Photograph Cobol Development by Computing (1 results)

Captioned on the verso "IBM Programmers Develop New Computer Languages", this photograph shows a woman demonstrating the application of COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), one of the earliest high-level programming languages. COBOL was designed in 1959 by a committee of software developers including Mary Hawes, Betty Holberton, Jean Sammet, Nora Taylor, and Gertrude Tierney. Grace Hopper, who invented the predecessor language FLOW-MATIC, advised the committee. "Women were unusually prominent in this movement, given their small percentage of the computing workforce. They may have been uniquely situated to participate in these innovations because of their gendered role. As working programmers - and as the staff members who stereotypically were asked to assist customers or in-house users - women had both the expertise to devise solutions and the incentive to make programming easier for experts and novices alike" (Abbate, pp. 80-81). The typewritten statement pasted onto the verso bears a date stamp (1 September 1961) and the telephone exchange and number "White Plains 9-1900" for the IBM headquarters in White Plains, New York. Janet Abbate, Recoding Gender: Women's Changing Participation in Computing, 2017. Glossy publicity photograph (200 x 254 mm). Minimally creased at extremities, a few annotations and some adhesive residue to verso: in very good condition.