Grace Hopper, Computer Programming Pioneer

When Grace Hopper was born in 1906, computers didn’t exist, but the first calculator had been envisioned. Charles Babbage started building a mechanical calculator he called “The Difference Engine” in the mid-1800’s. While he never completed it, Ada Byron Lovelace, a woman, described how it worked, writing the first “computer program.”

Grace Hopper, following her birth family’s ancestors, joined the Navy Reserves after Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941. Having graduated from Vassar, and from Yale with both her Master’s and PhD in mathematics, she worked on the Mark I computer, a 55-foot-long machine, to figure out how to program it to solve military problems. She literally “wrote the book” on the Mark I, the first computer manual. She coined the term “debugging” when she found a moth in the monster machine.

Grace was unimpressed with hardware, concentrating on software, the directions for the computer. After the war she worked on the BINAC, the first electronic computer. Her team included many women and experts from around the world, nicknamed the “United Nations.”

Grace created the first “compiler,” a shortcut set of instructions that simplified programming. She developed the FLOW-MATIC compiler that became the model for the COBOL programming language. Her goal was to make using a computer as easy as driving a car — no need to know the programming language behind the scenes or how to “change the oil.” Our laptop computers do just that.

By the time Grace Hopper died in 1992, she had been granted 50 honorary degrees, the highest US Defense Department honor, and the National Medal of Technology from President George H.W. Bush.

“Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’ I try to fight that.” Grace Murray Hopper

Submitted by Teresa Wilmot