Frances Spence, One of the First Computer Programmers of the ENIAC

Frances Spence was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a family of five sisters. Working in the education sector, her parents knew that they wanted all of their children to pursue higher education, and the sisters excelled in school. Her father was an engineer, which sparked an interest in maths and physics for Frances at a young age. Whilst in school, she thrived in all of her subjects and ended up at Temple University for her Bachelor’s Degree. However, after discovering her talent, Chestnut Hill College offered her a full scholarship, so she transferred and finished her degree there.

After finishing college in 1942, she planned to return home and become a maths teacher, working in the same field as her parents had. Settling for a simple life seemed to be where Spence was heading to, but her career soon took a turn. In 1945, the U.S. Army funded a project to digitize aspects of their work during World War II, and they recruited 80 women for the team. Six women from Moore School at the University of Pennsylvania, including Spence and her friends Kathleen Antonelli, Jean Bartik, Marlyn Meltzer, Ruth Teitelbaum, and Betty Holberton, were recruited. Another one of her friends from college, Mcnulty, was later hired, and the two worked together closely on the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the first programmable computer. They worked as ‘computerers,’ calculating ballistic trajectories and lead computational development.

The ENIAC was a challenging tool to work with as it consisted of forty 80 feet-long machines. It was the first-ever all-electronic digital computer. Although it aided in making calculations, using it was labor-intensive. The team’s first recruits had to manually route data by flipping different switches on buttons. These analog technologies were new and, therefore, faulty, so they would have to replace hundreds of vacuum tubes and cables every day. There were few guidelines on how to manipulate and use these machines at first, so the team had to learn and improvise as they went.

Their work was a classified project at first because it was a new machine being tested for the war. Showing the ENIAC to the public meant that they would face harsh backlash if there were any failures or mistakes. This means that the effort and wit these women put into the project was never published. When the ENIAC was made known to the public in 1946, it just seemed like another industrial job as people were only focused on the on-going war. The only ones noticed by the press were the mechanical engineers behind the machine, belittling the work of the women who spent most of their days working on the device. Thus, the work of Spence and her small team went largely unheard of, and they received little to no credit for their work. Moreover, because of the consensus that women can not work in technology, everyone believed that this was just normal labor like simple sewing or manufacturing done by factory workers.

As the war was coming to an end, more men started working with the ENIAC. This was where Frances reunited with her old friend from Moore School, Homer Spence, and the two were married in 1947. They were both promoted and continued working with the ENIAC after the war. When Homer got a job in New York, they moved, and Spence retired to look after their three children.

Although the ENIAC machine was essentially brought to life by the group of women, they barely received any recognition for their work as women’s accomplishments were downplayed in the male-dominated field of technology. Nevertheless, Frances Spence was inducted to the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame, and this device paved the way for many innovative technologies in the future. She left behind a legacy as one of the first-ever computer programmers when she passed in 2012.

by Ha Nguyen

References

Sylvian, Aaron. “Mrs. Frances Spence.” IT HISTORY SOCIETY, https://www.ithistory.org/honor-roll/mrs-frances-spence-ne-bilas.

Campbell-Kelly, Martin, et al. “ENIAC.” Exhibition, Birth of the Computer, Computer History Museum, https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/birth-of-the-computer/4/78.

Forrister, Thomas. “Happy Birthday, Frances Spence.” Comsol Blog, Comsol, 2 March 2018, https://www.comsol.com/blogs/happy-birthday-frances-spence/.

Cruz, Frank. “Programming the ENIAC.” ENIAC PROGRAMMER, Columbia University, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/eniac.html.

“Frances Spence.” Frances Spence — ETHW, Engineering and Technology History Wiki, 25 January 2016, Cruz, Frank. “Programming the ENIAC.” ENIAC PROGRAMMER, Columbia University, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/eniac.html.

W. Barkley Fritz, ‘The Women of ENIAC’, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol.18, №3, 1996, pp. 13–28