page_title: Women in computing
section_title: 1960s
hierarchical_section_title: Women in computing / History / 1960s
caption_attribution_description: English: Katherine Johnson, NASA employée, mathematician and physicist, in 1966 Deutsch: Katherine Johnson, Mitarbeiterin der NASA, Mathematikerin und Physikerin, im Jahr 1966
context_page_description: Women in computing were among the first programmers in the early 20th century, and contributed substantially to the industry. As technology and practices altered, the role of women as programmers has changed, and the recorded history of the field has downplayed their achievements.
  Since the 18th century, women have developed scientific computations, including Nicole-Reine Lepaute's prediction of Halley's Comet, and Maria Mitchell's computation of the motion of Venus. The first algorithm intended to be executed by a computer was designed by Ada Lovelace who was a pioneer in the field. Grace Hopper was the first person to design a compiler for a programming language. Throughout the 19th and early 20th century, and up to World War II, programming was predominantly done by women; significant examples include the Harvard Computers, codebreaking at Bletchley Park and engineering at NASA.
  After the 1960s, the "soft work" that had been dominated by women evolved into modern software, and the importance of women decreased. The gender disparity and the lack of women in computing from the late 20th century onward has been examined, but no firm explanations have been established.
context_section_description: Milly Koss who had worked at UNIVAC with Hopper, started work at Control Data Corporation (CDC) in 1965. There she developed algorithms for graphics, including graphic storage and retrieval.
  Mary K. Hawes of Burroughs Corporation set up a meeting in 1959 to discuss the creation a computer language that would be shared between businesses. Six people, including Hopper, attended to discuss the philosophy of creating a common business language (CBL). Hopper became involved in developing COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) where she innovated new symbolic ways to write computer code. Hopper developed programming language that was easier to read and "self-documenting." After COBOL was submitted to the CODASYL Executive Committee, Betty Holberton did further editing on the language before it was submitted to the Government Printing Office in 1960. IBM were slow to adopt COBOL, which hindered its progress but it was accepted as a standard in 1962, after Hopper had demonstrated the compiler working both on UNIVAC and RCA computers. The development of COBOL led to the generation of compilers and generators, most of which were created or refined by women such as Koss, Nora Moser, Deborah Davidson, Sue Knapp, Gertrude Tierney and Jean E. Sammet.
  Sammet, who worked at IBM starting in 1961 was responsible for developing the programming language, FORMAC. She published a book, Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals (1969), which was considered the "standard work on programming languages," according to Denise Gürer  It was "one of the most used books in the field," according to The Times in 1972.
  Between 1961 and 1963, Margaret Hamilton began to study software reliability while she was working at the US SAGE air defense system. In 1965, she was responsible for programming the software for the onboard flight software on the Apollo mission computers. After Hamilton had completed the program, the code was sent to Raytheon where "expert seamstresses" called the "Little Old Ladies" actually hardwired the code by threading copper wire through magnetic rings. Each system could store more than 12,000 words that were represented by the copper wires.
  In 1964, the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced a "White-Hot" revolution in technology, that would give greater prominence to IT work. As women still held most computing and programming positions at this time, it was hoped that it would give them more positive career prospects. In 1965, Sister Mary Kenneth Keller became the first American woman to earn a doctorate in computer science. Keller helped develop BASIC while working as a graduate student at Dartmouth, where the university "broke the 'men only' rule" so she could use its computer science center.
  Christine Darden began working for NASA's computing pool in 1967 having graduated from the Hampton Institute. Women were involved in the development of Whirlwind, including Judy Clapp. She created the prototype for an air defense system for Whirlwind which used radar input to track planes in the air and could direct aircraft courses.
  In 1969, Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler, who was working for Stanford, made the first Resource Handbook for ARPANET. This led to the creation of the ARPANET directory, which was built by Feinler with a staff of mostly women. Without the directory, "it was nearly impossible to navigate the ARPANET."
  
  By the end of the decade, the general demographics of programmers had shifted away from being predominantly women, as they had before the 1940s. Though women accounted for around 30 to 50 percent of computer programmers during the 1960s, few were promoted to leadership roles and women were paid significantly less than their male counterparts. Cosmopolitan ran an article in the April 1967 issue about women in programming called "The Computer Girls." Even while magazines such as Cosmopolitan saw a bright future for women in computers and computer programming in the 1960s, the reality was that women were still being marginalized.
caption: Katherine Johnson working at NASA in 1966
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