This blog will focus on Grace Hopper, a computer science visionary. When hearing about famous women in computer science, Grace Hopper is definitely a name that has come up, so I was intrigued to learn about her contributions to Allied efforts in World War II. In 1943, when the US entered the war, she joined the Navy and was eventually assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard. The group she joined worked on one of the first computers, MARK I, which was used to calculate rocket trajectories and other calculations for war efforts. Even after the war, she programmed on the MARK II and MARK III.
Side Note: I decided to look up the manual that Grace Hopper wrote for the MARK I. The title of the manual is “A Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator” since the MARK I was essentially a calculator. Even if you only read the intro, it’s interesting how they wrote about the history of the calculator and what led to the MARK I. Below is a picture included in the manual of the Front View of the MARK I.
If you want to read it, here’s the link to the manual: Harvard IBM Mark I - Manual | The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments
After leaving Harvard, she worked for the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation where she worked on the UNIVAC I and II (Universal Automatic Computer). Through her work on the UNIVAC, she created the idea of automatic programming and created the first compiler, A-0. Compilers translate code from human readable to machine readable code, meaning that the programmer doesn’t have to write their code solely in machine readable languages. This led to her idea of creating word-based programming languages.
In the 50s, programming languages were all symbol based and Hopper pioneered the idea of word-based programming languages. Word-based languages are easier for people to understand and allow for people without engineering or math degrees to understand the language and contribute. She and her team created FLOW-MATIC which was the first programming language to use words instead of symbols. Later she contributed heavily to a language called COBOL (common-business oriented language) which was a programming language that could be used across industries and sectors. The idea for COBOL was for anyone to be able to use it across education backgrounds and industries, and in the 1970s, it was the most widely used programming language.
Her legacy extends to not just programming languages, but also to encouraging women to pursue a career in computer science. Anita Borg, an advocate for women in computer science, created the Grace Hopper Celebration which is a conference designed to showcase the work that women have done that year in CS and to connect women to companies to further their career.
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