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.

The living history DVD project entitled "Northwest's: A Moment in History" has been completed. The project, which was sponsored by the Jean Jennings Bartik Computing Museum and Northwest Missouri State University’s Information Systems department was produced in cooperation with the Mass Communication department’s talented Bearcat Productions team. The production, which features 1945 Northwest graduate, Jean Jennings Bartik, examines Bartik’s experiences as a programmer of the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), her recollections of its brilliant co-inventors John Mauchly and Presper Eckert, and Bartik's own extraordinary life experiences during that historic time while working on a technology that PBS television described as the “machine that changed the world.”

Bartik was selected as one of only six women programmers to program the world’s first successful electronic computer, known as ENIAC. 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.

Tom Spencer, Associate Professor of History at Northwest, was the host of the production, and Dr. Jon Rickman, Vice President of Information Systems and Director of the Jean Jennings Bartik Computing Museum, was the co-host. The project was coordinated by Kim Todd, Information Systems User Consultant and Assistant Director of the Jean Jennings Bartik Computing Museum. The Bearcat Productions team was headed by Fred Lamer, Assistant Professor of Mass Communications, and was comprised of the following students: Lindsay Blohn, Christopher Rinella, Joe Masciovecchio, and David Morgan. Will Murphy, TV/Video Engineer with the Mass Communications department, also helped produce the project.

The formal sit-down interview with Bartik took place on April 7, 2006, during her return to campus as a featured speaker at the Central Plains Regional Conference of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges.

The DVD is dedicated to Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, widow of John Mauchly and Bartik's close friend for over sixty years. Mauchly Antonelli died April 20, 2006, after a short battle with cancer. Mauchly Antonelli was 85 years old. The DVD can be checked out and viewed by all Northwest students, faculty and staff through Owens Library.