#Marlyn Meltzer

[citedesdames]

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[valkyries-things]

MARLYN MELTZER // MATHEMATICIAN

“She was an American mathematician and computer programmer, and one of the six original programmers of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. Meltzer was hired by the Moore School of Engineering after graduating to perform weather calculations, mainly because she knew how to operate an adding machine; in 1943, she was hired to perform calculations for ballistics trajectories. Although mentioned in Woman of the ENIAC at the time, little recognition was attributed to the women working on the computer, with attention focused on the male engineers who built the machine.”

[denimbex1986]

'It took me nearly four weeks to watch Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer for a number of reasons. Firstly, I was still recovering from my Barbie-induced comma, thoroughly enjoying my existence in an alternative pink world. Secondly, I am not a big fan of the 53-year-old British-American director: I find his aesthetics irritating, and his movies boring and pretentious. Thirdly, our talented writer Victoria Luxford had already written a review of the film for DMovies. To top it all up, the accusations of sexism – with many pundits pointing out that all of Nolan’s film may fail the Bechdel Test – made me even less enthusiastic about watching it. But nothing, absolutely nothing, could prepare me for what I was about to see. Oppenheimer is far worse than I feared. Not in my wildest dreams did I anticipate such a poorly disguised, shameless celebration of US military belligerence. A geopolitical weapon as dangerous as the atomic bomb.

Let’s start with the topic of female representation. I believe that the accusations of sexism are entirely founded. Not only does the film fail the Bechdel Test, but also the only two significant female characters are entirely one-dimensional and uninspiring. J. Robert Oppenheimer’s (Cillian Murphy) lover Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) only appears a few times, and she’s almost invariably naked (whats are lovers for, after all?). She exists solely for the purpose of providing Oppie’s consciousness with a sounding board. His wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) has a permanently sad and gloomy face, and very little to say about her husband’s predicament. Plus, despite having a baby, she is entirely desexualised (asking a woman to be a mother AND a satisfactory sex partner both at once is just a little too much, isn’t it?). There is no female politician or scientist at sight, except for a woman who Oppie promptly orders: “put her in the plutonium team”, only for her face never to be seen again. Is this a reflection of the time? Not entirely. An American woman received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in the 1940s (the decade in which most of the film takes place). Several African-American women received a PhD, and one became a staff supervisor at Nasa. American physicists Frances Spence, Ruth Teitelbaum, Marlyn Meltzer, Betty Holberton, Jean Bartik and Kathleen Antonelli became the first computer programmers in the world. All roughly at the same time.

The first omission

Selective omission is a memory bias. In collective memory, it is a bias where a group works together in order to erase certain memories. Such is the case here.

The most blatant historical omission, and evidence that Nolan’s historicity is highly selective, is the fact that the War in Europe was finished when the atomic bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Not a triviality. This crucial fact is very quickly brushed over, and never discussed in detail. This is no mean feat in a film with a duration of three hours. The entire moral argument for developing the a-bomb repeated. several times in Oppenheimer is that the Americans should build “the strongest explosive” before Germans and Russians. It is malicious and deceitful that the director opted not to inform viewers that such argument was no longer valid at the time the weapons were detonated. The film spends a long amount of time on shoddy physics lessons (so incomprehensible that I had to look up “quantum mechanics”, “isotope” and even the difference between the atomic and the hydrogen bomb as soon as the film was finished) and tedious debate between scientists and politicians – why could it not allow any time at all for essential geopolitical contextualisation?

Trump challenged Obama not to apologise on his trip to Hiroshima in 2016. He never did. Nor did Biden, who visited the Japanese city just this year. On the other hand, Japan has long apologised for Pearl Harbor. That’s because Americans take it for granted that the use of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was inevitable, and any discussion around this topic is not welcomed. Oppenheimer attempts to corroborate this falsehood by inserting a character boldly claims that the Japanese “will never surrender”, without providing any evidence whatsoever to support this very questionable assertion. There is even a touch of sadism: ““I bet the Japanese didn’t like it”, says a smirking Oppie about his invention.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a a turning point in American history, the time when US firmly established itself as the most powerful nation in the world. It is barely convenient for the US government to reveal that their destructive foreign policy has killed in excess of 20 million people worldwide since WW2 (that’s more than three times the number of Jews killed by the Nazis in the conflict). Well, I expect no American president to challenge the false orthodoxy and apologise, but I do think that cinema has the duty to subvert these paradigms and open people’s minds. Cinema should question the unquestionable. Nolan’s film does precisely the opposite: it legitimises it. Despite its seemingly explosive nature, Oppenheimer will not open any minds. At all.

