COMPUTING YEARS
After the outbreak of World War II, Grace joined the Navy despite the disapproval of female cadets. She became a lieutenant and was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance's Computation Project at Harvard University in 1944, where she worked on the Mark I, II, and III, the first large-scale automatic calculators and precursors of electronic computers. She remained at Harvard as a civilian research fellow while maintaining her naval career as a reservist. After a moth infiltrated the circuits of Mark II, she coined the term "Bug" to refer to unexplained computer failures.
In 1949 Hopper joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp., where she designed an improved compiler, which translated a programmer's instructions into computer codes. Grace remained with the firm when it was taken over by Remington Rand in 1951 and by Sperry Rand Corp. in 1955. She began work on the UNIVAC I, the first commercial electronic computer, and helped develop the Flow-Matic programming language in 1957, and the Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL; 1959), that is still used today. Hopper is known as the Mother of COBOL.
Photo #: NH 96566-KN (Color)
The First "Computer Bug"
Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II
Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9
September 1945. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with
the entry: "First actual case of bug being found". They put out the word that
they had "debugged" the machine, thus introducing the term "debugging a
computer program". In 1988, the log, with the moth still taped by the entry,
was in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Computer Museum at Dahlgren,
Virginia.
Courtesy of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA., 1988.
U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.
Online Image: 94KB; 740 x 615 pixels (reduced)
from www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h96000/h96566k.jpg
documentation on www.history.navy.mil/photos/pers-us/uspers-h/g-hoppr.htm
