Biography February 15th, 2016
@ Betty Snyder, 1944. Photo courtesy Priscilla Holberton
Frances Elizabeth Holberton was a technological pioneer regardless of her gender. Frances, nicknamed Betty, was born in 1917 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In her early years of life she was driven to further herself with an education from a higher learning facility. After her normal K-12 education she decided to attend the University of Pennsylvania. When she entered the University of Pennsylvania she was told that she was wasting her time with an education, and her time would be better spent at home raising children. Even though she was emotionally patronized by her peers she continued to better herself with an education. After completing her degree in journalism she got drafted by the Moore School of Engineering to help with their computing program. Since this was during the 1940’s, when World War II was going on, the Moore School of Engineering drafted women to take the place usually occupied by men. Since the Moore School of Engineering was located on the University of Pennsylvania campus, her life would not be disturbed too much. Once she accepted the offer to attend the Moore School she found herself working on some of the most amazing and influential technological advance of the twentieth century.
Working at ENIAC Betty Holberton was able to help create one of the first computers. She was hired as a “computor” in hopes to create a personal computer that would be able to communicate from one person to another. While working at ENIAC she was hired to figure out ballistics trajectories. By doing so she was able to fix a lot of amazing problems for the company. While being at ENIAC she was able to work on computers on a team of six exclusive girls. The group of women included, Betty Holberton, Kay McNulty, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jean Jennings, and Fran Bilas. At the time since they were women and, “couldn’t be trusted” they were not allowed to be alone with the technology. Luckily for them, they were able to prove themselves “worthy” of working with the computer systems they helped create. Funny enough the women of ENIAC premiered their computers on this day, 15 of February 1946. Crazy how far we have come in 70 years.
