Marlyn Meltzer

Programmers Gloria Gordon Bolotsky (crouching) and Ester Gerston (standing) wiring the right side of the ENIAC with a new program.

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 Marlyn Wescoff in Philadelphia in 1922. She graduated from Temple University in 1942.

Career 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. At the time, this was accomplished by using manual desktop mechanical calculators. In 1945, she was selected to become one of the 6 original programmers of Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC).

ENIAC Meltzer, alongside Kathleen Antonelli, Jean Jennings Bartik, Frances Elizabeth Holberton, Frances Spence and Ruth Teitelbaum, were the original six programmers of ENIAC, a project that originally began in secret at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 1943.

ENIAC was a huge machine full of black panels and switches, containing 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1500 relays, resistors, capacitors and approximately hand-soldered joints. It weighed more than 30 short tons, occupied 167m2 and consumed 150 kW of electricity. Its huge power requirement led to a rumor that the lights across Philadelphia would dim every time it was switched on.

ENIAC was unveiled to the public on February 14, 1946, making headlines across the country.

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. Meltzer resigned from the team in 1947 to get married before ENIAC was relocated to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. 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.