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

 

 

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Pantages:  

In terms of that thinking, are there specific projects ongoing within your group? 

Hopper:  

No not yet. Still thinking about how you can do it. And doing a little piece here 

and there.  

Pantages:   

Does the Center of Excellence have an opportunity for doing any work in that 

area or are they not staffed that way?  

Hopper:  

Do you mean down the group in Norfolk? They are doing lots of thinking in all 

different kinds of directions. They’re terrific. They’re a bunch of youngsters. They don’t know you 

can’t do anything. 

Pantages:  

Who’s running it? 

Hopper:  

Well, it reports back to Burdette. The guy down there in charge is Slater, who is 

in charge of building that micro. He’s the one who built the computer aboard ship that they put in 

Navy Times and then the admiral wrote him the letter and that’s how all that got started. The PR 

man for the ship took a picture of him and his computer and put it in Navy Times, and the 

admiral wrote and congratulated him, and he wrote a letter back to the admiral thanking him. 

But he went on for 10 pages single spaced and told the admiral what was wrong with the 

computers in the fleet. And he was absolute about what ought to be done about it, and he was 

absolutely right. And that’s when the Admiral got him transferred from the Pacific Fleet to 

Norfolk and we started the Center of Excellence with him. Admiral told him to build a computer 

for the fleet. So he did. But Burdette had a hand in that all the way. Once Slater wrote back to 

the Admiral, and Burdette said let’s get him.  

Pantages:  

You made some comments to me and Burdette also mentioned young people 

and you made quite a number of efforts at training, particularly down there. And he said you are 

not as gung ho about the ability to turn them all into geniuses, as you were at the outset. 

Hopper:  

I’ve always known you couldn’t turn them all into geniuses, but you could 

upgrade all of them and some would be geniuses. 

Pantages:  

What is your philosophy when it comes to training youths?  

Hopper: 

The tremendous advantage of youngsters is that they will try anything. They have 

no prestige to put on the line. It’s harder to get senior people to try something new. Because 

they have so much prestige on the line that if it fails you are losing. Youngsters have a 

tremendous edge there to try things for the first time. Their imaginations are more free. They 

haven’t been told so many times they “can’t do that.”  

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CHM Ref: 

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Now they are growing up in schools where they had calculators and computers. Our senior 

people unfortunately have had piles of paper on their desk, big reports they had to read, things 

they had to decide. By and large they’ve had very little time to keep up with what’s happening.  

Think of the vice president in charge of information processing, and look at what he gets on his 

desk every day. And how much time does he have to read and study and hear about the newest 

things in electronics? Or an admiral or general or president of a company? So you are bound to 

get new ideas from youngsters, and you try to make use of it. That’s true in any field. Some of 

them will continue to try new things, like George Baird and Dick Burdette, as long as they live.  

Pantages:  

And you. 

Hopper:  

Oh I think that’s the most fun. I’ve always promised that on 1 January 2000, I’m 

going to call everybody up and say, “See, you underestimated.” Which will be true. I think we 

consistently continually underestimate what we can do with computers if we really try.  

Pantages:  

Where do you think they are going to do the most constructive things in the 

future, and where will computers be, potentially, most destructive? 

Hopper:  

I’m hoping that the business and industrial and commercial companies all 

recognize what they can get out of their young people and give them a chance now and then. 

And you can see it happening because most of the new developments do promote economy 

and make more effective use of the computers. So I think it’ll come in industry where there is an 

actual dollar value in doing things like that.  

The ones that are building systems and computers today are not science and engineering 

people, but insurance companies and banks. So it will probably come from there.  

Don’t forget we have another generation coming that has grown up with computers; we can’t 

even guess what’s going to happen. There’s a whole attitude of mind that is different.  

Pantages:  

The only problem is that a lot of them can’t speak and a lot can’t spell. 

Hopper:  

We’ll have to teach them that then. At every college and university I speak, I get 

that every time, that they must learn to communicate. I tell it to the students, because if the 

students begin to get demanded, they’ll get it. I think somewhere in the 60s, we forgot that 

people had to learn to communicate. We went off into relevance and forgot that communication 

was relevant. And that writing plain English was relevant. We’ve got to get that back again.  

Pantages: 

As you have pointed out, that’s the death of new ideas – the inability to 

communicate them.  

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