Esther Marley Conwell, the subject of the sixth installment of IEEE-USA’s Famous Women Engineers in History series, had a front row seat watching the birth and evolution of computers.
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Famous Women Engineers in History – Book 6: Esther Conwell – Theorist and Mentor
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Author: Paul Lief Rosengren
Esther Marley Conwell had a front row seat watching the birth and evolution of computers. As Conwell was finishing college, the first general-purpose programmable electronic digital computer was unveiled — ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). Developed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert Jr. in 1943, it was huge — weighing more than 30 tons — and containing 18,000 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, and millions of hand-soldered joints. It consisted of 40 cabinets, each of them nine feet high.
By the end of her life, Conwell would witness nearly everyone carrying not just a phone, but also iPods — and maybe even a watch that could do more and faster computations than the early computers.
