Creator: Helen Spence, Jeff Charnley, Elizabeth Spence

Subjects: Anniversaries, Sesquicentennial

Description:

Helen Spence came to MSU as a student in 1936 and worked as a lab assistant in the physics department. After she graduated in early 1939, Mrs. Spence taught math, physics and chemistry in a public school in Portland, Michigan. She married Bob Spence in 1942 and they moved out East where her husband taught radar to Army and Navy personnel and she worked in the theoretical division of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Radiation Lab on state-of-the-art computers (Monroes and Marchants – mainly electrically-powered calculating machines that carried 10 digits and could add, subtract, multiply and divide but not figure square roots). In 1947 Mrs. Spence and her husband came to MSU where he taught in the Physics Department and she was an instructor in the Computer Science Department where she taught Assembly languages. She helped program the first major computer on campus and eventually taught FORTRAN in the 1960s. Mrs. Spence retired in 1987.
Topics Covered in the Interview Include: MIT Radiation Lab; computers; Computer Science Department; FORTRAN

Date: June 1, 2005

Format: Audio/mp3

Original Format: Audiocassettes

Resource Identifier: Helen_Spence_Intv_t1s2.mp3

Collection Number: UA 3

Language: English

Rights Management: Educational use only, no other permissions given. Copyright to this resource is held by Michigan State University and is provided here for educational purposes only. It may not be reproduced or distributed in any format without written permission of the University Archives & Historical Collections, Michigan State University.

Contributing Institution: University Archives & Historical Collections, MATRIX, Office of the Provost

Relation: Sesquicentennial Oral History Project

Contributor: MSU Archives and Historical Collections

Audio File:

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