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While their numbers have been small, women and minorities have made many contributions to technology and computing in Minnesota and elsewhere in the United States. The ENIAC computer, the world's first, was programmed in the 1940s by five women who this week will finally be honored for their work. And Annie Easley, an African-American and one of NASA's top scientists, has been with the agency since 1955. Here are some Minnesotans who are continuing to change the face of technology. Lori Frank The founder and CEO of Eagan-based software company Imaging Institute, Frank has set up two tech firms within a decade. She started Legend/DCR Technologies in 1988 -- an outfit that served the banking industry with an innovative information archiving concept -- and sold it in 1994. Curtis Chong This Twin Cities man is president of the National Federation of the Blind in Computing Science, and is spearheading a drive to keep computer operating systems and the Internet accessible to the visually impaired. Ann Winblad Nearly every profile of this Minnesota native -- she attended the College of St. Catherine and the University of St. Thomas -- includes the fact that she once dated Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, but Winblad is best-known as a keen observer of the Silicon Valley scene and head of a venture capital firm that only invests in technology companies. Janet and Janice Robidoux These twin sisters encountered 1950's-style discrimination in the technology field, often training college graduates for jobs that women hoped to get, but were told weren't available to them because they would probably get married and quit their jobs. The 62-year-old Coon Rapids women stuck with computing, though, until their retirements from Cray Research and Control Data a few years ago. Grandville Ricks Perhaps the Twin Cities' youngest tech writer, this promising 11-year-old has developed a following as the CD-ROM games reviewer for Youth Speak, a monthly newspaper. He's regarded as the Mac Wizard in his fifth-grade class at Golden Valley's Breck school. He hopes for a career in computer graphics design. Ansula Liu The founder and president of a Bloomington computer consulting company called Pioneer Consulting, Liu is working closely with many high-tech firms to deal with the Year 2000 Problems and other technology issues. Philip Emeagwali A Nigerian-born computer scientist who serves as a consultant, working out of the University of Minnesota, Emeagwali has received prestigious Golden Bell Prize -- regarded by some as the Nobel Prize of computing -- for his work on supercomputers. Reported by James Romenesko Staff Writer, Pioneer Press June 1, 1997, Saint Paul, Minnesota. Click on emeagwali.com for more information. philip@emeagwali.com