Amazing Grace - 5 interesting facts about the life of the “tamer” of the first American computer

09.12.2020 18:34

She was known as "Amazing Grace" and "Grandma COBOL". She was the “tamer” of the world's first computer, Mark I.

Grace Murray Hopper was born in New-York in 1906. She began her scientific career as an ordinary mathematician - in 1930 she received a master's degree from Yale University, where she wrote a dissertation on algebra. Starting from 1931, she taught mathematics at Vassar College. Grace's life changed dramatically with the United States' entry into World War II when she volunteered for service in the Navy. With the rank of junior lieutenant, she was assigned to the Navy's computing laboratory at Harvard University. It was there that she had her first encounter with computers, specifically with the first American programmable computer, the massive "Mark I," developed by IBM back in 1941.

From then on, Grace Hopper's entire life was intertwined with the Navy. Later on, she reached the rank of Rear Admiral, and in most photographs, we see her in uniform adorned with numerous awards. Among them: the "Defense Distinguished Service Medal" (1986), the National Medal of Technology (1991). Her name graces the Data Processing Center, an Award for Young Professionals in the field of programming, and even a U.S. Navy missile frigate.

Her true mission as a scientist, educator, and Navy Rear Admiral was significantly broader. Grace herself would say about herself:

"One of my most important achievements, besides creating the compiler, is mentoring young people. They come to me, you know, and ask, "Do you think we can do this?" I reply, "Give it a try." And I support them. They need that. I keep an eye on their progress and sometimes encourage them to take risks, so they don't miss out on opportunities. "

What better tells about a person than social media and the good old Google? But in all seriousness, a person's habits and preferences speak volumes about them. We have gathered 5 interesting facts about the life and working style of Grace Hopper. We're happy to share them with you.

As a teacher, Grace had an interesting quirk – she demanded that her students write well. In the first class on probability theory, she wrote her favorite Stirling's formula on the board, followed by assigning homework to write an essay about it. When students complained that they came to study mathematics, not English, Hopper replied:

- There's no point in learning mathematics without the ability to pass on your knowledge to others.

Grace always came to give lectures in full military attire, even after her retirement. For much of her later career, she was a speaker at various events related to computer technology. At such gatherings, our heroine stood out from others with her casual presentation style and stories about the early years of the war.

III

Working on a machine like the "iron Mark," equipped with 800 kilometers of wire and a hundred cubic meters of components, demanded from the programmer an insane amount of patience and meticulous attention. Nevertheless, Grace often complained about her "laziness" and couldn't stand dull work. Therefore, while part of her brain was occupied with composing and inputting programs, another part was figuring out how to avoid the repetitive actions involved in programming calculations.

So she wrote the world's first subroutine, and soon after, an entire "subroutine library." It is considered that it was Grace Hopper who became the author of the first compiler - in 1952, she created a compiler for the A-0 System language.

IV

Grace also had a great sense of humor.

"When an officer came in to inquire about what we were doing, we replied that we were cleaning the computer of bugs (debugging)."

she said when a butterfly somehow got inside the Mark II computer and shorted the contacts of one of the relays. At that time, she didn't yet know that she had become the author of the now popular term 'bug' (software error)."