Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli was one of about 75 young women mathematicians hired to serve as "computers" for United States government military projects during World War II. As such, these women calculated weapons firing and bombing trajectories for the U. S. Army at the University of Pennsylvania. With the development of the first electronic digital computer (ENIAC), those calculations became automated, and the women switched from tedious hand computing (each trajectory calculation took five days) to configuring the monster machine for every trajectory calculation.

Kay McNulty graduated from Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. The young math major heard that the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in Aberdeen, a pioneer in computer development, was hiring mathematicians. It was there that she began her "computing" work. When the brilliant physicist team of John Mauchly and Presper Eckert created the ENIAC, McNulty became one of its programmers.

Thomas...