Where Walt Whitman Walked

A Work in Progress
28

So Donal came to stand on land where Whitman may have walked

where he and Jean Bartik sometimes walked and talked

by the Cooper River across the street from where Donal worked

as Editor: Standard Electronic Data Processing

in time to see how it all began with those

who were programmers, coders

Donal carpooled with Jean

one of ENIAC’s team of programmers

all of them women 

Americans working with male engineers

She, Jean Bartik nee Betty Jean Jennings was an Editor 

at Auerbach Publishers across the river from Philadelphia

in Pennsauken, New Jersey beyond Camden

by the Cooper River 

And ENIAC claimed being first

And once upon a time the Cray-1 was undoubtedly the fastest

built by wirers, all of them women

Americans working with male engineers

So Donal learned to write for money

Auerbach Reports on mainframe computers

got to see how it was done

emergent from an archive of previous work

Cray’s short vector machine 

the world’s fastest computer by far

And Donal got a job at Cray Research, Inc.

and was there to witness Seymour himself

on a Saturday at the punch card machine

at the Halle Lab in Chippewa Falls

and in time got a transcript of his recorded talk

explaining a tool which measured nanoseconds 

in short strides of wire

delay lines running back and forth across the board

synchronizing signals

interconnecting simple electronic parts

obtained from Fairchild and Motorola

to mathematicians

famous at wrangling data breaking codes

there in the puzzle palace where a red flight flashed

when Donal went down to the basement where a multitude

of computers were arrayed

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                    2025