https://builttoadapt.io/refrigerator-ladies-the-first-computer-programmers-19f1927045fa

In the 1980s, a young Harvard undergraduate named Kathy Kleiman was doing research when she stumbled upon an old, fairly well-known photograph of the first all-electronic computer. In it, the photo showed men and women demonstrating the machine. When Kleiman looked closer, the photo only identified the men — not the women. Who were these women? She asked. What was their role? Kleiman took these questions to a university historian, who told her the women in the picture were models that were hired to pose in front of the machine. They were dismissed as “Refrigerator Ladies.” To Kleiman, this didn’t sit right, there had to be more to the story. And so, Kleiman started digging — what she would find about these women, who they were, and their accomplishments would be the furthest thing from models hired to pose in front of a machine.

Being a programmer was never part of Jean Jennings Bartik’s plan. The sixth of seven children, Bartik, then known as Betty, grew up in a poor, large northwestern Missouri family during the heart of the Great Depression.