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I'm Margaret Marrs, I was appointed
as senior computer operator of EDSAC
in September 1952
EDSAC was the first stored program computer
in England and it was housed in Cambridge part of the university
I got grabbed by computer science when I was offered my job
What I found interesting was that
the work was so varied and I particularly enjoyed
the time as programming adviser
At the time this was just a job but then when you had events like
people winning the Nobel Prizes you realised
the quality of the people that you were working with and for
There was one job I remember in particular and it was taking in numbers
coordinates of a graph or something like that. You'd have
a number with perhaps four decimal places, that would be
four characters on a paper tape and somebody suggested
storing numbers in binary. I remember
this had worked and I was so excited I was ill
on that occasion. Right from the start of
electronic computers women had been employed
as well in firms. I went to one British Computer Society meeting in London
and I was very surprised when the speaker
got up and said madam and gentlemen
I realised then I was the only woman in the audience
It's interesting to think that after one year
I was senior computer operator
and my junior was straight from school
Perhaps I was just born at the right time