Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977
10
Grace Murray Hopper Interview, July 5, 1972, Archives Center, National Museum of American History
TROPP:
I went through that same period and I know what you are talking about in terms of that
kind of dedication. But in terms of your actual operating time at the Laboratory at
Harvard, was the time pressure and the press to solve problems so great that there wasn't
time for exchange of ideas and sort of a corridor kind of …(voice fades out).
HOPPER:
We didn't worry about the future at all. We didn't worry about mathematics except that it
solved a particular problem.
Remember if we had a problem running we were in there twenty four hours a day, the
number of days it was running. I can remember leaving there in '44 for instance. We had
been there three days and three nights and there was a hurricane on. Three of us went
home by holding hands. (Brendle?) and I and another girl, all three were Waves, we held
hands and one would hold on to the lamp post or a tree while the other two would string
out and get to the next one and hang on and we made our way up by laughing from tree to
post because we had been there for three days we were going out even in a hurricane, we
were going to get home and get washed.
But there was no theorizing, there was no higher mathematics. There was no future of
computers, there was nothing but get those problems going, and what the computer was
doing. The future in a sense, didn't exist.
TROPP:
Well if the War hadn't been won of course there was no future.
That was part of the same
time press.
HOPPER:
I stayed on three years after the War you see. I stayed there from '46 to '49 in the heart of
the contract. I worked on the Mark III.
LUEBBERT:
You weren't in the Navy then?
HOPPER:
I got out in '46.
LUEBBERT:
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Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977
11
Grace Murray Hopper Interview, July 5, 1972, Archives Center, National Museum of American History
You got out in '46?
HOPPER:
August of '46. I stayed on until June of '49. Then I joined UNIVAC.
LUEBBERT:
Were you a member of any of the conferences that were going on? There was the one at
MIT on the differential analyzer. The one at Harvard.
HOPPER:
That one I edited the book for.
TROPP:
The '36?
HOPPER:
I edited that.
LUEBBERT:
And Aiken seems to have gone to one about every three months until '49.
HOPPER:
The rest of us didn't go.
TROPP:
How about communication with similar work that might have been going on near you,
say at MIT? Was there much contact?
HOPPER:
There wasn't. Except some of the MIT from Radiation Lab people came up to see us. We
didn't go down there.
What's his name, you know.
TROPP:
For additional information, contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or archivescenter@si.edu
Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977
12
Grace Murray Hopper Interview, July 5, 1972, Archives Center, National Museum of American History
Gordon Brown?
HOPPER:
No. The famous guy…
TROPP:
Oh, Forrester?
HOPPER:
No, the…
TROPP:
Oh, I'm sorry, Robert Weiner?
HOPPER:
Robert Weiner used to come over in intervals and he and Aiken would scrap
( ?).
TROPP:
I wonder, the kinds of things that Weiner was interested in?
HOPPER:
Robert Weiner was very busy claiming he had all the ideas first which of course Aiken
( ?). (LAUGHTER).
TROPP:
Everybody apparently…
HOPPER:
Every seminar Weiner would go to sleep in the front row.
TROPP:
That was, I've even heard stories of Weiner not only sleeping
in the front row but he was
snoring so loud he almost drowned out the speaker. (LAUGHTER). Then asking the …
For additional information, contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or archivescenter@si.edu
Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977
13
Grace Murray Hopper Interview, July 5, 1972, Archives Center, National Museum of American History
HOPPER:
( ?). I thought he was obnoxious.
TROPP:
Well would you, as I look through some of the material, it's difficult to find out any role
that Robert Weiner played in any of the development?
HOPPER:
He didn't. He claimed he did though.
TROPP:
What were some of the things that he and Aiken fought about other than priorities?
HOPPER:
He was a very good actor and a very good salesman and he collected everybody else’s
ideas and sold them, and then ( ?).
TROPP:
How about Von Neumann? Was he there when…
HOPPER:
Yes, he was there. Very, very seriously involved with ( ?) because that was the
first computer he had his hands on.
TROPP:
As I remember…
HOPPER:
He didn't get to ENIAC until a year after he got to Mark I.
TROPP:
There
was a problem, I think, that Bob Campbell showed me of his that was run on the
Mark I in early '44.
HOPPER:
For additional information, contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or archivescenter@si.edu