The second omission

There is another significant omission in Oppenheimer, this time not a historical one but an illustrative one instead. The total number of casualties (220,000) is indeed mentioned in the film, however it is never represented. Responsive mimicry (ie the sentiments of allegiance, compassion and solidarity that film elicits from viewers) requires a visual or at the very least a sound representation. Oppenheimer has neither. Just the mere mentioning of a number is not enough. We never see the face of these victims, we never hear their voices. This could have been 220,000 cows, pigs or bees. These victims are entirely robbed of their identity and their humanity. We never see a Japanese face in the movie (even the word “Japanese” is barely uttered). Instead, the explosion is presented as something beautiful, hypnotic, even fascinating. We watch the overpowering fire, the mushroom cloud and creepy atomic representations fly around at the speed of light with a loud buzzing , but we never see the destruction that they caused on Japanese soil. Not for one split second. At one specific moment, Oppie laments that he has “blood in his hands”, however we never see the colour of such blood (neither in real-life representations nor even in the dreams that allegedly torment our loving protagonist)., And we never hear these 220,000 people talk, scream in agony, or desperately plead for their lives. Not for one split second.

By sanitising mass destruction, Christopher Nolan makes it palatable, even beautiful and enjoyable to watch. So beautiful that for a few moments sound is almost entirely removed so viewers can appreciate the colours of fire in their full splendour. People head to their local IMAX in order to experience what it’s like being inside the flames of bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however Nolan never puts his audiences in the shoes of those who suffered the most. I could almost see an Oppenheimer Disney ride soon, magnificent with pyrotechnics and sound engineering, the pinnacle of bad taste, but not a sign of what it was like to be on the ground of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time. This is very similar to what Nolan did in Dunkirk (2017), another bloodless, non-violent portrayal of WW2 (something I discussed years ago in my article “Why does Nigel Farage like Dunkirk so much?”).

It is downright insulting that someone should make a film about the alleged suffering of the creator of the atomic bomb, while blatantly and entirely neglecting the suffering of the victims.

While painted as some sort of self-reflective historical drama, Oppenheimer barely allows for any sort of reflection. In fact, none of Christopher Nolan’s films do. The frenetic editing (there is a cut every few seconds), rhetorical dialogues and incessant music are not conducive to reflection but to manipulation instead. Oppenheimer barely allows audiences to breathe, let alone to think. This is a movie that instead tells people how to think. And the conclusion is crystal-clear: the atomic bombs were necessary, and those who invented and oversaw its use were deeply moral and responsible people.

Despite setting out to present Oppie as a man tormented by the repercussions of his invention, that’s hardly the case. Our protagonist does not dwell on guilt and misery for too long (except perhaps in the final 15 minutes). And it’s not mass destruction that torments him. His biggest fear is that the explosion could not be contained and therefore trigger a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world (including the US), a concern dismissed by Albert Einstein. And he is more concerned about proving his allegiance to the US than reflecting on the human cost of his invention.

The greatest nation of all

The biggest focus of Oppenheimer is on the race to develop the atomic bomb. The scientific prowess is celebrate ad infinitum, ultimately romanticising their achievement. Oppie and his associates are jubilant at first controlled explosion of the atomic bomb. At one point a scientist does bemoan that “hundreds of years of physics could culminate in a weapon of mass destruction”, but this concern is quickly discarded as the film consistently fails to reveal that the use of the bomb may have been entirely redundant. A show-off of military power, with meaningless six-digit figure attached to it. This is hardly unusual in US foreign policy. When questioned about the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children (the figure being explicitly compared to casualties of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madaleine Albright infamously replied: “The price is worth it”.

We soon learn that anything is “worth it” in the name of American imperialism. About a third of the film (mostly in the end, in a narrative that confusingly zigzags back and forth in time) consists of Oppenheimer being judged years after the war. But it’s not for the murder of 220,000 innocent people. It is his loyalty to the US that’s on trial. Many suspect that Oppie is a secret Soviet agent, highlighting that his wife and friends were members of the Communist Party. Oppie’s wife Kitty comes to his rescue, asserting that she left the Communist Party… 16, 17… actually 18 years earlier, and that her husband was never a member. Phew, this vague left wing allegiance was just a fleeting mistake of youth, Oppie is an American in whom we can trust after all!

