Chestnut Hill College (CHC) was scheduled to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) on Tuesday evening, including a planned conversation with Kathy Kleiman, author of “Proving Grounds: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World’s First Modern Computer.”

Of the six programmers, two were CHC alumnae: Kathleen “Kay” McNulty (1921-2006) and Frances Bilas (1922-2012). The Local spoke to Gini Calcerano, the daughter of McNulty, about her mother’s life and work.

‘A real Chestnut Hill girl’

McNulty was born in Ireland, but her family moved to the United States when she was just 3 years old. After several years in Wyndmoor, the family settled in Chestnut Hill.

From attending Our Mother of Consolation Parish School to stealing her brothers’ bikes and riding around town with friends, McNulty was “a real Chestnut Hill girl,” according to Calcerano. She even worked at Caruso’s Market, the famous former grocery store on Germantown Avenue.

After graduating from J.W. Hallahan Catholic Girls High School, she earned a full scholarship to CHC. When she enrolled and had to choose a major, McNulty chose what was easiest for her: mathematics. She took every math course offered at CHC and graduated as one of only three math majors in a class of roughly 100 women.

Lacking a set plan for after graduation, McNulty happened across an ad in the newspaper looking for women math majors. With plenty of men assigned in other roles during World War II, the U.S. Army was hiring women to calculate ballistic trajectories. Along with Bilas, McNulty applied.

“They were desperate to find women who would be qualified to do this, and they did pretty much a national search,” Calcerano said. “The two math majors who applied [McNulty and Bilas] were hired immediately because they had good math backgrounds.”

This job would lead McNulty and Bias to becoming programmers of the ENIAC along with four other women, Betty Jean Jennings, Ruth Lichterman, Elizabeth Snyder, and Marlyn Wescoff. Developed for the purpose of completing ballistic trajectory calculations, the ENIAC is recognized as the first general-purpose electronic computer.

Getting recognized

Calcerano’s father, John Mauchly, invented the ENIAC along with J. Presper Eckert. Growing up, Calcerano said she heard lots of stories about her parents’ work. However, the work of the six women programmers often went underappreciated.

“Nobody ever talked about the people who actually made the machine work,” Calcerano said. “Nobody talked about ‘How do you get the instructions from a mathematical idea into this machine to make it process the numbers and come out with an answer?’... They got no recognition for it until the time when Kathy Kleiman started to wonder, ‘I see women in pictures of the ENIAC. Who are they?’”

Calcerano said Kleiman’s book is an engaging read that focuses on the lives of the women instead of just a technical account of the computer.

“You get a real sense of who the women were,” Calcerano said. “It’s not just all about how they made these technical developments — although that’s in there just enough so that you understand the significance of it. But it [asks] ‘Who were the people that did this? What were their interactions with each other like? What did they themselves learn from going through this?’”

Calcerano is pleased that both of her parents are receiving the recognition they deserve for their accomplishments. During Women’s History Month, she is proud that McNulty is a figure for young women to emulate.

“The ENIAC programmers have gone from nobody knowing about them to being regularly recognized,” Calcerano said. “I think that the country is so hungry for having women role models.”

Maggie Dougherty can be reached at Margaret@chestnuthilllocal.com.