WEBVTT - TechStuff Remembers Grace Hopper 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.280 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:15.920 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:19.800 I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:23.840 are you? So? Here in the United States, we are 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:28.360 observing Memorial Day today, and on this day, the United 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:32.520 States honors the memory of US military personnel who died 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:37.120 while serving. The subject of our episode today was in 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:40.640 the United States Military. She even rose to the rank 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:43.760 of Rear admiral in the United States Navy. However, she 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:47.159 did not die while in service. So I want to 0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:50.960 make clear that this episode does not dismiss the countless 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:53.519 people who have given their lives in service to the 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:57.280 United States Military, but rather to remember someone who made 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:04.319 enormous contributions to technology, particularly while a member of the 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:08.080 US military. And we also associate her with a story 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:11.320 that usually gets told incorrectly. In fact, I've been guilty 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:15.160 of telling it incorrectly myself in the past. The person 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:19.160 I'm talking about is, of course, Grace Hopper, who sometimes 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:26.880 gets the affectionate nickname Grandma Cooebol. Note I said cobol Cobol, 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:31.759 not cobold, as in the Nasty Little critters in Dungeons 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:36.400 and Dragons. Grace Hopper was born in nineteen oh six 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:40.680 in New York City to a well off family. Her father, 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:45.920 a Yale graduate, owned an insurance company, and she grew 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:49.480 up not wanting for anything really. She attended private schools 0:01:50.160 --> 0:01:54.840 and she matriculated at Vassar. She focused her studies on science, 0:01:55.000 --> 0:02:00.640 specifically in physics and in mathematics. She graduated Vassar in 0:02:00.720 --> 0:02:04.360 nineteen twenty eight, and then she followed in her father's footsteps. 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:08.920 She enrolled in Yale for graduate studies. In nineteen thirty, 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:13.000 she earned her master's degree in mathematics. She continued her 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:16.760 graduate studies and pursued a PhD. Around the same time, 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:20.400 she also accepted a job to teach mathematics at her 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:24.320 alma mater, Vasser. Her mentor during this time was a 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:28.280 fella named Howard Ingstrom. He was just four years older 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:33.240 than Hopper herself. So just a quick word about Ingstrom. 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:35.959 The story is not really about him, but we need 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:38.240 to at least get an idea of who he was, 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:42.160 and it is a bit important. While he was a mathematician, 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:46.880 his actual degrees were in chemical engineering, and then he 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:48.920 would go on to be one of the co creators 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:54.079 of the UNIVAC computer. Now, keep in mind at the 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:56.600 time we're at right now, with Grace Hopper's timeline, we're 0:02:56.600 --> 0:02:59.959 in the nineteen thirties. The concept of an electro mcanennic 0:03:00.320 --> 0:03:05.519 computer is really just starting to become coherent. Around this time. 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:08.600 There were people working on it, but these were very 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:12.639 very early days with the idea of an electro mechanical computer. Now, 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:18.280 there had been earlier examples of purely mechanical computational machines 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:23.560 like Babbage's difference engine, Babbage's analytical engine. Those were at 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:29.880 least concepts that were computational engines that used mechanical components 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:34.560 to calculate things. Considering where Happer's career would take her, 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:37.800 having a mentor who was an early contributor to computer 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:42.000 science and design is meaningful and they would have other 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:45.520 encounters in the future. But back to Hopper herself. She 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:49.400 had the opportunity to study with the German American mathematician 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:53.360 Richard Courrant, whose work in the field of applied mathematics 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:57.120 was renowned, and she earned her PhD from Yale in 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:00.160 nineteen thirty four, and she earned it in mathematics and 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:04.200 mathematical physics. So then we skip ahead a few years. 