Kathleen Booth

Kathleen Booth (nee Britten) is sometimes credited with writing the first assembly language and the design of the assembler and autocode (ARC and APE(X)C) for the Birkbeck College computers, University of London.[1]

The publications from 1947 which locate Booth (then Britten) in the timeline of computer programming languages were co-authored with Andrew D. Booth who in turn was primarily responsible for founding the Computer Science Department at Birkbeck. While Booth built the machines, Britten wrote the programming language.[2]

"The smallest of the early British computer groups consisted of A. D. Booth and K. H. V. Britten (later Booth), based at Birkbeck College in the University of London (Booth 1975). That this group produced three machines, ARC,SEC, and APEXC, during the period 1947 to 1953 was a remarkable achievement, considering the size of the group (mainly just Booth and Britten) and the limited funds at its disposal. Although APEXC eventually led to the successful HEC series manufactured by the British Tabulating Machine Company, the small scale of the Birkbeck operation did not place it in the front rank of British computer activity.[3]

References

  1. ^ Booth, Kathleen. "machine language for Automatic Relay Computer". Birkbeck College Computation Laboratory,. University of London. 
  2. ^ http://www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/about/history/
  3. ^ Campbell-Kelly, Martin "The Development of Computer Programming in Britain (1945 to 1955)", The Birkbeck College Machines, in (1982) Annals of the History of Computing 4(2) April 1982 IEEE