ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRANDMA COBOL! By Sand in Our Shorts Administrators

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper

“Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow.” This proverb is often attributed to 14^th Century England. But I suspect the sentiment is of a much more ancient origin. And its message to never give up, regardless of how “small” you are, is universal.

Perhaps there’s no better example of this than Grace Hopper. Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 to January 1, 1992) was a computer pioneer and naval officer. She earned a master’s degree (1930) and a Ph.D. (1934) in mathematics from Yale. Hopper is best known for her trailblazing contributions to computer programming, software development, and the design and implementation of programming languages. A maverick and an innovator, she enjoyed long and influential careers in the U.S. Navy and the computer industry.

And she was stubborn as a mule, some might say, and determined to leave her mark on the United States Navy, whether that often-hidebound organization cared to acknowledge it or not.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into World War II, Hopper decided to join the war effort. She was initially rejected because of her age and diminutive size, but she persisted and eventually received a waiver to join the U.S. Naval Reserve (Women’s Reserve). In December 1943, she took a leave of absence from Vassar, where she was an associate professor, and completed sixty days of intensive training at the Midshipmen’s School for Women at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

After receiving her commission (lieutenant junior grade), Hopper was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University. There, she joined a team working on the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, better known as the MARK I. Hopper's work on the Harvard Mark I computer, an early electromechanical computer, led her to realize the need for a more user-friendly programming language. This insight drove her to develop the first compiler, known as A-0, which enabled programmers to write code using more human-readable language instead of machine code or assembly language.

The origin of the term "debugging" in computer programming is often attributed to Grace Hopper during her work on the Harvard Mark II computer in 1947. While troubleshooting a malfunction, Hopper and her team discovered a moth trapped in one of the computer's relays, causing the issue. After removing the moth, Hopper logged the incident in the computer's logbook, noting that they had "first actual case of a bug being found" and that they had "debugged" the computer.

In the late 1950s, Grace Hopper played a key role in the development of COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language), one of the first high-level programming languages designed for business applications. COBOL became widely adopted and is still in use today. Hopper's work in computer programming and her contributions to the development of compilers and COBOL have left a lasting impact on the field, earning her the nicknames "Amazing Grace" and "Grandma COBOL."

Throughout her career in the computer industry, Hopper remained a Navy reservist. In 1966, age restrictions forced her to retire from the Navy as a commander. She later called it “the saddest day of my life.” Just months later, however, she was recalled to active service to help standardize the Navy’s multiple computer languages and programs. She retired from UNIVAC, a division of Sperry Rand, in 1971.

An optimist as well as a visionary, Hopper celebrated the potential of computers. “I think we consistently…underestimate what we can do with computers if we really try,” she once said. In a 1983 interview on “60 Minutes,” host Morely Safer asked if the computer revolution was over. Hopper replied, “No, we’re only at the beginning…We’ve got the Model-T.” Until the end of her life, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper looked forward with confidence to new technologies and their problem-solving capabilities.

Hopper remained on active duty for nineteen years. She retired from the Navy as a rear admiral at the age of 79—the oldest serving officer in the U.S. armed forces. That same year she went to work as a senior consultant in public relations at the Digital Equipment Corporation, where she worked until her death in 1992. Hopper was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

So, as writers, just think where we'd be without Amazing Grace's contributions to computer science and, ultimately, the word processing programs we depend on today. 

(Sources: Biography of Grace Murray Hopper | Office of the President (yale.edu) and Grace Hopper (Computer Scientist and Admiral) - On This Day.)