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

 

 

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Pantages:  

It’s true – some will talk in acronyms and some will tell you what they are talking 

about.  

Hopper:  

That’s right. So there had to be two kinds of compilers. One was for the symbol-

oriented people, which turned out to be the mathematicians and engineers and all those people. 

The others turned out to be “the other kind of people” and you had to give them both the ability 

to use computers. I always wanted to let people use computers, which I think is such a nice step 

forward. 

Pantages:  

Somebody mentioned that there was a point at which you hit a wall, which is one 

of the reasons you moved on to the research group at the University of Pennsylvania. Is that 

true, you had a disagreement and moved out of line management? 

Hopper:  

No, it was more the fact that I recognized and they recognized that I did not want 

to go up in line management. It was management of research and development that I wanted. I 

did not want to go up in company line management. I didn’t feel I was qualified for it, and it 

wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted keep on playing with machines. 

Pantages:  

Okay, so it was time for the programming group to start becoming more 

complex… 

Hopper:  

And it was time to pull out the research and development of the programming 

group. And concentrate it. Pull that away from the line development of the software that went 

with the computer. 

COBOL and CODASYL 

Pantages:  

What were you working on at that point that you felt needed that kind of 

concentration, the three or four earmarked developments? 

Hopper:  

The real development of what COBOL is today. The very first COBOL was pretty 

naïve when you think about it. And the first COBOL, the early COBOL’s, were built for the 

dedicated computer, where there was no such thing as interrelationship with an operating 

system or anything else. Each program was a unit in itself and it ran all by itself. And we began 

to come up to the point of the interactions, and the direct access and all those things that were 

beginning to appear. And the compilers were going to have to change. 

Pantages:  

Where are we now, at post COBOL 60? 

Hopper:  

This is where we step forward into the real COBOL we have today: where you 

have things interacting, things happening simultaneously. And we began to think about systems 

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and computers and communications between them. This is where communications really comes 

in, where they aren’t just on an access, asking a question, but beginning to really interact.  

Pantages:  

Is this what you took your group off to do? 

Hopper:  

Yes, we were beginning to look toward the future. People were beginning to have 

three UNIVAC IIs instead of just one. The whole thing was no longer monolithic.  

Pantages:  

Univac was of course one of the real pioneers… 

Hopper:  

Has been all the way along the line, which people have forgotten 

Pantages:  

…but in real-time and on-line programming. 

Hopper:  

And that influence was coming in from the Navy on account of the nuclear 

submarines… where you had three computers operating simultaneously and they had to 

compare. That influence is beginning to penetrate, and of course, there again I was getting the 

feed-in on my training duty, and that reinforced the idea of multiple computers. 

Pantages:  

What was your role in this? 

Hopper:  

As far as the Navy was concerned I was a listener.  What would it do in business. 

I was listening to everything under the sun, from every direction at all times and reading 

everything I could get my hands on. And then trying to see how I could put them together and 

use them in the business environment.  Being alone I spent a lot more time reading than most 

people did. So these things were coming at me from all directions and I was trying to figure out 

how to use them. 

Pantages:  

Howard Bromberg said he complained to you about that. He said you would ride 

home together in the evening and you would talk about a problem that needed solution. And 

you’d discuss it a bit. He said, “I’d go home and read a newspaper. And I’d pick Hopper up in 

the morning and at 8 o’clock she would have the problem solved. I told her she was taking our 

problem-solving fun away from us.” 

Hopper:  

Again it was a constant reading in all areas. People sort of stayed in separate 

boxes, but if you combined the boxes, you had the answer. I didn’t invent the answer. It was 

being aware of everything that was going on and combining the pieces.  

Pantages:  

In parallel – at the same time this was going on, CODASYL – it started a few 

years earlier, right? And you were involved in that. 

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Hopper:  

Yes, it started in 1958. But the leadership of that was Cunningham. And Jack 

Jones and Al Ash, the Air Force. 

Pantages:  

That goes back to the development of COBOL itself, right?  

Hopper:  

That’s right. 

Pantages:  

Your role was to implement the specs they came up with. 

Hopper:  

We’d written FLOW-MATIC before that, and if you take the FLOW-MATIC 

manual and compare it with COBOL 60 you’ll find COBOL 60 is 95% FLOW-MATIC. So the 

influence of Commercial Translator in fact was extremely small. But I figured the thing to do was 

corral those people and when we had something to say, we’d say it was a compound of FLOW-

MATIC and Commercial Translator and keep the other people happy and wouldn’t try to knock 

us out. We’d give them some credit and they’d have to get on board with us. But if you compare 

the two manuals you’d find that it had hardly any influence at all. But if you gave them credit for 

it, why they’d go right along with you. If you didn’t, they’d fight you. You can always give credit, 

you can always afford to. 

That again is the practical. Think about the other guy and his position and his interest. You are 

always trying to work with people rather than against them. You’ve got a new idea; give the 

boss credit for it. It doesn’t cost you anything. 

Pantages:  

COMTRAN was an IBM development wasn’t it? That’s what they wanted rather 

than COBOL. So that’s the way you got around them. 

Hopper: 

Yeah, give them credit for it. Meld it into COBOL. Bob Bemer went along with it. 

He was the original representative to CODASYL for IBM. He’d gone back as head of the 

scientific engineering FORTRAN group and Bob Bemer was the one doing the data processing 

side and he and I were originally technical advisors to the CODASYL committee.  

Pantages: 

Are you still an advisor? 

Hopper:  

No, they decided that was giving too much favoritism to Univac and IBM.  

Eventually I was actually a member… after I stopped working for Univac and became a user. 

I’m on the executive committee. I was the Univac representative on the COBOL committee, until 

I found that I was fighting for my ideas instead of looking at the whole picture and decided they 

better put someone else on. You can get too wrapped up in your own ideas. 

Pantages:  

People have said those two things about you – not that you get wrapped up in 

your own ideas, but you are very strong for your own ideas. “The problem with Hopper was that 

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