Browsing by Subject "Carleton College"

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    Oral history interview with Fran H. Henig
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 2015-12-16) Henig, Fran H.
    Fran Henig graduated in 1964 from Wheaton College, an all-women school in Massachusetts, as a math major. She accepted a job with Bell Labs and began work at the Whippany NJ computer center, doing part time study for a master’s degree. With the advent of time-sharing, the computer center moved from IBM to GE/Honeywell machines to run MULTICS. Henig initially worked on adapting IBM programs and applications for the GE computers using FORTRAN, machine language, and SNOBOL. She emphasizes the importance of affirmative action for women at Bell Labs, including the women in the work environment workshops; and discusses strategies for making women’s voices heard in meetings. She accepted a technical supervisor position in 1971, then moved to a development division working on phone-system troubleshooting and became a department head. She shares observations about the organizational and cultural changes at AT&T in the 1980s. This material is based on work funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award B2014-07 “Tripling Women’s Participation in Computing (1965-1985).”
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    Oral history interview with Jane Hauser Pejsa
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 2016-01-28) Pejsa, Jane Hauser
    Jane Hauser Pejsa grew up in Minneapolis and graduated from Carleton College in 1951 with a degree in mathematics, then took an engineering position with Northwestern Bell Telephone in downtown Minneapolis. Her supportive math professor, Kenneth O. May, helped her land a position with Remington Rand Univac at the original Engineering Research Associates factory in St. Paul. At Univac she worked with Earl Joseph, then later worked in General Mills’ government computing division with Francis Alterman, founder of the short-lived Advanced Scientific Instruments. After briefly working for a book publisher, she took a position as a FORTRAN specialist with Honeywell Systems and Research developing computing and guidance systems for the Space Shuttle. She offers numerous character sketches and anecdotes, which she has written down in an essay entitled Memoir of a Fortran Queen (2016). This material is based on work funded by the