In other words, Oppenheimer is a shameless apologia of American imperialism. An ardent emblem of nationalism. It seeks to defend the indefensible.'

[hagleyvault]

The second Tuesday in October is Ada Lovelace Day, a day of recognition launched in 2009, when the British tech journalist Suw Charman-Anderson began a campaign to establish an “international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology”.

We’re participating today with this clip from a longer reel of historic, ca. 1945 footage of the ENIAC computer system. ENIAC was created at the University of Pennsylvania and was argued to be the first all electronic computer. While they received little recognition for their work at the time, the project team included a number of notable women, some of whom can be seen here in this footage. Recruited from a team of around two hundred women working in computing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering, Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Meltzer, Fran Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman were ENIAC’s first programmers, and worked under the direction of Herman and Adele Goldstine.

This film is in Hagley Library’s collection of Sperry Corporation, UNIVAC Division photographs and audiovisual materials (Accession 1985.261). You can view the full video online now by visiting our Digital Archive’s online collection, Grace Hopper and Women Computer Programmers.

[autolesionistra]

Parleremo quindi di 8 marzo, perché sono lento mi piacciono le ricorrenze fuori fase, buoni (quasi) tutti a ricordarsi dell'8 marzo l'8 marzo, andrebbe vissuto in stile non-compleanno.

Comunque, sul tema soffro di un un certo bipolarismo.

Il buon Enrico ha elencato una serie di link molto interessanti sul tema Women in science: https://www.enricozini.org/blog/2021/links/women-in-science/

Segnalerei in particolare:

- Le intriganti vicende di Hedy Lamarr

- il tizio che ha scritto mini biografie di famosi scienziati maschi immaginando come sarebbero stati descritti se fossero stati donne:

«Pierre Curie, married and proud father of two, found time for love and family during his short scientific career.» «No one could imagine that behind Newton’s large eyes and frail appearance hid one of the most prodigious brains in the world.»

Però questi aspetti, pur nella loro appassionante appassionanza (perché, diciamocelo, non c’è nulla che ti rimescoli le emozioni come l’eterna lotta fra fra illuminismo e oscurantismo incarnata nella biografia di una donna scenziata), lasciano scoperta un’altra tematica fondamentale e particolarmente ottomarzica, che è nella definizione stessa della “Giornata internazionale dei diritti della donna”.

I diritti umani hanno (o dovrebbero avere) un paio di caratteristiche graziose: la prima è di essere universali, quindi tutto ciò che avrebbe aiutato (o meglio, non limitato) una Julia Lermontova o una Marlyn Meltzer avrebbe aiutato nella vita un’esercito di perfette sconosciute che ne avrebbero avuto titolo anche se la loro vetta professionale fosse stata cavarsi un cappero colossale dal naso mentre accarezzavano il gatto davanti al camino.

L’altro tratto distintivo è di essere inalienabili. Quindi, ecco, pure se una ha la fortuna di non essere particolarmente turbata dal fatto che il collega maschio venga chiamato per titolo e cognome e lei per nome, o che sopporti particolarmente bene la battuta sessista o lo stereotipo di genere, o che in questo grazioso periodo storico nessuno le faccia pesare al 90% la gestione dei figli domiciliati a scapito della sua vita professionale, tutto ciò non dovrebbe spostare il diritto di altre persone a non subire trattamenti analoghi.

Tenendo quindi questo doppio binario, un occhio all’orizzonte verso figure ispiranti che hanno mosso cose e un occhio per terra alla mera quotidianità, una delle campagne che mi è piaciuta di più (e pure alla mia compagna, che fa più testo di me) è quella del collettivo/associazione/progetto CHEAP di qualche anno fa:

https://zero.eu/it/news/ringrazia-una-femminista-la-nuova-affissione-di-cheap-su-viale-masini-a-bologna/

Ricordo che ero in motorino e quasi ho inchiodato in mezzo a viale Masini per guardarmi i poster (non ditelo all’assessore alla mobilità però)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The ENIAC Programmers: how women invented modern programming and were then written out of the history books

Kathy Kleiman, founder of the ENIAC Programmers Project, writes about the buried history of the pivotal role played by women in the creation of modern computing, a history that is generally recounted as consisting of men making heroic technical and intellectual leaps while women did some mostly simple, mechanical work around the periphery.

