Transcript Grace Murray Hopper a Computer Pioneer

By: Raimundo Strauszer
January 30, 2011
COMP 1631
•December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992
•Hopper is the oldest of 3 children
•Married to NYU professor Vincent Foster
Hopper in 1930 until his death in 1945
• Her curiosity as a child continue to evident in
her career
• At 16 years old Hopper was rejected from early admissions to Vassar
college
• Graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar in 1928 with a bachelor’s degree in
mathematics and physics
• Grace Hopper earned her Master’s degree at Yale University in 1930
• Under the direction of Øystein Ore, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics
from Yale
• In 1931 Hopper began teaching mathematics in Vassar, and was promoted
to associated professor in 1941
• Hopper’s computer career began in July 1944
• She joined the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard
University
• Hopper was the third person to join the research team of professor
Howard H. Aiken
• During this time she worked on the MARK I computer system (and would
later work on the MARK II and MARK III systems
• During her time employed by the Eckert-Mauchly Corporation she
developed the first English language compiler
• During this time she also popularized the term debugging, Remington
Rand Corporation in 1950
• A computer designed by Howard H. Aiken and Grace Hopper
•The first of these computers was the Mark I
•The Mark I was made up of approximately 760,000 separate pieces and
weighed 5 tons
•The computer was used by the U.S. Navy to perform gunnery and ballistic
calculations
•The computer was controlled by a pre-punched paper tape and could carry
out addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division as well as reference to
previous results.
•The Mark I also had subroutines for logarithms and trigonometric function
•Used 23 decimal place numbers
• Data in the Mark I was stored and counted mechanically using
3,000 decimal storage wheels, 1,400 rotary dial switches, and 500
miles of wire
•The machine was classified as a relay computer due to its
electromagnetic relays
• All of its output was displayed on an electric typewriter
•By today’s standards the Mark I was slow, since it required between
3 to 5 seconds to perform a multiplication operation
• Grace Hopper had conceptualized how a much wider audience
could use the computer if there tools that were both
programmer-friendly and application-friendly
• In 1949 she joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation
in order to pursuit her vision and provide businesses with
computers
•During her time with the company she began a pioneering
effort of UNIVAC I
•A compiler is a software which makes computer programming software
easier to write
• Before computer programmers had to write programs using binary code
• Hopper’s compiler allowed programmers to use more human like
commands to replace repetitive commands.
• The FLOW-MATIC was the first English language compiler
• She continued to work on compilers, and published her first paper on that
topic in 1952
• Hopper worked with John Eckert and John Mauchly on the Univac
computer
• Univac I was the first large-scale electronic digital computer
• In order to ease their task Hopper encouraged programmers to
collect and share common portions of programs
• In spite of having to be copied by hand, these early shared libraries
of code reduced errors, tedium, and duplication of efforts
• By 1949 programs contained mnemonics that were transformed
into binary code instructions executable by the computer
• After having worked on compilers, Hopper began to
work on specifications for a common business language
• prior to this the FLOW-MATIC was the only existing
business language
• Another important goal Hopper was related to compilers,
particularly that there should be a certain standardisation.
• This led to the publication of COBOL in 1959
• COBOL stands for Common Business-Oriented Language
• In 1951 during a
maintenance engineer
discovered a moth stuck in
one of the relays. She then
pasted the “computer bug”
as it is known from now on
into the UNIVAC I logbook
• 1969 – She won the inaugural "computer sciences man of the year" award from the Data
Processing Management Association.
• 1971 – The annual Grace Murray Hopper Award for Outstanding Young Computer
Professionals was established in 1971 by the Association for Computing Machinery
• 1973 – She became the first person from the United States and the first woman of any
nationality to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.
• 1986 – Upon her retirement she received the Defence Distinguished Service Medal.
• 1987 – She became a Computer History Museum fellow Award Recipient.
• 1988 – She received the Golden Gavel Award at the Toastmaster International convention in
Washington, DC.
• 1991 – She received the National Medal of Technology.
• 1996 – USS Hopper (DDG-70) was launched. Nicknamed Amazing Grace, it is on a very short
list of U.S. military vessels named after women.
• 2001 – Evan Boland wrote a poem dedicated to Grace Hopper titled "Code" in her 2001
release “Against Love Poetry"
• 2009 – The Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center
named its flagship system "Hopper“.
Bellis, Mary. "Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper - Inventors of the Mark I Computer."
Weblog post. Inventors. 2011. Web. 29 Jan. 2011.
<http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa052198.htm>.
Bellis, Mary. "Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper." Inventors. Web. 01 Feb. 2011.
<http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blaiken_hopper.htm>.
Bois, Danuta. "Grace Murray Hopper." Women's Biographies: Distinguished Women
of Past and Present. 1998. Web. 01 Feb. 2011.
<http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/hopper.html>.
"Grace Murray Hopper." The History of Computing Project. 17 Mar. 2010. Web. 01
Feb. 2011. <http://www.thocp.net/index.html>.
Maisel, Merry, and Laura Smart. "Grace Murray Hopper: Pioneer Computer
Scientist." San Diego Supercomputer Center. 1997. Web. 29 Jan. 2011.
<http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/hopper.html>.