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Diff — Marlyn Wescoff

Comparing rev 3 → rev 4

	Marlyn Wescoff — born Marlyn Wescoff (1922 – 4 December 2008), later Meltzer — was an American mathematician and one of the six original programmers of ENIAC.

	# Life

-	Wescoff graduated from Temple University in 1942 with a mathematics degree and, like the others, went to work computing artillery firing tables for the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory — first in Philadelphia. She volunteered for the secret machine project that turned out to be ENIAC, working on its left-side digit trays and the program that would become its public demonstration.
+	Wescoff graduated from Temple University in 1942 with a mathematics degree and, like the others, went to work computing for the Army — weather calculations under John Mauchly's group at first, then artillery firing tables — in Philadelphia. She volunteered for the secret machine project that turned out to be ENIAC, working on its left-side digit trays and the program that would become its public demonstration.

	# ENIAC and after

-	Wescoff's specialty was the machine's trickiest physical domain: the panels that had to be cabled just so for a trajectory to run. She stayed with the project through ENIAC's move to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, programming the machine's new stored-program configuration — then left computing in 1947 to marry, at a time when marriage generally ended a woman's technical career by custom if not by rule.
+	Wescoff's specialty was the machine's trickiest physical domain: the panels that had to be cabled just so for a trajectory to run. She married Philip Meltzer in February 1947 and left the project before ENIAC's relocation to the Aberdeen Proving Ground — at a time when marriage generally ended a woman's technical career by custom if not by rule.

-	Her second career was uncommonly dramatic: decades later, in her seventies, she entered rabbinical school and was ordained a Reform rabbi in 2001 — one of the oldest people ever ordained. She died in 2008.
+	Her second career was uncommonly dramatic: decades later, in her seventies, she entered rabbinical school and was ordained a Reform rabbi in her late seventies (c. 2001) — among the oldest people ever ordained. She died in 2008.

	# Legacy

	- Inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame (1997) with the other five ENIAC programmers.
	- Her life reads as two complete stories — founding programmer, then rabbi — joined by the fact that almost no one knew about the first until her last decade.

	# See also

	- [[The first programmers]]
	- [[History of Programming]]

	# References

	1. Kleiman, Kathy. Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World's First Modern Computer (Grand Central, 2022).
	2. Haigh, Thomas, Mark Priestley, and Crispin Rope. ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer (MIT Press, 2016).
	3. Evans, Claire L. Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet (Portfolio, 2018).
	4. Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, 180 U.S.P.Q. 673 (D. Minn. 1973) — the ENIAC patent trial.

	[[Category:History]]
	[[Category:People]]

	Marlyn Wescoff — born Marlyn Wescoff (1922 – 4 December 2008), later Meltzer — was an American mathematician and one of the six original programmers of ENIAC.

	# Life

-	Wescoff graduated from Temple University in 1942 with a mathematics degree and, like the others, went to work computing artillery firing tables for the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory — first in Philadelphia. She volunteered for the secret machine project that turned out to be ENIAC, working on its left-side digit trays and the program that would become its public demonstration.
+	Wescoff graduated from Temple University in 1942 with a mathematics degree and, like the others, went to work computing for the Army — weather calculations under John Mauchly's group at first, then artillery firing tables — in Philadelphia. She volunteered for the secret machine project that turned out to be ENIAC, working on its left-side digit trays and the program that would become its public demonstration.

	# ENIAC and after

-	Wescoff's specialty was the machine's trickiest physical domain: the panels that had to be cabled just so for a trajectory to run. She stayed with the project through ENIAC's move to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, programming the machine's new stored-program configuration — then left computing in 1947 to marry, at a time when marriage generally ended a woman's technical career by custom if not by rule.
+	Wescoff's specialty was the machine's trickiest physical domain: the panels that had to be cabled just so for a trajectory to run. She married Philip Meltzer in February 1947 and left the project before ENIAC's relocation to the Aberdeen Proving Ground — at a time when marriage generally ended a woman's technical career by custom if not by rule.

-	Her second career was uncommonly dramatic: decades later, in her seventies, she entered rabbinical school and was ordained a Reform rabbi in 2001 — one of the oldest people ever ordained. She died in 2008.
+	Her second career was uncommonly dramatic: decades later, in her seventies, she entered rabbinical school and was ordained a Reform rabbi in her late seventies (c. 2001) — among the oldest people ever ordained. She died in 2008.

	# Legacy

	- Inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame (1997) with the other five ENIAC programmers.
	- Her life reads as two complete stories — founding programmer, then rabbi — joined by the fact that almost no one knew about the first until her last decade.

	# See also

	- [[The first programmers]]
	- [[History of Programming]]

	# References

	1. Kleiman, Kathy. Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World's First Modern Computer (Grand Central, 2022).
	2. Haigh, Thomas, Mark Priestley, and Crispin Rope. ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer (MIT Press, 2016).
	3. Evans, Claire L. Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet (Portfolio, 2018).
	4. Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, 180 U.S.P.Q. 673 (D. Minn. 1973) — the ENIAC patent trial.

	[[Category:History]]
	[[Category:People]]