
Grace "Granny COBOL" Hopper
"She is a true Marine, but if we dig deeper, we will find a pirate."
Grace Hopper ( Grace Hopper ) - American scientist and Rear Admiral of the US Navy. Harvard computer programmer Mark I.

Having built a successful career in mathematics at Yale (defending a doctorate and becoming a professor), Grace Hopper in 1943 (37 years old) volunteered for the Navy.
But she had a shortage of 6 kg, so I had to sit "at the keyboard" Harvard Mark 1.

In 1949, Hopper became an employee of Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation and, as a senior mathematician, joined the UNIVAC I development team.
In the early 1950s, the company passed into the hands of Remington Rand Corporation, and then their team released the first ever compiler . It was known as “A Compiler” , and its first version was A-0 .
“They could not believe it,” she said. “I had a working compiler, and no one used it. I was told that a computer can only perform arithmetic operations. ”
In 1954, Grace became the head of the department of automation and programming, and her department released some of the first compilers, including ARITH-MATIC, MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC.
In the spring of 1959, the COBOL language was standardized at the Conference on Data Processing System Languages (CODASYL).
The new language was an extension of the hopper FLOW-MATIC and contained some ideas of COMTRAN, a similar language from IBM.
Hopper's idea was concluded in this language that programs are better written in a language that is closer to English than in a language that is closer to machine code .

From 1967 to 1977, Grace led the Navy Programming Languages Group (Navy's Office of Information Systems Planning) and received the rank of captain in 1973. She developed software for COBOL and its compiler, which was part of the COBOL standardization program.
In the 1970s Hopper convinced the Department of Defense to replace large centralized systems with a network of small computers located in different places. Any user of any computer node could get access to databases stored on the network.

She first applied standardization to testing computer systems and components, and most importantly, to early programming languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL.
In 1946, at Harvard, working on the Mark 2 and Mark 3 computers, trying to figure out the causes of the error, a moth was found in the relay. The insect was neatly removed and pasted with tape into a log with logs.

"First actual case of bug being found"
Hopper is famous for its visual aid "nanoseconds." People (for example, generals and admirals) often asked her why satellite communications took so long. For clarity, Grace began to give them pieces of cord 30 centimeters long, since that is how much light passes in one nanosecond. Grace gave the metonym “nanoseconds” to these segments. Hopper clarified for the audience that this is the maximum distance that light travels in a vacuum without interference, and that the signals travel longer through real cables, which served as her guide.
She later used the same metaphor to illustrate why computers should be small in order to be faster. At many of her lectures and visits, she gave out “nanoseconds” to the audience, complementing the presentation with a 300-meter-long cable bundle, indicating a microsecond. While lecturing for DEC, she handed out packets of pepper, which she called "picoseconds."
The ship USS Hopper (DDG-70) was named after her :

And the Cray XE6 supercomputer :

Google Doodle on the 107th anniversary:

The first woman to receive the rank of Rear Admiral of the Fleet and the Defense Distinguished Service Medal (the highest award for non-military service).

About Grace Hopper made a documentary for 15 minutes , look at the performances of this woman in front of the audience, the audience is often filled with laughter from her stories. Trailer:

Full version here .
Grace Hopper's long lecture on satellite communications
Together with Edison, we continue the spring publication marathon.
I will try to get to the bottom of the source of IT-technologies, to understand how they thought and what concepts were in the minds of the pioneers, what they dreamed about, how they saw the world of the future. Why did they think about “computer”, “network”, “hypertext”, “intelligence amplifiers”, “collective problem solving system”, what meaning they put into these concepts, what tools they wanted to achieve the result.
I hope that these materials will serve as inspiration for those who are wondering how to go “from Scratch to Unit” (to create something that was not even mentioned before). I want IT and "programming" to cease to be just "coding for the sake of dough," and recall that they were conceived as a lever to changemethods of warfare, education, a way of joint activity, thinking and communication, as an attempt to solve world problems and respond to the challenges facing humanity. Something like this.
March 0 Seymour Peypert
March 1. Xerox Alto
March 2 "Call Jake." The story of the NIC and RFC
March 3 Grace “Granny COBOL” Hopper
March 4 Margaret Hamilton: “Guys, I'll send you to the moon”
March 5 Hedi Lamarr. And to shoot a movie in a naked movie and to shoot a torpedo at an enemy
on March 7 The magnificent six: girls who counted a thermonuclear explosion
on March 8 "Video games, I am your father!"