0:04:04.560 --> 0:04:09.480 On December seventh, nineteen forty one, Japanese forces bombed the 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:13.440 US base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The United States, 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.120 which had resisted entering into the conflict we would call 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:21.800 World War two, found itself drawn into the conflict, and 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:24.320 Hopper wanted to be part of the war effort, and 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:29.599 she applied to become enlisted in the Navy. However, the 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:33.520 Navy rejected her, partly because Grace Hopper was of a 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:38.960 petite build, diminutive in size some would describe her, and 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:43.080 also because at age thirty four at this time, the 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:48.440 Navy considered her to be too old to join the effort. Nevertheless, 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:52.400 she persisted, and Grace Hopper would end up joining the 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:57.599 US Naval Women's Reserve in nineteen forty three. So while 0:04:57.640 --> 0:05:00.919 she wasn't an active member of the Navy, she was 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:03.800 an active member of the Navy Reserves, and she received 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:07.680 an assignment to work on the Bureau of Ship's computation 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:12.040 project at Harvard University. There, she worked with a Harvard 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:16.640 graduate named Howard Aiken. When Aiken was a graduate student 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:21.080 at Harvard, he lamented that his doctoral thesis relied upon 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:27.400 complex calculations that were tedious to perform by hand, and so, 0:05:27.720 --> 0:05:30.960 like many innovators before him, he decided the best option 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:34.240 was to find people he could work with to invent 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:37.640 a device that could do those kinds of calculations automatically. 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:41.560 So he was able to work with a relatively young 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:46.800 company called International Business Machines better known today as just IBM, 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:50.640 and together they would be able to bring his wish 0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:54.880 into reality. So Iiken would kind of act as the 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:59.920 director or at least the guide officer, like he's guided 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:05.080 the development of this machine to perform these calculations automatically. 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:09.960 The result was a device called the Automatic Sequence Controlled 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:15.479 Calculator ASCC, but later and better known as just the 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:21.040 Harvard Mark one. So Hopper joined the Bureau of Ships 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:24.080 right around the time that the Mark one had been 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:29.280 shipped to Harvard from IBM. So the Mark one didn't 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:34.320 look anything like a modern computer does. It was an 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:39.480 electro mechanical device. It had moving parts like there were 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:44.160 shafts that would turn and gears that would turn, and 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:47.160 all sorts of stuff like it was. It was a 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:52.080 real machine, and it also had electrical parts right there 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:55.600 were electrical switches, there were various relays, and there were 0:06:55.800 --> 0:07:01.320 miles and miles of cables, something like hundred miles it was. 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:04.080 You know, I've seen different estimates, but yes, hundreds of 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:08.200 miles of cables connecting all these different components. The whole 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:13.280 thing collectively weighed more than four tons. If you were 0:07:13.400 --> 0:07:16.200 to look at the deal and get a tape measure out, 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:19.920 it was about fifty one feet long. It was eight 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:24.160 feet tall and then two feet deep, right, so like 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:26.520 you might want to think, it was like fifty one 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:30.240 feet wide, eight feet tall, and then two feet deep 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:34.200 something like that. That's a definitely not a desktop computer 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:39.360 unless you have a truly ginormous desk. This computer could 0:07:39.360 --> 0:07:43.040 store a few dozen numbers, and you could actually then 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:46.360 use those numbers for multiple calculations. So that was useful, right, right, 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:49.520 You didn't have to insert the same number every time 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:51.640 you wanted to do a different calculation. You could actually 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:55.240 store a number in this device. In fact, more than 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:57.240 seventy numbers at a time, and I think it was 0:07:57.280 --> 0:07:59.960 something like it was more than twenty decimal points or 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:04.080 decimal digits that you could store in this per number. 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:06.720 The length of time it would take to generate an 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:10.640 answer would depend upon the nature of the calculation, so 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:15.080 simple operations like addition or subtraction would take around a 0:08:15.200 --> 0:08:19.680 second for this machine to perform. More complex mathematical functions 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:24.320 could require a minute or more. But it was all automatic. 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:27.240 At least it was once you input all the data, 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:31.960 which you would do by using switches. Lots and lots 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:35.440 of switches. The Mark one had more than a thousand 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:39.560 switches in various switch banks, so you had to use 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:42.800 all these in order to input the data you wanted 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:46.960 to then operate upon. Now to tell the computer what 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:50.880 you wanted done to the input, remember inputs just one thing. 