Question
Should computers be turned off?
Answer
Human computers played integral roles in the World War II war effort in the United States, and because of the depletion of the male labor force due to the draft, many computers during WWII were women, frequently with degrees in mathematics. In the Manhattan Project, human computers, working with a variety of mechanical aids, assisted numerical studies of the complex formulae related to atomic fusion. And because the six people responsible for setting up problems on the ENIAC, the premiere general-purpose electronic digital computer built at the University of Pennsylvania during WWII, were drafted from a corps of human computers, the world's first professional computer programmers were women, paving the way for careers in data processing as socially acceptable for women in an era of gender roles. (These six computers-turned-computer-programmers were Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jean Jennings, and Fran Bilas.)
— Source: Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org)