Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea

Grace Hopper's contributions to computing were very impressive - I knew that before reading this book because I was a COBOL programmer. Nonetheless, "Admiral of the Cyber Sea" provided a very informative and interesting biography of this lady. It was also interesting to learn of the signal achievements of her siblings - reminding me of President Eisenhower, one of many "stars" in his household. Born in 1906, Grace Hopper graduated from Vassar, and got a PhD in mathematics from Yale in 1933. She married in '43, and divorced 15 years later. During WWII she followed her grandfather (an admiral) and joined the Navy - WAVES division. At that time she wrote programs for the Mark I computer housed in Harvard - focus was on ballistic trajectories, and accomplished at the speed of 3 operations/second. The Mark I was an electro-mechanical giant - 50' long, 8' tall, and 8' deep, with 3 million wire connections and weighing about 5 tons, and only having 72 words of storage. The term "Bug" came about when the Mark II was stopped by a relay failure - a moth had been trapped inside one of the relays. The moth was fished out, and taped to the computer's log book. Hopper then went to work on compiler development, having foreseen their potential for drastically reducing programming efforts while reducing "bugs." Retired from the Navy Reserve in 1966 as a Commander. However, the Navy soon realized it needed Hopper's continue service, and brought her back. She was impatient with bureaucracy - and displayed it with a clock that ran backwards and a Jolly Roger flag on her desk. One might suspect that Hopper would be one wedded to the "big iron" computers of her day - however, she early on saw the potential and value of microcomputers, and for networking minis. Commodore Hopper received her new rank (equivalent to today's Rear Admiral) in 1983 at a White House ceremony attended by President Reagan. Retirement took place 12/86 on the deck of the U.S.S. Constitution - the Navy's oldest commissioned ship. The very next day civilian Hopper, twice retired from the Navy, reported for full-time work at DEC. Grace Hopper died in 1992 at the age of 80, having worked and given almost daily speeches cross-country until the prior Summer. Truly an inspirational achiever!

I had a chance to hear Grace Hopper speak in 1970's in the early days of my own computer career. She was impressive then, and, after reading this book, I'm even more impressed by her career and her accomplishments, which were underrepresented in the 'computing history' to which I had previously been exposed. Through interviews and delving into untold amount of original source material, Ms. Williams has found MANY fascinating tidbits about Grace and the environment in which she lived and worked. For example, Grace DIDN'T invent the term computer bug. However, the interesting facts are strung together in an oft times confusing narrative - it took me much longer to read than usual. And the index didn't mention her engaging physical representation of a nanosecond. A worthwhile book, nonetheless, for those interested in computing history, and/or women who made a difference in technology.

I was at a coctail party at a computer show when this lady in a white Navy uniform came it. It was Grace Hopper. Someone asked her for an autograph. Admirals don't need to carry pens around, so I promptly offered her mine. And after she signed one of her business cards for him, I said that I'd like one also, so she signed another. I still have it. This all came back to me as soon as I saw this book. I picked it up, I opened it to a page where it talks about her first reporting to Howard Aiken at Harvard to work on the Mark I computer. Aiken handed her a manual and told her to write a program. Almost exactly twenty years after she was given the manual, the Army did exactly the same to me - here's a manual, here's the equasion I want solved. Even in her advanced years at the time I met her, she was still one very bright lady. This was in the very early days of the PC, and she had a basic understanding that enabled her to predict many of the things that were going to happen while the rest of were stumbling around thinking about word processing. Grace Hopper was quite a lady, and that's reflected in this book. Between 1934 and 1937 hers was the only Ph.D. in mathematics awarded to a female. It was quite a life that she led, and that too is reflected in this book. Adm. Hopper lived in a time when women didn't need to be educated, they were just going to be housewives, and they certainly weren't going to be Navy Admirals. This book is a story of one remarkable woman, but more than that it's the story of computing and of our changing times.