Show Above: Jean Jennings Bartik programming the ENIAC, along with co-inventors of the ENIAC John Mauchly [center] and Presper Eckert [front left]. Photograph is courtesy of Robert Sheroke, United States Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground. PBS television described the ENIAC as the "machine that change the world." --Dr. Jon Rickman, VP of Information Systems & Director of the Jean Jennings Bartik Computing Museum

Northwest 1945 graduate and computer pioneer Jean Jennings Bartik will deliver the keynote address during the Central Plains Regional Conference of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges on Friday, April 7, 2006.

Bartik’s speech, “Luck Beats Brains: A Personal History of Computing,” is scheduled for 7:15 p.m. in the J.W. Jones Student Union Ballroom. The event is free and open to the public.

Bartik was selected as one of only six women programmers to program the world’s first electronic computer, known as ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). The ENIAC was commissioned by the U.S. Army to speed up the computation of artillery firing tables during World War II. Bartik would later go on to program the UNIVAC I, the world’s first commercial stored-program computer.

Other items on Jennings Bartik's agenda for Friday include a Bearcat Productions television "living history" interview at 11 a.m. and a meet and greet reception at the Jean Jennings Bartik Computing Museum in B.D. Owens Library from 2 to 4 p.m. The meet and greet museum reception is free and open to the public.

Tours of the Jean Jennings Bartik Computing Museum are scheduled following Jean's Friday night lecture. On display in the museum are a number of artifacts relating to Bartik’s career along with items from Northwest’s own computing past. Highlights include an original ENIAC decade ring counter on loan from the Smithsonian Institution and a miniature, pot-metal salesman's model of the UNIVAC I.