Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992) is often referred to as the "mother of
the computer'. She is also generally credited with spearheading the efforts
that led to the development, standardization and acceptance of the COBOL,
the business world's programming language of choice, which was used by
nearly all of the world's largest corporations for more than three decades.
Hopper was arguably the world's most famous programmer and the most influential woman in the history of computing. Her story is one of firsts, not just for women but also for the exploding world of digital computing.
Born in New York city in 1906 as Grace Murray, she studied mathematics and physics at Vasser College, graduating with a B.A. in 1928. She joined the Vassar faculty as an instructor and concurrently continued her studies at Yale, in mathematics, where she earned her Master's degree in 1930. Also in that year she married Vince Foster Hopper and continued her studies at Yale, completing her Ph.D. in 1934. Hopper's doctorate in mathematics was was a rare accomplishment in its day, especially for a woman.
Hopper taught at Vasser College for ten years and then took a leave of absence to offer her mathematical skills to her country for World War II, with the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1943. Later often introduced as the "third programmer on the first computer in the United States," Lieutenant Junior Grade Grace Hopper began her work computing with Howard Aiken at Harvard. They used the first computer to figure ordnance calculations.
Her husband died during the War, in 1945 and they had no children. After the war Hopper resigned her leave of absence from Vasser College and became a research fellow in engineering and applied physics at Harvard's Computation Laboratory. In 1949 she moved to a post of senior mathematician with the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation which eventually was to become the Sperry Corporation.
The first compiler
At Eckerd-Mauchly, Hopper worked with the world's first large-scale
digital computer, the Mark I, developing programs.
"It was 51 feet long, eight feet high, eight feet deep," she said.
"And it had 72 words of storage and could perform three additions a second."
Up to 1949 all programming of digital computers was done directly in machine code or in assembly language, in which mnemonic codes were transformed into the binary machine code instructions that the computer could execute.
There she developed the A-O, the first compiler, which she described in the first published paper on compilers, in 1952.
"Nobody believed that," she said. "I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic."
Since that time she published over fifty papers on software and on programming languages.
Hopper and her colleagues followed development of the A-O with B-O, better known as FLOW-MATIC, which eventually lead to the development of the COBOL programming language.
Admiral Hopper's goal was to create a more 'friendly' computer programming language, more like ordinary English language so that it could be used by non-technical people. She possessed a sharp business acumen and strove to open the world of computer programming to the business world.
Awards and Recognition
Admiral Grace Murray Hopper received many awards and commendations. The most notable of these include the first ever "Computer Science Man-of-the-Year Award" from the Data Processing Management Association. In 1973, she became the first United States citizen and the first woman to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.
The first computer "bug"
Hopper is also sometimes mistakenly credited with inventing the term
bug, a flaw in a computer or a program. The true story is that In 1951
she discovered the first computer "bug." There was a real live moth inside
the computer that had caused a disturbance. She captured the moth, preserved
it and pasted it into the UNIVAC I logbook.
"Don't waste a microsecond"
At the end of her career Admiral Hopper felt her greatest contribution
had been "all the young people I've trained." She was an inspirational
professor and a much sought after speaker, with a reputation for enthusiasm
and entertaining speeches..
As a speaker Hopper often used analogies that have become legendary.
The most famous was when she presented a piece of wire about a foot long,
and explained that it was the best way to explain a nanosecond, that being
the distance electricity could travel in wire in one billionth of a second.
She often contrasted this nanosecond with a microsecond - a bale of wire
nearly a thousand feet long - as she encouraged her audience of programmers
not to waste 'even a microsecond.'
| The Wit and Wisdom of Admiral Grace Hopper
Throughout her years in academia and industry, Admiral Hopper was a consultant and lecturer for the United States Naval Reserve, traveling around the world speaking about the power and future of computing. She was a dynamic and sought after speaker, in some years addressing as many as 200 audiences. Here are a few of her memorable quotes: On Big Computers: "In pioneer days they used oxen for heavy pulling, and when one ox couldn't budge a log, they didn't try to grow a larger ox. We shouldn't be trying for bigger computers, but for more systems of computers." On Business Information: "A business' accounts receivable file is much more important than its accounts payable file." On Life: "Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems." On Change: "Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise." On Information vs. Knowledge: "We're flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We've tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question." Her Message to Young People: "You manage things, you lead people.
We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership. It might help
if we ran the MBAs out of Washington."
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Her legacy
Upon retirement from the Navy in 1986 as a Rear Admiral, Hopper joined
Digital Equipment Corporation, and worked there as a technical consultant
well into her eighties. When Admiral Grace Murray Hopper died in her sleep
in Arlington, Virginia on New Year's Day, 1992, the world lost an inspiration
to women, scientists and young people. Her contributions to computer science
benefited business, academia and the military. Her vision of the the potential
for commercial applications of computers, rather than just as 'number-crunchers'
paved the way for modern business data processing.
