ENIAC, programmed by Snyder and five other women, was publicly unveiled at the Moore School, marking the birth of modern computing.
On February 15, 1946, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was formally unveiled to the public and press at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC was the first large-scale, general-purpose electronic digital computer, capable of performing calculations thousands of times faster than any prior mechanical or electromechanical device.
Betty Snyder was one of six women — along with Jean Bartik, Kathleen Antonelli, Marlyn Meltzer, Ruth Teitelbaum, and Frances Bilas — selected to program ENIAC. These women, originally hired as human "computors" to calculate ballistic trajectories by hand, were tasked with figuring out how to physically program the machine using plugboards and switches, without any manuals, programming languages, or precedent to guide them.
The unveiling was a landmark moment in the history of technology, demonstrating that electronic computation was feasible and practical. Yet for decades afterward, the contributions of the women programmers — including Snyder — were largely omitted from public accounts of the machine's development, with credit disproportionately given to its male engineers, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert.
Snyder's work on ENIAC established the foundation for her subsequent career, as she became one of the few individuals in the world with practical experience programming an electronic computer — expertise that was in its earliest infancy and virtually undocumented at the time.