Grace Murray Hopper

Work and Accomplishments

Grace was considered overage and underweight and was told that she could not enroll in the Navy. However, Grace obtained a waiver and was soon commissioned a Lieutenant (JG) and assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University. Grace was the third programmer on the Mark I, “the world's first large-scale automatically sequenced digital computer (Norman).” The computer was 8 feet high, 8 feet wide, and “filled with relays, switches and vacuum tubes (Danis).” Mark I was used to “calculate aiming angles for Naval guns in varying weather conditions (Norman).” Grace was released from active duty in 1946.

Regardless of being released from active duty, Grace continued working on the Mark series of computers with the Harvard Faculty at the Computation Laboratory. One of her most important accomplishments there was popularizing the term “bug” when she pulled a moth out of Mark II that caused the system not to function properly. Grace would go on to coin the term “debug” in the mid 1950’s to mean to remove programming errors. Grace remained at Harvard as a civilian research fellow in Engineering Sciences and Applied Physics until 1949 (Norman).

In 1949, Grace joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation as a senior mathematician. Grace helped program the BINAC (Binary Automated Computer) using C-10 code, which required the usage of octal arithmetic ("Women and Mathematics"). The BINAC paved the way for the UNIVAC I and II, the world’s first commercial computers (“Grace Hopper”).

It was during her time at the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation that Grace formulated an idea that would change computer programming forever. Grace was used to programming in binary and octal, but soon thought that there must be an easier way. Grace pondered the idea of being able to type commands in English and then compiling the commands into machine code using what would be called a compiler. Grace’s peers frowned upon the idea, but soon Grace had developed the A-0 and then A-2 compilers. Grace then applied her ideas of compiling to the UNIVAC computer and created the B-0 compiler, which could recognize English commands. Soon, the compiler was renamed to FLOW-MATIC and marketed as a business solution for payroll calculation and automated billing (Norman).

In 1959, Grace and her team developed a new programming language called COBOL, using FLOW-MATIC as their foundation. In 1966, Grace was forced to step down as a naval reserve due to her age. However, the navy could not develop a working payroll plan and was forced to re-instate Grace. Grace became the first ever female naval reserve to be re-instated. After she was re-instated, Grace continued her work on COBOL and created a certifier and translator programs to “convert non-standard COBOL languages into the standardized version (Norman).”

Grace Hopper received various awards for her lifetime accomplishments. In 1983, Grace was promoted to the rank of Commodore. And in 1985, she became the first woman elevated to the rank of Rear Admiral. 1986 marked the year of Grace’s retirement from the Navy, as she retired on the deck of the USS Constitution (Norman).