If you’re reading this on your phone or laptop screen, you can thank Grace Hopper for her groundbreaking work with computers. Because of Hopper and other trailblazing computer scientists, we are able to communicate and access information like never before! Let’s take a look at the life and work of this amazing computer programming pioneer.
Grace Hopper was born a curious child in New York City in the early 1900s. Early on in life, she showed interest in how things are made, which hinted at her future career in computer engineering. After earning her bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and her PhD from Yale University, Hopper began teaching mathematics.
In 1943, Hopper left her teaching position and was sworn into the United States Navy Reserve. After training, she was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University in 1944. During this time, she worked on the Mark I computer, an early electromechanical computer which was used during WWII. The term computer “bug” was introduced by Hopper, and is widely used today!
“From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it.”
After the war ended, Hopper continued her work on computer systems and programming at the Ekert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. Soon enough, the sensational new all-electronic computer, the UNIVAC, was set to be on the market in the 1950s. Hopper had an idea for this project, suggesting a new programming language that would use English words and translate them into code. This would allow for complicated and efficient processes inside computers in an exciting and unprecedented way. Hopper’s ideas were not easily accepted, but she persisted and continued to work on this new programming language. By 1952, undeterred by the skepticism of others, she had created a functional software to translate source code into machine code.
“They told me computers could only do arithmetic.”
“There sat that beautiful big machine whose sole job was to copy things and do addition. Why not make the computer do it? That’s why I sat down and wrote the first compiler. It was very stupid. What I did was watch myself put together a program and make the computer do what I did.”
Hopper eventually became the director of automatic programming for Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1954. Her revolutionary computer compiler captured worldwide attention. She came back to active duty was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal in 1987, after becoming Captain and Commondore of the Navy Programming Languages Group.
Today, an all-women’s coding bootcamp known as the Grace Hopper Program exists, aiming to break barriers in tech by helping women, transgender, and non-binary students on their way to becoming software engineers.
“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.”
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