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

 

 

CHM Ref: 

X5142.2009

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year after she married Vincent Foster Hopper, a doctor of comparative literature and instructor 

at New York University.  

Twelve years later, Dr. Hopper decided it was time to serve her country, and – as it turned out 

by chance – to begin her illustrious career in computing.  

1943-1949  

In December 1943, Dr. Grace Murray Hopper was sworn into the U.S. Navy Reserve, and, in 

1944, was commissioned Lieutenant (JG) and ordered to the Bureau of Ordinance Computation 

Laboratory at Harvard University. There she was assigned to program (actually to code) one of 

the first, if not the first, program-controlled computers ever built: the Navy’s electromechanical 

Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. The behemoth (55 feet long, 8 feet high) is known to 

the world as the Mark I computer. The chief designer and head of the project: Commander 

Howard H. Aiken.  

In 1946, released from active duty, Dr. Hopper joined the Harvard faculty as a research fellow in 

Engineering Sciences and Applied Physics at the Computation Laboratory to continue work with 

Aiken on the Mark II (a paper-tape sequenced calculator) and Mark III (an electronic computer 

with magnetic drum storage). 

1949-1964  

In 1949, her three-year fellowship at Harvard ending, she decided to join the Eckert-Mauchly 

Computer Corporation to help design and program UNIVAC I, the first commercial electronic 

computer. This pioneering company was sold to Remington Rand in 1950, which in 1955 

merged with Sperry Corp. to create Sperry Rand. 

In 1952, Dr. Hopper developed the first compiler, A-O, a mathematically oriented single-pass 

compiler. As Director of Automatic Programming Development for the Univac division of Sperry 

Rand, her A-O work subsequently led her and her staff to create an English-language compiler, 

B-O, known later as Flow-Matic, a precursor to COBOL. In 1959, Dr. Hopper and colleagues 

among users, educators, and vendors began their push for a common language for business 

applications and hence, greater compatibility among vendor systems. They organized 

CODASYL, the Conference on Data Systems Languages, which created COBOL and advanced 

its development over the years.  

In the 1950s, Dr. Hopper, impatient with the growing complexity of the all-purpose giant 

mainframes and huge operating systems, also began advocating the use of smaller computers 

and distributed computing.  

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CHM Ref: 

X5142.2009

                    © 1980 Computer History Museum                           Page 

5

 of 54

 

 

 

 

1964-1967. When her programming development group was disbanded at Univac, Dr. Hopper – 

not wanting to move up in line management – moved with a small staff to the University of 

Pennsylvania Moore School of Engineering. As she had done as a visiting lecturer and 

professor at Moore School over the Univac years, she taught Penn students and lectured 

around the country on the future of computing.  

1967-1986. While she retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of Commander in 1966, 

Commander Hopper was recalled to active duty in 1967 for a six-month assignment requested 

by Norman Ream, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy for Automatic Data 

Processing. Ream had the length of her assignment changed to “indefinitely” – this, because he 

wanted her to execute her proposal: the development of testing and validation procedures to 

enforce standards and hence, ensure portability. (At this point, vendors had so hampered 

portability among systems that conversion costs were exploding.) 

From 1967 to 1976, she served as director of Navy programming languages and language 

standards, and from 1976 to 1986 she was Special Advisor to the Commander of the Naval 

Data Automation Command, heading the Training and Technology Directorate. 

She was elevated to Captain in 1973, rare for Navy reservists, and a decade later, in 1983, she 

was promoted to Commodore. The ultimate Navy honor came in 1985, when she was promoted 

to Rear Admiral, an historical first for a woman. In 1986, Rear Admiral Hopper, the oldest 

serving officer, retired and was honored in a ceremony on the USS Constitution.  

1992. Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper left us January 1, 1992 and was laid to rest at 

Arlington National Cemetery. Her life, spanning almost nine decades, was filled with historic 

accomplishments, innumerable friends and colleagues, and more than 30 awards from the U.S. 

government and professional societies and educational institutions around the world. But, as her 

interview illustrates, she was just as – perhaps most – proud of working with the young, 

teaching them about the future of computing, and encouraging new ideas and how to 

communicate them. She was and is accurately dubbed by all, Amazing Grace.   

 

 

[This transcription begins with Grace Murray Hopper’s time at Harvard, working with then-Navy 

lieutenant Howard H. Aiken on the Mark I, II and III calculators. The tape, as transcribed, begins 

in mid-sentence.] 

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