Death of Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli

Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli died on April 20, 2006, in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, at the age of 85, after a battle with cancer. Her death marked the passing of one of the last surviving members of the original ENIAC programming team, a group whose historical significance had only begun to be widely recognized in the years before her death.

In her later years, Kay had become an increasingly visible figure in the growing effort to document and celebrate the contributions of women to the early history of computing. She gave interviews, participated in documentary projects, and was honored by organizations recognizing the overlooked achievements of the ENIAC programmers, helping to correct a historical record that had for decades credited only the male engineers of the project.

Her death was met with recognition from computing historians and institutions who had come to understand the magnitude of her contributions — not only as one of the first programmers of a general-purpose electronic computer, but as a woman who had broken through significant barriers in a field that would soon become dominated by men. Her legacy endures through ongoing scholarship, museum exhibits, and educational initiatives, including recognition from institutions such as the Women's Museum of Ireland and Carnegie Mellon University, which continue to tell her story as part of the foundational history of computer science.