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:55.480 You also have to instruct the computer what operation to perform. Well. 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:58.040 To do that, you would use a program, and in 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:03.160 those days, a program consisted of you know, punch cards 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:06.400 in some cases, but in the case of the Mark one, 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:11.079 it was essentially paper tape that had holes punched into it, 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:14.040 and you would feed the tape through the computer and 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:17.600 those holes would allow for specific connections within the computer, 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:21.520 and in turn that served as instructions for the computer. 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:26.240 It would perform a specific operation depending upon which contacts 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:31.080 allowed to go through. So programming a computer meant physically 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:35.280 punching holes in cards or in tape, and Grace Hopper 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:39.200 would be one of the first three people to do this. 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:42.880 So she was one of the first three computer programmers 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:47.440 for the Harvard Mark one computer. Now she wasn't just 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:51.760 a programmer, She never was just a programmer. She was 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:54.880 also an instructor. Remember, she had come from a background 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:58.599 of teaching. She taught at Vassar before she joined the 0:09:58.679 --> 0:10:02.480 Navy Reserves. So it became her job to write a 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:05.000 user manual for the Mark one. The story goes that 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:08.520 I Can initially didn't want to give Hopper very much 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:13.280 responsibility because he mistakenly believed that due to the fact 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.400 she was a woman, she would be limited in that capacity. 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:19.960 And then Hopper proved him wrong, and so then he said, 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:21.960 all right, you know what, you know what you're doing, 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:25.880 write the instruction manual for the Mark one. Now, as 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:29.960 you might imagine, the complexity of the Mark one required 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:35.720 a pretty long instruction manual. From what I understand, the 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:40.959 manual had more than five hundred and fifty pages of instructions. Yikes. Now, 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:45.120 keep in mind again it's an electro mechanical system, really complicated. 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.400 Literally lots of moving parts, which means there's lots of 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:51.800 potential points of failure. So it makes sense that any 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:54.800 comprehensive manual would need to be long. But can you 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:59.360 imagine being put in charge of writing a comprehensive instruction 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:03.839 manual for such a complicated machine. She did it, and 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:06.959 she would work on various projects that would contribute either 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:10.560 directly or indirectly to the war effort. So the lab 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:16.040 she worked in, the calculations they were performing using this computer, 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:20.840 they were for all sorts of things, including things like numbers, 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:25.079 tables for stuff like rocket trajectories or specific types of artillery, 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:29.240 so that soldiers in the field would have a reference 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:31.800 and they would know what settings to use when they 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:35.440 were targeting enemies. Right like you know where the enemy is, 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:37.679 or you're told where the enemy is in relation to 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:40.439 where you are, you have to actually make the calculations 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:44.480 of how to position, say a piece of artillery, how 0:11:44.520 --> 0:11:47.920 to position the gun barrel, so that when you fire, 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:50.920 you're actually going to hit that target and not something else, 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:53.520 Right Like, you don't want to end up hitting a 0:11:53.559 --> 0:12:00.400 civilian building. You're aiming at a military unit or or 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:04.320 something like that. You need these tables so that you understand, 0:12:04.880 --> 0:12:10.240 based upon the equipment you're using and the firepower behind it, 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:12.200 that you are actually going to hit the thing you're 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:17.480 aiming at. That's the kind of calculations that Hopper's team 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:21.960 was working on, and some of the work that was 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:24.760 done with the Harvard Mark one would also end up 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:28.480 being used by the Manhattan Project that was the top 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:32.160 secret mission to develop the atomic bomb. They also would 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:38.080 depend upon calculations made by the Mark one. Now, at 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:41.920 the conclusion of World War Two, Hopper would choose to 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:45.640 stay with Harvard. She was given the opportunity to go 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:48.760 back to Vassar, but she decided she