For more than 50 years, some of the women who helped build modern computing couldn’t tell anyone what they had done. Not even their families.
On this episode of Keep Going, I spoke with Eileen Buckholtz, author of Queens of Code: Inspiring True Stories from NSA’s Computing Women, about the women who helped develop some of the world’s earliest computer systems while working in secrecy at the National Security Agency.
Buckholtz joined the NSA in 1970 as one of its first employees with a computer science degree. At the time, the agency had more than 100 computers spread across five acres of basement space, and many of the women working there had started their careers breaking codes by hand during World War II.
These women helped develop early programming methods, worked with IBM on new computer systems and built technology that would eventually become part of everyday computing. They also faced serious discrimination. Buckholtz recalled how women had to fight for equal access to promotions and senior positions, even as they were doing some of the most advanced technical work in the country.
We talked about the early days of computer science, what it was like debugging enormous machines with paper printouts, the women who helped build the NSA’s computing operations and why so much of their work has been missing from the history books.
Buckholtz spent years collecting their stories, working through the restrictions surrounding classified material and documenting the contributions of 29 women whose work had largely gone unrecognised. Her book, published by MIT Press, arrives November 17.
It’s a fascinating conversation about the history of technology, the people who helped create it and the importance of making sure their stories aren’t lost.
