She played a pivotal role in the rise of computers, although she was given little credit toward the foundations of the

. In 1997, 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, along with the other five original ENIAC programmers. 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 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.

Personal life

She married Adolph Teitelbaum. Marriage licence was issued on September 17, 1948.

Death

Ruth Teitelbaum died in 1986, aged 62, in

Dallas, Texas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County ...

References

External links

The Women of ENIAC
{{DEFAULTSORT:Teitelbaum, Ruth 1986 deaths Hunter College alumni University of Pennsylvania staff 1924 births 20th-century American Jews American women computer scientists American computer scientists Human computers 20th-century American women Jewish women scientists