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Betty Snyder

By sophieflaks

  • Early Life

    Early Life
    Betty Snyder originally named Francis Elizabeth Snyder was born on March 7, 1917 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  • College

    College
    Around 1940 she attended college at the University of Pennsylvania and took up journalism because at the time it was one of the few professional fields open to women.

  • ENIAC involvment

    ENIAC involvment
    In 1945 she was chosen by the Moore School of Engineering to works as a 'computor' a short time after 6 women including her were picked to program the ENIAC.

  • ENIAC unveiling

    ENIAC unveiling
    The ENIAC was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania on February 15th, 1946. Betty along with the other 5 women were the only generation of programmers to ever program the ENIAC.

  • Life after the War

    Life after the War
    Once the war was over, Snyder now Holberton began working at the Remington Ran as well as the National Bureau of Standards. Here she worked on the 2 revisions of the FORTRAN. FORTRAN77 and FORTRANN90.

  • Moving up the ladder

    Moving up the ladder
    Holberton was one of the first people to write the first generative programming system (SORT/MERGE)as well as the first statistical analysis package which was used for the 1950 U.S. Census.

  • Developing UNIVAC

    Developing UNIVAC
    In 1951 Holberton joined John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly ENIAC designers, in helping to develop the UNIVAC.

  • Becoming Supervisor

    Becoming Supervisor
    Holberton was appointed supervisor of advanced programming in a part of the Navy's applied Math Lab in Maryland in 1953.

  • Working at David Taylor Model Basin

    Working at David Taylor Model Basin
    In 1959 Holberton became the chief of the Programming Research Branch, Applied Mathematics Laboratory at the David Taylor Model Basin.

  • COBOL

    COBOL
    In 1966 she became a member of the COBOL programming language committee.

  • Hall of Fame

    Hall of Fame
    Due to her work in programming ENIAC Betty Holberton was inducted to the Women in Technology Hall of Fame along with the 5 other women involved in the programming of ENIAC.

  • IEEE Computer Pioneer Award

    IEEE Computer Pioneer Award
    As a result of Holberton developing the SORT/MERGE generator she received the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award issued by the IEEE Computer Society.

  • Augusta Ada Lovelace Award

    Augusta Ada Lovelace Award
    The last of the awards she received in 1977 consisted of Augusta Ada Lovelace Award. She was the only one out of the 6 original programmers of the ENIAC to receive this award which was considered the highest award given by the Association of Women in Computing.

  • Retiring

    Retiring
    Holberton retired from the burea, which is now the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 1983.

  • Death

    Death
    Sadly on December 8, 2001 Holberton passed away due to health issues.