- As a child, I dismantled 7 alarms to understand how everything works.
- Fought for the idea of a machine-independent programming language.
- Developed the first compiler.
- She had a hand in spreading the debugging meme (catching a real bug from Mark 2).
- She could explain to the smart military what the “nanosecond” and “picosecond” are. On fingers.
- The USS Hopper destroyer (DDG-70) was named after her .
- And the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer.
- And in her honor, the personal prize of the Association of Computing Engineering ( ACM ) is awarded to a young (up to 35 years old) specialist who has made a significant contribution to the field of computing.
Having built a successful career in mathematics at Yale (defending a doctorate and becoming a professor), Grace Hopper in 1943 (37 years old) volunteered for the Navy.
But she had a shortage of 6 kg, so I had to sit "at the keyboard" Harvard Mark 1.

Compiler

In the early 1950s, the company passed into the hands of Remington Rand Corporation, and then their team released the first ever compiler . It was known as “A Compiler” , and its first version was A-0 .
“They could not believe it,” she said. “I had a working compiler, and no one used it. I was told that a computer can only perform arithmetic operations. ”
In 1954, Grace became the head of the department of automation and programming, and her department released some of the first compilers, including ARITH-MATIC, MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC.
COBOL
In the spring of 1959, the COBOL language was standardized at the Conference on Data Processing System Languages (CODASYL).
The new language was an extension of the hopper FLOW-MATIC and contained some ideas of COMTRAN, a similar language from IBM.
Hopper's idea was concluded in this language that programs are better written in a language that is closer to English than in a language that is closer to machine code .

From 1967 to 1977, Grace led the Navy Programming Languages Group (Navy's Office of Information Systems Planning) and received the rank of captain in 1973. She developed software for COBOL and its compiler, which was part of the COBOL standardization program.
In the 1970s Hopper convinced the Department of Defense to replace large centralized systems with a network of small computers located in different places. Any user of any computer node could get access to databases stored on the network.

She first applied standardization to testing computer systems and components, and most importantly, to early programming languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL.
Bug
In 1946, at Harvard, working on the Mark 2 and Mark 3 computers, trying to figure out the causes of the error, a moth was found in the relay. The insect was neatly removed and pasted with tape into a log with logs.

"First actual case of bug being found"
Nano and picoseconds
Hopper is famous for its visual aid "nanoseconds." People (for example, generals and admirals) often asked her why satellite communications took so long. For clarity, Grace began to give them pieces of cord 30 centimeters long, since that is how much light passes in one nanosecond. Grace gave the metonym “nanoseconds” to these segments. Hopper clarified for the audience that this is the maximum distance that light travels in a vacuum without interference, and that the signals travel longer through real cables, which served as her guide.
She later used the same metaphor to illustrate why computers should be small in order to be faster. At many of her lectures and visits, she gave out “nanoseconds” to the audience, complementing the presentation with a 300-meter-long cable bundle, indicating a microsecond. While lecturing for DEC, she handed out packets of pepper, which she called "picoseconds."
Confession
The ship USS Hopper (DDG-70) was named after her :

And the Cray XE6 supercomputer :

Google Doodle on the 107th anniversary:

The first woman to receive the rank of Rear Admiral of the Fleet and the Defense Distinguished Service Medal (the highest award for non-military service).

The queen of code
About Grace Hopper made a documentary for 15 minutes , look at the performances of this woman in front of the audience, the audience is often filled with laughter from her stories. Trailer:

Full version here .
Grace Hopper's long lecture on satellite communications
Together with Edison, we continue the spring publication marathon.
I will try to get to the bottom of the source of IT-technologies, to understand how they thought and what concepts were in the minds of the pioneers, what they dreamed about, how they saw the world of the future. Why did they think about “computer”, “network”, “hypertext”, “intelligence amplifiers”, “collective problem solving system”, what meaning they put into these concepts, what tools they wanted to achieve the result.
I hope that these materials will serve as inspiration for those who are wondering how to go “from Scratch to Unit” (to create something that was not even mentioned before). I want IT and "programming" to cease to be just "coding for the sake of dough," and recall that they were conceived as a lever to change
March 0 Seymour Peypert
March 1. Xerox Alto
March 2 "Call Jake." The story of the NIC and RFC
March 3 Grace “Granny COBOL” Hopper
March 4 Margaret Hamilton: “Guys, I'll send you to the moon”
March 5 Hedi Lamarr. And to shoot a movie in a naked movie and to shoot a torpedo at an enemy
on March 7 The magnificent six: girls who counted a thermonuclear explosion
on March 8 "Video games, I am your father!"