The Real Grace Hopper

GRACE HOPPER AND THE INVENTION OF THE INFORMATION AGE

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Who Is Grace Hopper?

Type the term “Grace Hopper” into a popular internet search engine and it comes up with thousands of adoring websites, pictures, and quotes dedicated to “Amazing Grace” or “The Grandmother of COBOL.” Most images the public sees are that of a petite, heavily wrinkled old woman wearing a naval uniform. Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper became a minor celebrity during the end of her career. One could argue that Hopper’s exceptional career may have gone unnoticed by an indifferent public if it were not for an interview broadcast on the popular CBS show 60 Minutes in March 1983. America was introduced to the irreverent Navy captain, who playfully reflected on her life in an interview with Morley Safer.

The interview on 60 Minutes reached millions, including Congressman Philip Crane, who initiated a bill to have the contributions of Grace Hopper properly recognized. Captain Hopper was also promoted by special appointment to Commodore, and later to Rear Admiral. Soon thereafter, an assortment of honors and awards were showered on the grandmotherly figure depicted in the interview. In 1985, the Navy’s newest Data Automation Center was renamed the Grace Murray Hopper Center, and in 1997 the ultimate honor was bestowed with the commissioning of the Navy’s latest and most advanced guided missile destroyer, the USS Grace Hopper.

The accolades precipitated by the 60 Minutes interview were naturally well deserved, but it also created the modern public perception of the aging admiral that today is captured in so many websites. Forgotten is the aggressive, brilliant computer pioneer and business executive who faced decades of technical challenges and gender discrimination to drive a new technology, and vision of the future, forward. The book Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age strips back the layers of time to uncover a more authentic Grace Hopper within the context of the meteoric trajectory of the early computer industry. At the end of the day, the young, vibrant Grace Hopper is far more intriguing, complex, and instrumental in creating our modern society then the aging admiral portrayed by the popular press.

Grace Hopper Career Timeline

1934-1943 Grace Murray Hopper becomes the first woman to graduate from Yale with a PhD in Mathematics and serves first as an instructor and then as an associate professor at Vassar College

1941 Grace Hopper works with famous mathematician Richard Courant at New York University on critical mathematical problems for the war effort.

1943 Grace Hopper joins the Navy as an officer after President Roosevelt authorizes the formation of the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service).

1944-1945 Lieutenant (jg) Grace Hopper serves as operational head of the first computer during WWII, the Harvard Mark I

1944 Grace Hopper works with mathematician John von Neumann to solve the famous implosion problem for the Nuclear bomb that ended WWII

1949 Grace Hopper joins the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, the first computer start-up company

1951 Grace Hopper invents the compiler, the cornerstone of all high end programming languages

1953 Grace Hopper is named director of automatic programming for the first commercial computer, UNIVAC

1951-1957 Grace Hopper and her staff create the first commercial high end mathematical and business computer languages, MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC

1959 Grace Hopper organizes the conference that created the business language COBOL. As of 2009 over 70% of the world’s computer code is still in COBOL

1966 Grace Hopper retires after a brilliant 23 career as computer industry pioneer and business executive.

1967 Grace Hopper comes out of retirement and returns to active service in the US Navy.

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