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But it means changing people’s minds. It means upheavals in some organizations. The big
speed-up will come when the next generation of young people come who have grown up with
this stuff. We still have too many people at the tops of things in awe of their great big computer.
And they’ve been so busy that they haven’t had time to find out about the new stuff.
Pantages:
Changing people’s minds runs straight through your career. Everybody that I
talked to said you were very good at that. But you ran into some stumbling blocks.
Hopper:
You always run into some stumbling blocks. There are always people out there
who are screaming about the future, and they just live out there and yell about the future and try
to explain to people why it is to their advantage to do things differently. And it takes you a little
time to change people’s minds. You have to show them why it’s going to be to their advantage.
COBOL’s Ancestors and the Rise of Data Processing Programming
Pantages:
Going back to your time with Eckert and Mauchly and then Remington Rand –
Remington Rand wasn’t stodgy, but it was a company that wasn’t conscious of programming.
Hopper:
Well, Art Draper was and he was sent down from Remington Rand as the
manager in Philadelphia…of the Univac operation. And he listened.
Pantages:
What happened? At this point, you came in and you were working for Mauchly.
And then a couple of years later, Remington Rand came in. What happened during this?
Hopper:
They split the two groups, and Mauchly’s group went toward the mathematic
engineering side and my group went toward the data processing side.
Pantages:
When you went to work for Mauchly…
Hopper:
We were still doing mathematical scientific engineering problems. But it was the
influence of Betty Holberton’s sort/merge generator and the beginning of the swing toward the
data processing problem. The first one I did was on finding out how long extended insurance
would go on once someone stopped paying their premiums. In life insurance they still do that. In
most policies, they use the cash value to pay for extended insurance until that runs out. Then
there was a slow but sure swing toward data processing. And I found the data processing more
interesting. I had all the math and everything, but the data processing was more fun because it
had people in it, and because you had things like union contracts that made sense but were not
logical from a mathematical point of view.
Pantages:
What customers did you work with?
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Hopper:
One of the first ones we went to was Carborundum, putting in the computer.
Those were all started with UNIVAC I.
Pantages:
Earlier on, what was it like working with Mauchly? What kind of influence did he
have? What arguments did you have with him?
Hopper:
I don’t know as we ever really had any arguments about it.
Pantages:
The reason I said that was that you said you and Mauchly didn’t see eye to eye
about compiler development.
Hopper:
His group was heading in one direction and mine was heading in another. There
was competition there. But it wasn’t from Mauchly; it was the people working for him. People like
Tolly Holt.
Pantages:
What was Mauchly like in terms of the things you learned from him, exchanged
with him?
Hopper:
Oh Mauchly was always willing to try anything. If it sounds at all reasonable, try it.
So many people say “no” to begin with. He never did that. He always encouraged you to try
things. If you had a bright idea, try it. He let people try things, let them have computer time, and
time to do things. He encouraged innovation, the technical terminology I guess. He knew we
were in a new world. He had full recognition of that. And he never let personalities bother him.
He was nice to everybody, encouraged everybody, he was a good leader.
Pantages:
Were there concepts you picked up from him?
Hopper:
I don’t think of any.
Pantages:
Your group was the Automatic Programming Group.
Hopper:
I didn’t name it that. The sales department did. I didn’t feel it was automatic
programming because the individual still had to design it. It just made the computer do it, that’s
all. I always disliked that phrase. We still had to tell the compiler what to compile. It wasn’t
automatic. The way the sales department saw it was we had the computer writing the programs;
they thought it was automatic.
Pantages:
It was a glamorous concept.
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Hopper:
Typical of sales.
Pantages:
Now, you were a saleslady.
Hopper:
Only of ideas, though. I’ve always seen computers as a tool, as much as a
screwdriver or a lever or anything else
Pantages:
Someone told me that the way you got management to accept an idea was to go
out and get some users interested in it and they’d sell it for you.
Hopper:
I did that one once. US Steel, Westinghouse, Metropolitan Life thoroughly backed
the idea of English-language programs. We might not have done it if we hadn’t had them with
us.
Pantages:
What else was marketing management reticent to do, because they couldn’t
comprehend it?
Hopper:
I don’t think that it was so much they couldn’t comprehend it… because they had
been selling punch card equipment and typewriters for years. I think nobody knew what it was
going to be like to sell a computer. I don’t think anybody had any concept before we really got
started just how much it was going to take to write the software for any given job, and I don’t
think anyone fully realized how much the maintenance job was going to be. I don’t think the
whole impact of the computer was fully realized until after they got out there. And I don’t think
anybody realized – either in the companies, not just Univac, but IBM and all the rest of them –
what an impact computers would have on management of the company that started to use one.
And thought that through. So there were an awful lot of things to cope with. Because it not only
affected the people who ran the computer and wrote the programs, but it could ultimately affect
the structure of the company using the computer. I don’t think anyone was aware of that ahead
of time until they got out there. It had to happen before you learned to cope with them.
Pantages:
How did your thinking evolve in that time? The English-language compiler was a
natural demand from your standpoint.
Hopper:
I think I always recognized as soon as I started working with people and talking
with people that there were some people who were totally oriented and perfectly happy using
symbols, and there were other people who were not. That’s where English came from. You talk
to people in general and some of them will take abbreviations and symbols and manipulate
them like mad and others won’t at all. Some people get to be mathematicians and some get to
be managers, or something. There are two kinds of people, some symbol-oriented and some
not. Sounds simplistic but it’s really true.
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