Jean Jennings Bartik Computing Museum

64468 Maryville, MO, United States of America (USA) (Missouri)

Jean Jennings Bartik: Computing Pioneer

Jean attended Northwest Missouri State Teachers College, majoring in mathematics.  She became one of only six women computer programmers on the ENIAC, the world's first successful electronic computer.
Jean Jennings Bartik, whom the museum is named after, was born "Betty Jean" Jennings outside Stanberry, Missouri.  Jean, who stopped using "Betty" in the mid-to-late 1950s for business reasons, graduated from Northwest in 1945 and went on to make history by becoming one of the world's first computer programmers.

Jean graduated from Northwest in 1945 and was hired as "Human Computer" during World War II.  She was literally a "Top Secret Rosie!"  Jean calculated firing trajectories for the United States military so they could accurately aim at and fire their big guns and hit their intended targets.  Jean then went on to program the ENIAC (The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), the world's first successful electronic "general purpose, programmable" computer during World War II.  Jean also led a team that turned the ENIAC into the world's first successful stored program computer by March 1948.

Besides her work on the ENIAC, Jean helped to launch the commercial computer industry by programming the BINAC and designing and programming the UNIVAC I. Jean wrote the world's first sort/merge program for a computer (UNIVAC I).  The UNIVAC, which was also the first computer to have a mass storage system (Magnetic Tape), was the first successful commercial computer. The first UNIVAC was sold to the United States Census Bureau. 

Jean Jenning Bartik Computing Museum

Northwest's computing history, which includes the Electronic Campus Program, is housed in the Jean Jennings Bartik Computing Museum.  

The Jean Jennings Bartik Computing Museum has a two-fold mission:

1. To honor the accomplishments of Northwest alumnus Jean Jennings Bartik whose pioneering work on the ENIAC, BINAC and UNIVAC I helped to shape the digital age we now live in.
2. To document and showcase Northwest's technological development.

The museum, which has a unique collection of early computing memorabilia, has on display an authentic ENIAC Decade Ring Counter, which is on loan from the Smithsonian Institute,
and an original Remington-Rand miniature model of the UNIVAC I.
Additionally, there is an extensive collection of Northwest computing hardware
including an Altair 8800 computer, considered the first personal computer,
and an Osborne portable computer, an ancestor to the modern notebook [laptop] computer.

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