Celebrating Women in Computing – Frances Elizabeth Holberton #SheIsWhyICode

SIGUCCS Commuity

Frances Elizabeth Holberton (1917 – 2001)

During World War II, Betty was hired as a “computor” – women that were hired to manually compute ballistic trajectories for the Army. These manual calculations were complex and took 30 hours to solve. But in 1945, the Army built a machine to replicate the work and Betty was part of the team of six women commissioned to program the ENIAC machine. All six women earned a place in the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame.

Early computer

Betty went on to help with the development of the UNIVAC machine and is credited for placing the numeric keypad next to the keyboard, as well as replacing the black exterior of the UNIVAC with the gray-beige tone that came to be the universal color of computers for many years. She also worked on early standards for COBOL and FORTRAN.

Why do you Code? Share your inspirational stories on our Facebook community page or Twitter. Be sure to include the tags #SIGUCCS and #SheIsWhyICode

About SIGUCCS Editor

The Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services (SIGUCCS) is an association of professionals who support and manage the diverse aspects of information technology services at higher education institutions. SIGUCCS is one of 36 special interest groups of ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, the world's largest educational and scientific computing society. SIGUCCS focuses on issues surrounding the support, delivery, and management of those services, and provides professional development opportunities for its members and the other individuals in the field.