would stick with 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:52.760 Harvard and work on computer systems. We're going to take 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:54.640 a quick break, but when we come back, we'll talk 0:12:54.720 --> 0:13:08.959 more about the contributions Grace Hopper made to computing. Okay, 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:12.240 we're back. So, as I mentioned before the break, after 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:16.000 World War Two, Grace Hopper decided that she was going 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:19.640 to stay at Harvard, at least briefly. She would stay 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:25.160 there so she was an intrinsic part of the team 0:13:25.440 --> 0:13:28.880 that developed the Mark two, the successor of the Mark one, 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:34.000 so a more complicated and sophisticated computer. She also worked 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:37.560 on the design of the Mark III, which obviously followed 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:41.600 the Mark two, and at this point Harvard was still 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:44.880 receiving support from the US Navy, which had a vested 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:51.880 interest in having access to sophisticated computational machines. Around this time, 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:55.600 we get to a story that has been mangled quite 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:58.559 a bit in the past. In fact, even Yale's own 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:02.320 page about Grace appears to have a mistake in it, 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:06.719 because the Yale page says that this incident that we're 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:09.880 about to talk about happened in nineteen forty five, but 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:14.400 according to other sources that talk about the actual log 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:20.440 book that recounts this event, it happened on a specific 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:24.600 day two years later, on September ninth, nineteen forty seven. 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:27.800 So again, this is a story that has been told 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:31.320 and retold many times, and a lot of those retellings 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:37.720 are inaccurate, probably not intentionally inaccurate, but it just has happened, 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:41.280 And like I said, in the past, I've repeated some 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:45.200 of those inaccuracy. So I'm going to try to be 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:49.280 as careful as I can to recount what actually happened. 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:52.280 Keeping in mind that this story has been told so 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:55.640 many times that it's very possible that there is no 0:14:56.920 --> 0:15:00.600 one hundred percent accurate version of the story. But here's 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:04.520 how it goes. So the Mark two team at Harvard 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:09.760 were running into problems. The Mark two computer was producing 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:12.760 error after error, and it was doing so consistently. So 0:15:13.560 --> 0:15:17.400 there was something wrong and it didn't matter how many 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:20.040 times they ran the calculation through. They were getting the 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:23.960 same errors at the other side, which meant something somewhere 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:26.520 in the computer system was hanky. I mean, maybe a 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:30.920 connection was loose, maybe a wire had broken. Like there 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:33.360 was no way to know unless you cracked the sucker 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:36.560 open and really took a look. So that's what Hopper's 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:40.800 team did. They began to look through the Mark two 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:43.520 computer to see what was going on, where was this 0:15:43.600 --> 0:15:48.640 problem actually occurring. Then they found it. A moth had 0:15:48.680 --> 0:15:52.040 been trapped inside the Mark two computer and it got 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:56.920 zapped in a relay and thus it was blocking a signal. Right, 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:00.120 the relay could not relay signals because there was a 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:03.640 a dead moth in the way. So they removed the 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:08.520 x insect and they actually taped it into the log 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:10.760 book they were keeping where they were. You know, they 0:16:10.800 --> 0:16:13.200 would write down whenever they had errors you know, they 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:17.360 would log them so that they could work the errors out. 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:21.520 So they taped the dead moth into the logbook, and 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:26.360 they included the amusing note of quote first actual case 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:33.320 of bug being found end quote. So the shorthand for 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:37.840 this story is that Grace Hopper invented the term bug 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.240 when it comes to a problem that's in a computer 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:44.520 program or even in a computer system. But that's not 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:49.840 entirely accurate. So the term bug meaning something is going 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:53.880 wrong inside a mechanical or electrical system, something is creating errors. 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:57.840 That pre dates the nineteen forty seven incident. That was 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:02.720 a term that was already in use in various engineering circles. 