Microsoft Word Hopper Grace oral history. 1980. 102702026. final doc

 

 

CHM Ref: 

X5142.2009

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Pantages'>Back to 1949-1964:  John Mauchly and the Univac Years 

Pantages:  

Let’s go on to your years with Eckert and Mauchly. You chose to go there 

because of John Mauchly. 

Hopper:  

Well, he was the one that hired me. The other reason was that there were two 

companies that were going to have working machines that year. One was Engineering 

Research Associates (ERA) in St. Paul and the other was Eckert and Mauchly in Philadelphia 

(Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation). And I liked the idea of Philadelphia better than St. 

Paul.  And out in St. Paul was my good friend Howard Engstrom, who was one of my professors 

at Yale.  He was president of ERA then. 

So there was a strong tug either way. Of course it ended up eventually that Remington Rand –

Jim Rand – bought ERA. 

Pantages:  

Was Engstrom still there when they bought it? 

Hopper:  

No, he had died by then, or just after that. See, ERA was the old Naval 

Communications Annex, which built the relay computers that did the coding and decoding 

during the war. And that’s why the Navy helped them find some money to support it and start a 

company. And Engstrom had been the captain of the Naval Communications Annex, and 

William Norris was the commander and executive officer.  And of all of those young officers, 

eventually Robert McDonald* became president of Univac. 

[A few years after the Sperry/Remington Rand merger (1955), Jay Frank Forrester, a top Sperry 

executive, succeeded William Norris as the president of the Univac division. Robert McDonald 

succeeded Forrester when he became president of Sperry Rand in the late 1960s.] 

Pantages:  

Was McDonald out of that group too? 

Hopper: 

Yes. They are all still at Univac. 

Pantages: 

An illustrious group. 

Univac – Navy Men and “Bright Young Women” 

Hopper:  

But having everything classified, most people never knew them. And of course 

when Sperry took over, Frank Forrester was a Naval academy graduate. So there’s always 

been a tinge of Navy all through Univac. What happened was you had the original Navy group, 

and then, if you had two people in front of you with equal ability and one’s Navy and one’s not, 

you’d hire the Navy man. 

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CHM Ref: 

X5142.2009

                    © 1980 Computer History Museum                           Page 

27

 of 54

 

 

 

 

Hopper:  

See Mauchly had been building his team for ENIAC during the war. The bright 

young men were all in uniform and were in France or the Pacific. And he started hiring bright 

young women. I’d say close to half of the people that worked on all the beginning work on 

programming and the non-hardware side of ENIAC were women. And his right hand assistant in 

building the C-10 code was Betty Holberton. And he encouraged her to write that first 

sort/merge generator, which was the first time anybody used the computer to write a program. 

And part of it was necessity. The young men weren’t available.  And the bright young women 

were.  

But he never changed, even after we were bought by Remington and Sperry. The attitude at 

Univac has always been different from the other companies. They’ve always been there.  

He started what’s still a Univac custom – every spring there was a course in programming which 

is open to anyone in the company. That’s how so many secretaries got to be programmers 

before we were through.  

Pantages:  

That must have been unique at that time. Someone else said that to me, Bill 

Crowell, that you pushed the hiring of business people for programming for business 

applications.  

Hopper:  

They were the guys who knew the problem. You didn’t want engineers trying to 

do banking and insurance. They didn’t have the vocabulary even. 

Pantages:  

That’s only common sense. They are still talking about, “We’ve got to start hiring 

people who know the field.” 

Hopper: 

You’re right back again to common sense.  A gal who was a good secretary was 

bound to become a programmer, meticulous, careful about getting things right. Step-by-step 

attitude. The things that made them good secretaries were the very things that made them good 

programmers. 

Plus I think that it’s always been true that women were more willing to finish the job. They’ll stay 

with it; tie up all the loose ends. If they make a dress they put the snappers and button holes in. 

Whereas men, once they’ve solved the problem to their satisfaction, want to go on to the next 

problem instead of tying up all the loose ends. So you usually get better documentation from 

women. You can’t make that the final generalization, but I think it’s pretty much true. They are 

more willing to complete it and tie it up in a neat little bow at the end.  

Then I always said that the concept of getting the data all together so you could operate on it 

was the same thing as getting a dinner ready. You had to get all the parts together and have it 

finished at one time. 

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