About eight years ago, Eileen Buckholtz took her grandchildren to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., and was aghast at what she saw.
“It was all men,” Buckholtz, now 77, told The Post — still smarting from the memory.
There were copious exhibits extolling the achievements of guys, and only two devoted to women: Ada Lovelace, a 19th century mathematician considered to be the first computer programmer, and Grace Hopper, a pioneering computer scientist in the mid-20th century. “Even in the gift shop, there were no gifts for girls,” Buckholtz said. “It just did not sit right with me.”
For Buckholtz, this slight was personal. In 1969, she was one of the first people in the US to earn a bachelor’s degree in computer science. She went on to spend three decades as a computer scientist at the National Security Agency, one of many women recruited by the group to code, program and work on cutting-edge devices and technologies.
“I had worked with a group of over 150 women during my 30-plus career [at NSA] who had been involved in the early days of computing and had made significant contributions to all sorts of things we take for granted today,” Buckholtz said, “I kind of got a bee in my bonnet to do something.”
So Buckholtz channeled her exasperation into a book, “Queens of Code: Inspiring True Stories from NSA’s Computing Women” (MIT Press, Nov. 17). The fascinating history uncovers the female tech pioneers who secretly toiled at NSA and its predecessor, the Armed Forces Security Agency.
These STEMinists, as Buckholtz calls them, decoded enemy signals, programmed the first computers — NSA had contracts with early computing startups like IBM — and helped build cybersecurity networks. Yet, because so much of their work was classified, they have never gotten their due.
Buckholtz spent seven years delving into archives, getting documents declassified and encouraging dozens of retired NSA employees to contribute their stories for her project. Among them are Sharri Ramsay, whom Buckholtz referred to as “one of the mothers of cybersecurity,” and Nancy Welker, who helped invent some of the earliest microelectronic chips used to fuel second- and third-generation computers and which power the laptops, cellphones and other devices we use today.
“NSA was the origin story for women in STEM and technology,” Buckholtz said. “We were there at the very beginning. I think it’s important [to recognize] our contributions.”
Buckholtz starts “Queens of Code” with the “code girls” of World Wars I and II who were hired and trained by the government to decipher and analyze enemy signals. Some 10 thousand women did this kind of “cryptanalysis” during World War II — and they were good at it. When the war ended, many of them were offered jobs at the newly formed NSA.
The government “knew that they had an amazing group of women,” Buckholtz said.
The emphasis on code-breaking in World War II led to the development of the first computers, and the government needed workers to program them. NSA recruited anyone it could, regardless of gender. It scouted math and science majors at colleges and universities and trained them on these new-fangled machines.
Many of them “didn’t even know what a computer was,” Buckholtz said. “I was lucky, because I actually had a degree in computer science … A lot of them had never seen a computer. But NSA had this really amazing intern program in data systems, and they trained them — it was really equivalent to a college degree.”
NSA offered men and women the same starting salary, paid for their training and supported them in their pursuits of advanced degrees. The benefits were hard to refuse, even for Buckholtz, who admitted that NSA was her “last choice” after she graduated from Ohio State University. (“They put you through the ringer with all these psychological tests,” she said — never mind the fact that she was against the Vietnam War.) But once she started her training, “I found I really liked it a lot.”
She spent her first eight years programming in a scientific computer language developed by one of NSA’s original “queens,” Dottie Blum, who started as a cryptanalyst in 1944. Buckholtz eventually became a master computer scientist whose programs helped intercept Soviet and Vietnamese messages in the Cold War. She later managed a team of 400 tech workers.
It wasn’t always easy. A year into her internship program, two male colleagues were so mean to Buckholtz she almost quit. Luckily, her manager promptly moved her to a different department, where she thrived. “That experience formed this mission: to not only be really good at my job, but also to help mentor people,” Buckholtz said.
She said there’s an urgency to telling the stories of women tech workers. There has been a retrenchment in support for, and declining presence of, women in tech. Five of the queens of code who offered their stories for the book have passed away since Buckholtz started the project. There is not a lot of time.
“I want women, young girls, to know that women were there at the very first days of computing,” she said. “We’ve been there all along, even though we haven’t been recognized in the history … I want our stories to inspire women to go into STEM fields, to let them know that they belong.”
