Adele Goldstine (December 21, 1920 - November, 1964), born Adele Katz, wrote the complete technical description for the first digital computer, ENIAC. She attended the University of Chicago, and was married to Herman Goldstine, the military liaison and administrator for the construction of the ENIAC.
当年女程序员
当年女程序员As a teacher of mathematics for the women "computers" at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, Goldstine also trained some of the 6 women who were the original programmers of ENIAC to perform hand calculations of the firing table trajectory. Adele wrote the Operators Manual for the ENIAC after the 6 women (Kay McNulty, Betty Jean Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas and Ruth Lichterman) trained themselves to program the ENIAC using its logical and electrical block diagram. During this time, programming the machine meant moving dials and cables manually.
In 1946 Goldstine sat in on programming sessions with Jean Bartik and Dick Clippinger to implement Dick Clippinger's stored program modification to the ENIAC. John von Neumann was a consultant on the selection of the instruction set implemented. This solved the problem of the programmers having to unplug and replug patch cables for every program the machine was to run; instead the program was entered on the three function tables, which had previously been used only for storage of a trajectory's drag function.
ENIAC programmer Jean Bartik called Adele one of her three perfect partners in designing programs or logical design.[citation needed] They worked together to program the Taub program for the ENIAC.
Mrs. Goldstine died of cancer at the age of 43, leaving behind her husband and their two children.
World of Computer Science on Adele K. Goldstine编辑本段回目录
Adele Goldstine left a lasting legacy in the world of computing by writing one of the first computer manuals, a gargantuan task for the equally gargantuan ENIAC, the world's first electronic digital computer, completed in 1946. She was also instrumental in revamping the ENIAC, developing a stored program that obviated the necessity of reconfiguring the entire system for each new task.
Born on December 21, 1920, Goldstine was one of two daughters born to William Katz, a successful retail businessman. Growing up in New York City, Goldstine attended Hunter College High School and received her B.A. from Hunter College. From there she went on to the University of Michigan, where she graduated with a master's degree in mathematics. It was also at the University of Michigan that she met her future husband, Herman Goldstine. The couple was married in 1941. 
ENIAC
ENIACTrains Human Computers
Goldstine's husband also worked in mathematics and in the fledgling field of computer science. Entering the military during World War II, he was assigned as a first lieutenant to the Ballistic Research Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland to prepare firing and bombing tables. Such tables, involving complex mathematical calculations, were needed for each weapon, and allowed gunners in the field to make sighting adjustments for distance and angle to the target, weight of shell, wind speed, and other variables. When Herman Goldstine was sent to the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, to set up a training program for Aberdeen, Adele Goldstine also became active in the war effort.
Beginning in the fall of 1942 at the Moore School, Adele Goldstine began training women to calculate firing and bombing tables, using mechanical desk calculators. Known as "computers," the women selected for the program ultimately could perform the complex series of mathematical calculations in about one or two days. Ultimately some 75 women were working at the Moore School, and the talent pool of Philadelphia had virtually been drained. Adele Goldstine thereafter went out recruiting at colleges and universities all over the Northeast. Finally, with the formation of the WACS, the Women's Army Corps, many more women were made available for the tabular calculations. However, something faster was still needed.
Begins Programming the ENIAC
Beginning in 1943, the Army funded a program at the Moore School to construct an electronic computer that could take over some of the calculating work. Working with J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania, Herman Goldstine helped to develop the ENIAC computer, or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, an advance over all other forms of computing. The ENIAC took advantage of the introduction of vacuum tubes, which sped the computing process. Until that time, such processes had been performed by mechanical relays. The ENIAC was an imposing machine, consisting of 18,000 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, and five million soldered joints. It was a room-sized computer that had a voracious appetite, consuming more than 160 kilowatts of electrical power. (The lights of an entire section of Philadelphia dimmed when it was running.) It also had a calculating speed 1,000 times greater than any machine at the time.
Adele Goldstine's task was to write the manual for the ENIAC, something that her mathematics training only partially prepared her for. "At first I thought I would never be able to understand the workings of the machine since this involved a knowledge of electronics that I did not have at all," Adele Goldstine wrote in a diary she later kept for her children." But gradually as I lived with the job and the engineers helped to explain matters to me, I got the subject under control. Then I began to understand the machine and had such masses of facts in my head I couldn't bring myself to start writing." Goldstine overcame all such obstacles, however, finally finishing her extensive report in 1946.
Thereafter, when John von Neumann was brought on board the project, he and the Goldstines worked on converting the ENIAC to a stored-program computer, one that could retain instructions. Up to this time, a program was set manually by plugging in cables and setting switches for each function to be run. Starting in 1947, Adele Goldstine was instrumental in programming ENIAC to permanently understand a vocabulary of about 50 instructions, which could be introduced to the machine by punched cards. During the postwar years, she was von Neumann's primary programmer, working at Los Alamos preparing problems to be fed to ENIAC.
Adele Goldstine had two children, one in 1953, and a second in 1960. By 1962 she was diagnosed with cancer; she died in November 1964. Her work with first-generation computers made a lasting contribution to the field of computer science.
参考文献编辑本段回目录
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adele_Goldstine
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/adele-k-goldstine-wcs/
http://www.bluepoof.com/Colloquium/eniac.html
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/adele-k-goldstine-wcs/
http://www.bluepoof.com/Colloquium/eniac.html
