Naomi Most, grandchild of ENIAC co-inventor John Mauchly and programmer Kay McNulty, argues ENIAC was a narrative engine as much as a calculator.
Key Takeaways
The Irish word ríomh means to compute, weave, narrate, and compose – the original ENIAC programmers learned the machine like a loom, by touch and memory, with no manual.
Kay McNulty and colleagues are credited with conceiving the subroutine, a concept not in ENIAC’s blueprints, discovered through hands-on use of the machine.
ENIAC’s first weather forecast in 1950 required Klara von Neumann and Nick Metropolis to upgrade it with digital program memory; programmers Norma Gilbarg, Ellen-Kristine Eliassen, and Margaret Smagorinsky wrote the operational code.
The piece draws a direct line from ENIAC to large language models and autonomous systems: emergent capabilities are not specified in advance but arise through use.
Kay McNulty wanted to be remembered as a family storyteller; the Irish word for computer, ríomhaire, literally means “one who weaves, computes, and tells.”
