Top Secret Rosies: The Female Computers of WWII

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Images

some of the gals

Ballsistics class, UPenn

Project Geography

US: National
International: Europe

Identity Niches

Jewish, Senior/Aging, Women, Youth/Teen

Budget

Raised to date: $78,600.00
Estimate to complete: $34,400.00
Total Estimated Budget: $113,000.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of

Status

Post Production

Media Type

Video

Project End Use

Key Personnel

LeAnn Erickson
Producer/Director/Editor
LeAnn Erickson is Associate Professor of film and video production at Temple University in the Department of Film and Media Arts and has been an independent video/filmmaker for over 20 years. Her work has appeared on public and cable television, in media and art galleries, and has won national and international recognition in video/film festivals.

Titles include:
Documentaries: Folk Songs (2007), Neighbor Ladies (2005), hours, minutes, seconds, frame (1999), Essential Things (1997) and From One Place to Another: Emma Goldman Clinic Stories (1996).
Animation: Fun Days with Jake (2002) and bees, a documentary (2001).
Festival screenings include:
Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival (Toronto CN), Oberhausen International Short Film Festival (Germany), Feminale International Women’s Film Festival (Cologne, Germany), Women in the Director’s Chair (Chicago, USA), Dallas Video Festival (USA) and L’immagine Leggera: International Competition of Videoart and Experimental Film (Palermo, Italy).

She is a recipient of regional and national production grants for her work from such funding sources as NEA, the Jerome Foundation and The Leeway Foundation. Most recently she was awarded the 2003 and 2006 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for media arts.

Cynthia Baughman
Writer
Cynthia Baughman is an independent screenwriter, journalist, and fiction writer. She received her BA in English from Dartmouth College and her MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. She has worked as a screenwriter for Warner Brothers, taught screenwriting at Temple University and Ithaca College, and is a member of the Writer's Guild of America. She has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Djerassi Foundation, the Ucross Foundation, and the Ragdale Foundation, and received a fellowship in fiction writing from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Most recently she has received an American Philosophical Society Residential Fellowship in support of her research for Top Secret Rosies.

Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)

Target Audience
The finished project is targeted for public television exhibition along with educational distribution. General audiences with an interest in World War II will appreciate this film for telling a hitherto untold part of the story. This film will build on the classic documentary The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980) by sharing the story of her white-collar sisters working behind the scenes for the war effort. This film will also intrigue audiences interested in the history of the computer and the role it played in the Allied victory. Following these women during the war and on to their peace-time accomplishments, the project will be useful in math, science and engineering classrooms.

Educational Impact
The American educational community recognizes an urgent need to encourage more young people, particularly women, to study math and science in high school and college and to pursue careers in the sciences. Top Secret Rosies will do just that by offering inspiration, encouragement and role models. Through educational distribution, students will discover how, over 60 years ago, a group of women, some as young as 18, used their math skills to help win Allied victory during World War II. This little-known story of female brainpower, perseverance and sacrifice is a unique story of women who have applied their minds in surprising arenas and the goal is that it will inspire a new generation of young women to apply themselves in the areas of math, science, technology and computers.

Distribution Plan
Pre sales are currently being sought from both an American broadcaster and an American educational distributor. Once completed, the project will be submitted to prominent national and international film festivals to raise recognition.

Broadcast distribution outlets to be pursued include:
American Public television: PBS station-WGBH Boston: American Experience history series,- project submitted for consideration- June 2009
Also submitted June 2009: PBS station-WGBH Boston: POVseries
International television: BBC and CBC, National Film Board of Canada, European broadcast

Festival outlets: prominent festivals for documentary work that attract intense industry attention
American Festivals: Silver Docs Film Festival, SxSW-Austin, Tribeca Film Festival, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival,
International Festivals: IDFA (Amsterdam), Hot Docs Film Festival (CN), Toronto Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film festival, Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), Turin Film Festival (Italy), Rotterdam Film Festival

Educational distribution: Educational distribution will widen the impact of the project. The project would work as a classroom screener at the high school and college level to increase historical recognition of the contributions of women during WWII and as a catalyst for discussions of women in technology and the sciences. College departments and programs where this could be screened include: History, Women’s Studies, Computer Science, Math, Engineering, Sociology and Communications.
The project has secured an educational distribution letter-of-intent from Documentary Educational Resources (http://www.der.org/)

Funders

Name	Amount	Date
misc cash donations	$2,100.00	01/01/2009
IEEE Foundation	$10,000.00	06/01/2007
Temple Univeristy	$30,000.00	03/01/2007
Temple Univeristy	$25,000.00	03/01/2006
misc fellowships, 2006, 2007, 2008	$11,500.00

Location

126 N Tyson Avenue
Glenside, 19038

See Google Maps

Short Synopsis

In 1942, when computers were human and women were underestimated, a group of female mathematicians helped win a war and usher in the modern computer age. Summer 2010 marks the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII, yet the story of these female ‘computers’ remains untold.

Description/Treatment

In early 1942 a secret military program was launched to recruit women to the war effort. But unlike the efforts to recruit Rosie to the factory, this search targeted college-educated female mathematicians who would become human 'computers' for the US military. Working with desktop calculators and the Differential Analyzer, the women created firing tables for every weapon in the US arsenal. As the war neared its end, a handful of the women were selected to serve as programmers of ENIAC, the first electronic computer and a few, such as Kay Mauchly and Jean Bartik, continued after the war, working in the fledgling computer industry as it developed into a worldwide phenomenon. Chronicling the experiences of four of the original ballistics ‘computers’ and two WWII aviation veterans who used the tables, the project also includes insights by historical experts such as Dr. Kathy Peiss (Nichols Professor of American History, University of Pennsylvania) and Dr. William Atwater (Director, Ordnance Museum, Aberdeen MD) to tell this fascinating story of the role human and electronic technology played in winning WWII. The project rises above a simple chronicling of a historical event as it seeks to inspire other idealistic young people to the possibilities and promise the hard sciences hold for our future. “Top Secret ‘Rosies’: The Female ‘Computers’ of WWII” is a documentary with a potential audience of millions of viewers via television and educational distribution.