Admiral Grace Hopper, one of the most legendary early females in the computer industry, would have celebrated her 118th birthday on December 9. Born in New York City in 1906, Hopper built a career in the U.S. Navy and computer science, earning recognition for many accomplishments. Her work to co-develop COBOL, a computer language that relied on words instead of numbers, her work on the Mark computer series, just to name a few. Continue reading this Tech Time Warp to learn more about Hopper’s career.
Hopper’s fascinating career facts:
- The PhD in mathematics she earned from Yale University in 1934 was rare in general—not just for women. Hopper was one of four women in a doctoral program of 10, and only 1,279 doctoral degrees were awarded in math between 1862 and 1934.
- Due to her petite size, the U.S. Navy initially rejected Hopper from World War II service in the Women’s Reserve (known as the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services, or WAVES). However, she persistently pursued and eventually received a waiver. Thus began her long naval career.
- A logbook used by Hopper’s Mark II team is part of the Smithsonian Institution’s collection. A team member taped a moth labeled ‘first actual case of bug being found’ inside the logbook. The team had been experiencing hardware issues, and in this case, an actual bug caused the problems! Thanks to this logbook, computer programmers began widely using the terms “bug” and “debug” to describe flaws found and fixed during the programming process.
- Hopper initially retired from the Navy in 1966 due to age restrictions, but the Navy called her back to service within months to work on standardizing computer languages. When she finally retired from the Navy as a rear admiral at age 79, she was the oldest serving member of the U.S. armed forces.
- In 1969, the Data Processing Management Association named Hopper its “Man of the Year.” Curiously, it was the inaugural “Man of the Year” Award.
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Photo: Ralf Liebhold / Shutterstock