Kleiman summarizes her twenty years of research into the programmers of the ENIAC -- the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, the first modern computer -- whose first programmers were six women: Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Jean Jennings Bartik, Betty Snyder Holberton, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum and Frances Bilas Spence.

The ENIAC programmers had to invent programming as we know it, working without programming codes (these were invented a few years later for UNIVAC by Betty Holberton): they "broke down the differential calculus ballistics trajectory program" into small steps the computer could handle, then literally wired together the program by affixing cables and flicking the machine's 3,000 switches in the correct sequences. To capture it all, they created meticulous flowcharts that described the program's workings.

The women stayed on the ENIAC project after the war because "no solider returning home from the battlefield could program ENIAC," and went on to train the next generation of ENIAC programmers, also creating modern computer science education; they also went on to create the first computer instruction codes.

Kleiman's scholarship is an important rebuttal to the sexist, revisionist history of early computer science, like Nathan Ensmenger's odious 2010 book "The Computer Boys Take Over," which characterized the ENIAC women as "glorified clerical workers" and insisted that the women were only given the job because it was perceived as "low priority" (in reality, the women were the cream of the US Army's Ballistics Research Labs, recruited from math programs at top universities). The slander continues, with the ENIAC women mischaracterized as "low on the intellectual and professional status hierarchy."

Keilman says that the confusion may stem from the Army classifying the women as "subprofessional," and notes that it was common for sensitive intelligence jobs to have misleading titles -- cryptographers were classed as "secretaries" and "clerks" in a bid to disguise the work they did from hostile spies.

https://boingboing.net/2019/06/21/founding-mothers-of-computing.html

[riopelconsultant]

Pionniers de la technologie: l’ENIAC   L'ENIAC (acronyme de l'expression anglaise Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) est en 1945 le premier ordinateur entièrement électronique pouvant être Turing-complet. Il peut être reprogrammé pour résoudre, en principe, tous les problèmes calculatoires. Il est opérationnel à fin 1945, est dévoilé au public en février 1946, puis est coupé le 9 novembre 1946 pour être rénové et sa mémoire augmentée.   Entre 1944 et 1955, six femmes, Kathleen Antonelli, Jean Bartik, Betty Holberton, Marlyn Meltzer, Frances Spence et Ruth Teitelbaum sont les premières personnes à programmer l'ENIAC, pour un calcul balistique. Elles sont toutes mathématiciennes.    Longtemps oubliées de l'histoire, le documentaire The Computers réalisé en 2013 par Kathy Kleiman leur rend hommage https://www.instagram.com/p/CJ6uOOMnB-o/?igshid=qe19t49pkx9e

[intelligentchristianlady]

“As ENIAC neared completion of construction, BRL’s Lieutenant Herman Goldstine selected six women from the Computing Project to program the ENIAC. They were Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Jean Jennings Bartik, Betty Snyder Holberton, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum and Frances Bilas Spence.

“To say the women’s programming job was difficult is an understatement. ENIAC had no technical or operating manuals (they would be written the following summer) and no programming codes (written for the next computer by ENIAC Programmer Betty Holberton a few years later for UNIVAC, the first commercial computer). The women studied ENIAC’s wiring and logical diagrams and taught themselves how to program it.

“Then they sat down and figured out to break down the differential calculus ballistics trajectory program into the small, discrete steps the computer can handle – just as programmers do today.  Then they figured out how to program their steps onto the computer – via a ‘direct programming’ interface of hundreds of cables and 3000 switches. It is a bit like modern programming adding cartwheels and backflips.”

If you understand even a tiny bit about programming--or even if you don’t--this is fascinating. (Well, I thought so...)

[femmesdunumerique-blog]

The Eniac Women - 1946

Marlyn Meltzer, Ruth Teitelbaum, Frances Spence, Kathleen Antonelli, Jean Bartik et Betty Holberton ont été les 6 membres de l’équipe qui programma le tout premier ordinateur digital fonctionnant de manière totalement électronique (ENIAC).

