During World War II, a large number of women mathematicians were employed as "computers" to perform calculations necessary to create firing and bombing tables. Alice Burks was one of 75 women "computers" working at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Engineering. Eventually, the need to perform the calculations more rapidly led to the development of the ENIAC, the world's first electronic digital computer.

Alice Burks has coauthored numerous articles on ENIAC and the history of computers with her husband, Arthur Burks, a computer scientist who was part of the ENIAC team.