Swarthmore College Department of Computer Science

Film Top Secret Rosies and Q&A with director LeAnn Erickson

Top Secret 'Rosies': The Female 'Computers' of WWII
Wed, Mar 2, 2011
7:30 pm, Bryn Mawr Film Institute

Synopsis:

In 1942 a secret US military program was launched to recruit women to the war effort. But unlike the efforts to recruit Rosie to the factory, this search targeted female mathematicians who would become human 'computers' for the US Army. From the bombing of Axis Europe to the assaults on Japanese strongholds, women worked six days a week, around-the-clock creating ballistics tables that proved crucial to Allied success. Rosie made the weapons, but the female computers made them accurate.

When the first electronic computer (ENIAC) was developed to aid the Army's calculation efforts, six of these women were tapped to become its first programmers. Top Secret Rosies incorporates the stories of four very different women who worked as human computers at the University of Pennsylvania from 1942-1946, but does more than simply document the factual lives of a literally 'dying breed'- the participants of the WWII era. Using the 16x9 HD screen as a canvas, the project attempts to capture the opportunities and exhilaration of the times but also the moral dilemma inherent in their work as these human 'computers' labored night and day to create the mathematical computations that made every Allied bomb and bullet more deadly.

In 1942 when computers were human and women were underestimated, a group of female mathematicians helped win a war and usher in the modern computer age.

RSVP on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/ik2mQ9

Film web site: http://www.topsecretrosies.com/Top_Secret_Rosies/Home.html

This event is presented by the FLICS Program: Fantastic Lectures in Computer Science, jointly hosted by: Bryn Mawr College, Haverford College, Swarthmore College, and Villanova University.