Elles transformaient des analyses mathématiques en langage informatique

http://eniacprogrammers.org

[professored]

Feliz dia internacional da mulher: “Apesar de termos vivido em uma época em que as oportunidades de carreira para nós eram em geral bastante restritas, ajudamos a iniciar a era do computador”. - Jean Jennings, pioneira da programação de computadores "Todos os engenheiros que construíram o ENIAC eram homens. Um grupo de mulheres, especificamente seis, foi menos exaltado pela história, mas provou ser quase tão importante quanto eles no desenvolvimento da computação moderna.[...] Mas o que as mulheres do ENIAC logo demonstrariam, e que os homens mais tarde vieram a entender, era que programar um computador podia ser tão importante quanto o projeto de seu hardware." - do livro "Os inovadores, uma biografia da revolução digital" de Walter Isaacson. Jean Jennings(mais tarde, Bartik), Betty Snyder(mais tarde, Holberton), Marlyn Wescoff (mais tarde Meltzer), Ruth Lichterman (mais tarde Teitelbaum), Frances Bilas (mais tarde Spence), Kay McNulty (mais tarde, Mauchly, depois, Antonelli) foram as mulheres que primeiramente programaram o ENIAC. Para aprender a programá-lo, tiveram que analisar equações diferencias e aprender a configurar cabos para conectar aos circuitos eletrônicos corretos. Inventaram (Jean e Betty) um sistema para descobrir qual das 18 mil válvulas havia queimado. Conheciam mais a máquina que engenheiros que a haviam projetado. Em 15 de fevereiro de 1946, quando o ENIAC foi exibido ao público (já que até então era segredo de guerra), o exército e a Penn marcaram uma apresentação de gala e prévias para a imprensa. Para a apresentação, o capitão Goldstine, decidiu que a máquina iria demonstrar o cálculo de trajetória de um míssil. Duas semanas antes chamou Jean Jennings e Betty Snider para perguntar se elas poderiam realizar essa tarefa. Elas disseram um sim com entusiasmo! Um dia antes da apresentação, dia dos namorados, as duas estavam presas, à noite, com um "bug" que não fazia o monstrengo parar de calcular mesmo depois de encontrada a resposta. Snyder, após chegar em casa, depois da meia noite descobriu como solucionar o problema. Na demonstração, o ENIAC calculou em quinze segundos um conjunto de cálculos de trajetória de míssil que exigiria várias semanas de trabalho. Jennings, como as mulheres bem sabem, foi relegada e esquecida depois da apresentação, como ela mesma afirma: "Betty e eu fomos ignoradas e esquecidas depois da demonstração. Sentíamos que estávamos desempenhando papéis em um filme fascinante que de repente teve uma virada ruim, em que trabalhamos como cães por duas semanas para produzir algo realmente espetacular e depois fomos riscadas do roteiro." E assim, Walter Isaacson finaliza esse capítulo do livro: "Naquela noite, houve um jantar à luz de velas no venerável Houston Hall, da Universidade da Pensilvânia. O evento estava recheado de luminares da ciência, de altos oficiais militares e de boa parte dos homens que haviam trabalhado no ENIAC . Mas Jean Jennings e Betty Snyder não estavam lá, nem qualquer outra das mulheres programadoras. “Betty e eu não fomos convidadas”, Jennings diria, “e isso nos deixou quase horrorizadas. Enquanto os homens e vários dignitários celebravam, Jennings e Snyder iam sozinhas para casa em uma noite muito fria de fevereiro."

http://ifttt.com/missing_link?1488998487

[valkyries-things]

BETTY HOLBERTON // COMPUTER SCIENTIST

“She was an American computer scientist who was one of the six original programmers of the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer). The other five ENIAC programmers were Jean Bartik, Ruth Teitelbaum, Kathleen Antonelli, Marlyn Meltzer, and Frances Spence.”

[taonf]

On This Day in 1943, work began on ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)

The earliest programmers for the Eniac were entirely women, plucked from the ranks of the Army’s human computers. When the Army showed off the Eniac to the press, running lightning-fast ballistics-crunching algorithms, they didn’t introduce the ladies who’d written the code: Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Jean Jennings Bartik, Frances (Betty) Snyder Holberton, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Frances Bilas Spence, and Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum

[professored]

Às mulheres: Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Margaret Hamilton, Dorothy Vaughan, Jean Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff (mais tarde Meltzer), Ruth Lichterman (mais tarde Teitelbaum), Frances Bilas (mais tarde Spence), Kay McNulty e a todas as programadoras que criaram o primeiro computador de propósito geral que eram mulheres o meu muito obrigado, o meu infinito respeito, a minha solidariedade e meus sinceros perdões por terem vivido em mundo tão machista, mas que mesmo em uma área tão misógina conseguiram gravar seus nomes na história. Feliz dia Internacional da Mulher!

http://ifttt.com/missing_link?1488984106