Six women were sent by the US Navy to the Aberdeen proving ground to learn how to program the punch cards for an IBM computer. They were Jean Jennings, Marilyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Snyder, Frances Bilas, and Kay McNulty. They were an excellent team, despite the fact that there were two Jews, a Quaker, a Catholic, and a Protestant. Programming computers was considered a lowly task at the time, while the important part was designing the hardware. The former was done by women, the latter by men. They would soon realize the importance of the software.
