Kathleen Antonelli - Family Life

Family Life

ENIAC co-inventor John Mauchly, who had since departed his post as a professor at the Moore School to found his own computer company along with Presper Eckert, made frequent trips to Washington, D.C. during this period, and stopped in to check up on the ENIAC in Aberdeen. Mauchly had already hired Betty Jean Jennings (who had married and now went by Jean Bartik) and Betty Snyder (now called Betty Holberton) and had hoped to attract Kay to his fledgling company as well. But Mauchly's wife had died in a September 1946 drowning accident, and as a recent widower with two children, Mauchly instead proposed to Kay, who was almost 14 years his junior.

Resigning her post at Aberdeen, and without the blessing of her Irish Catholic parents, she married him in 1948. They lived initially in his row house on St. Mark's Street near the University of Pennsylvania, and later in a large farmhouse called Little Linden in Ambler, Pennsylvania. With Mauchly, Kay had five children.

She later worked on the software design for later computers including the BINAC and UNIVAC I computers whose hardware was designed by her husband.