Kathleen Rita Antonelli, known as Kay McNulty, was an Irish computer programmer and one of the six original programmers of the ENIAC, one of the first general-purpose electronic digital computers. The other five ENIAC programmers were Betty Holberton, Ruth Teitelbaum, Frances Spence, Marlyn Meltzer, and Jean Bartik.
Kay McNulty in her high school graduation portrait, 1938
Kay McNulty, Alyse Snyder, and Sis Stump operate the differential analyser in the basement of the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, c. 1942–1945.
Kay McNulty hands a print-out of ENIAC results to its inventors Pres Eckert (left) and John Mauchly (right) in a newsreel dating from 1946.
Kay McNulty (later Mauchly, later Antonelli) ENIAC programmer
ENIAC was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. Other computers had some of these features, but ENIAC was the first to have them all. It was Turing-complete and able to solve "a large class of numerical problems" through reprogramming.
Four ENIAC panels and one of its three function tables at the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania
Glenn A. Beck (background) and Betty Snyder (foreground) program ENIAC in BRL building 328. (U.S. Army photo, c. 1947–1955)
Cpl. Irwin Goldstein (foreground) sets the switches on one of ENIAC's function tables at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering. (U.S. Army photo)
Programmers Betty Jean Jennings (left) and Fran Bilas (right) operating ENIAC's main control panel at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, c. 1945 (U.S. Army photo from the archives of the ARL Technical Library)