Interesting People mailing list archives
First Computer Programmers Inspire Documentary
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2007 03:14:39 -0800
________________________________________ From: Brad Templeton [btm () templetons com] Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 9:36 PM To: David Farber Cc: ip Subject: Re: [IP] First Computer Programmers Inspire Documentary On Wed, Dec 05, 2007 at 12:39:00PM -0500, Dave Farber wrote:
First Computer Programmers Inspire Documentary Decline in Numbers of Women in Computer Science Threatens U.S. Competitiveness, Say Experts By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES Dec. 4, 2007 (ABCNews) During World War II the Army ran out of male mathematicians and turned to six women to program the world's first computer - ENIAC. Historian Kathy Kleiman (left) has recorded oral histories of these women - now in their 80s - in her upcoming documentary film, "Invisible Computers." ...
Dave, I would like to point out that while it talks about this "upcoming" documentary film, a good deal of funding has to be raised before this happens. Kathy Kleiman, who is a good friend of mine, may be known to some of you for her legal work on domain names and hounding ICANN. However, some years ago she learned the story of these programmers, met some of them and raised a more modest amount of money to do the basic groundwork -- sitting these women down to tell their stories to a camera in rough form while they still could. (And indeed, 3 of them are now dead.) However, going from raw footage to a compelling documentary is no minor project, and she needs to raise a bunch to make that happen. She's recruited an Oscar-winning documentary producer and other team members, but all of these are not quite as philanthropic as Kathy and money must be raised to pay for their services. This story is worth doing because they were the first in our field. That they happened to be women in a field that became dominated by men certainly adds a nice kicker to it. She'll be doing a fundraising dinner in January with Jean Bartik, one of this team of the world's first professional programmers, but if any list members would like to help Kathy out, either with old-fashioned money or help in raising it from others, let me know and I'll get you in touch. Or mail her yourself as KathrynKL at the aol.com domain. ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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