Today being Ada Lovelace Day, I pledged to write about a woman in technology who inspires admiration. I immediately seized on Admiral Grace Hopper as the ideal subject, particularly as Ada Lovelace, only legitimate child of Lord Byron, is often described as the “first programmer” of computational devices, since she developed programs for Charles Babbage’s early mechanical computers.
Hopper is indeed the spiritual heir to Lovelace—a woman who was able to apply focus and drive to a variety of problems. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College with a degree in mathematics and physics in 1928—an era when this was considerably rarer than it is now. Her graduate work was at Yale and she was teaching math at Vassar when the US entered World War II.
She volunteered for the Navy Reserve in 1943 and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at the Harvard Computation Lab. Here she began her career in computing, working with Howard H. Aiken on the Mark I computer. She wanted to transfer to the regular Navy at the end of the war, but was refused because she was 38, so she remained at Harvard &and in the reserves.
In 1949 Hopper joined the company eventually to be known as Remington Rand and was key to the development of the UNIVAC I. She focused on compiler work; COBOL being the eventual output. She believed that computer programs could be written in a language more like English than the machine languages then being used—imagine what a huge leap forward that was.
She went on to pioneer the implementation of standards for testing systems and components. In the 1980s her tests were assumed by what’s now the National institute of Standards & Technology (NIST).
Hopper retired from the Naval Reserve as a Commander in 1966, but was recalled to active duty—this process occurred twice. She finally retired permanently (and involuntarily) in 1986, with a ceremony held in Boston on the USS Constitution. At that time she was the oldest officer in the USN.
Hopper is indeed the spiritual heir to Lovelace—a woman who was able to apply focus and drive to a variety of problems. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College with a degree in mathematics and physics in 1928—an era when this was considerably rarer than it is now. Her graduate work was at Yale and she was teaching math at Vassar when the US entered World War II.
She volunteered for the Navy Reserve in 1943 and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at the Harvard Computation Lab. Here she began her career in computing, working with Howard H. Aiken on the Mark I computer. She wanted to transfer to the regular Navy at the end of the war, but was refused because she was 38, so she remained at Harvard &and in the reserves.
In 1949 Hopper joined the company eventually to be known as Remington Rand and was key to the development of the UNIVAC I. She focused on compiler work; COBOL being the eventual output. She believed that computer programs could be written in a language more like English than the machine languages then being used—imagine what a huge leap forward that was.
She went on to pioneer the implementation of standards for testing systems and components. In the 1980s her tests were assumed by what’s now the National institute of Standards & Technology (NIST).
Hopper retired from the Naval Reserve as a Commander in 1966, but was recalled to active duty—this process occurred twice. She finally retired permanently (and involuntarily) in 1986, with a ceremony held in Boston on the USS Constitution. At that time she was the oldest officer in the USN.
DEC then hired her as senior consultant, a position she held until her death in 1992. Her focus there was lecturing on the early days of computers and methods computer hardware and software companies could use to make life easier on users.
You can pretty well bet that—whatever your frustrations with your PC, your mobile phone, or any piece of equipment that has computer components—it works a lot better that it would have had Grace Hopper not been the computing pioneer she was, and for so many decades.
Working on a Mark II computer at Harvard, a moth stuck in a relay was interfering with operation. Hopper referred to its removal as “debugging”, a term that is vital to any software development project. That moth is in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, if you care to check it out.
You can pretty well bet that—whatever your frustrations with your PC, your mobile phone, or any piece of equipment that has computer components—it works a lot better that it would have had Grace Hopper not been the computing pioneer she was, and for so many decades.
Working on a Mark II computer at Harvard, a moth stuck in a relay was interfering with operation. Hopper referred to its removal as “debugging”, a term that is vital to any software development project. That moth is in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, if you care to check it out.
Also, if you’ve ever followed the aphorism that it’s better to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission, that’s been attributed to Hopper.
The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is an annual conference focused on the research and career interests of women in the field. This year’s will be held in Tucson in September. I’ve put it on my calendar because—although not a programmer or analyst—I think my career has been shaped by Hopper’s philosophy, so it’s worthwhile.
I think my favorite quote from her is, “I believe in having an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.”
You go, girl!
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