Frances Spence

Frances Spence ( born Frances Bilas, born March 2, 1922 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, † 18 July 2012) was one of the first programmers of the ENIAC computer.

Frances Spence first attended the Temple University, but then received a scholarship to Chestnut Hill College. She completed her studies with a major in mathematics and a minor in physics in 1942. Even in Chestnut Hill, she met Kathleen McNulty, who later also belonged to the programming team for the ENIAC. Although they belonged to the main programming team for the ENIAC, both her ​​and the importance of other female team members was downplayed due to the prejudice that women possess no particularly good relationship to technology. McNulty and Spence began their work at the Moore School of Engineering, where they were responsible for the calculation of ballistic trajectories. Both were selected there for the first programming team of ENIAC, which was to transfer these tasks to the computer.

In 1947 she married the electrical engineer Homer Spence, who at the Aberdeen Proving Ground initially worked for the U.S. Army. He has also been joined to the ENIAC project and later became head of the calculating department. Shortly after the wedding Frances Spence gave up their careers to start a family with her husband.

In 1997, she was inducted into the WITI Hall of Fame along with the other employees of the first programming team for the ENIAC by the Association of Women in Technology International as a member.