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:07.000 And that makes sense, like it has to have already 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:10.360 existed or else that log entry doesn't make sense. Right, 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:14.240 The log entry was first actual case of a bug 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:18.720 being found, So that implies that the term bug was 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:22.119 already being used to describe errors. It's just that in 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:27.080 this particular case the bug was a literal bug. So 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:30.920 a lot of historical accounts now say Grace Hopper was 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:34.320 the first to apply the term bug to a problem 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:38.840 within a computer system, not just an electrical system or 0:17:39.359 --> 0:17:44.080 mechanical system, but a computer system itself, and effectively she 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:48.359 coined the phrase computer bug. That's possibly true. It's at 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:51.480 least more accurate than just saying she coined the phrase bug, 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:55.640 because that's not true. Also, we should mention that it's 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:59.560 really her team, Like to this day, there's a little 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:03.520 bit of co of who first made the joke about 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:07.000 it being a bug. She also gets the credit for 0:18:07.080 --> 0:18:11.199 the term debugging, and initially that makes sense because her 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:15.880 team literally had to debug a computer system by removing 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:20.240 the moth from the relay. However, the term debugging was 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:23.400 already being used in other circles as well. In fact, 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:26.760 it appears in a nineteen forty four letter that Jay 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:31.199 Robert Oppenheimer wrote to Ernest Lawrence, for example, that happened 0:18:31.240 --> 0:18:34.120 three years before the Great Moth incident in the mark 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:38.520 to computer, So debugging was already a thing too. You 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:40.959 could argue maybe she was the first to use debugging 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:44.600 in relation to a computer system. And maybe she was, 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:47.640 or at least her team was. Now, as far as 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:51.919 I can tell, Grace Hopper never claimed that she or 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:57.000 her team coined the term's computer bug or debugging, that 0:18:57.119 --> 0:19:01.320 this was something of a narrative that develop around her 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:04.240 but she was not responsible for it. She never made 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:07.719 those claims. Now, I think it might be because the 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:11.159 actual story of a real bug causing problems in a 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:14.919 computer is so amusing that folks want it to be 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:19.120 the origin story for the term itself, right, because it's 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:22.040 such a good story. Wouldn't that be awesome if that's 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:27.400 why we say computer bug? And it's still a great story, right, 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:31.680 it's fantastic, and it really did happen to Grace Hopper's team, 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:34.720 So not taking anything away from that, it's just that 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:39.159 it's not where we get those phrases. It's just an 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:44.120 amusing example of it being literal in this sense. Now, 0:19:44.160 --> 0:19:47.000 we're not done with Grace Hopper, not by a long shot, 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:51.159 because her contributions went far beyond a close encounter of 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:55.159 the moth kind. That's just the amusing story folks like 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:59.840 to tell that. It relates to Grace Hopper's contributions in 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:05.440 computer science. So Hopper faced professional challenges. Despite her impressive 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:08.600 work to both the war effort during World War Two 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:13.040 and to computer programming in general, the Navy denied her 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:18.080 a regular commission, so she decided to leave active service. 0:20:18.600 --> 0:20:23.160 She would remain a reservist until nineteen sixty six. More 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:25.199 on that when we get there, But she was no 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:28.800 longer an active service member of the US Navy at 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:32.520 this point. Not long after she stepped down from active 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:35.960 service with the Navy, she actually chose to leave Harvard 0:20:36.320 --> 0:20:40.560 as well because she had been denied tenure, and it 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:43.800 also became obvious to her that she was not going 0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:47.200 to get promoted there despite all the work she was doing. 0:20:47.640 --> 0:20:51.159 That she was just hitting a glass ceiling super hard 0:20:51.240 --> 0:20:54.880 and there was no real chance of her getting beyond it. 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:59.400 So rather than bang her head and or accept her 0:20:59.400 --> 0:21:03.879 fate and not get any further in her career, she 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:07.679 decided in nineteen forty nine, she left Harvard University and 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:12.040 she went to join a computer company, a fledgling computer 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:18.480 company called the Eckert Mauchlee Computer Corporation or EMCC. The 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:25.919 following year, a typewriter company called Remington Rand would acquire EMCC. 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:28.119 And this is where we're going to get into a 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:33.080 very complicated history of a very important computer system. All right. 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:38.920 So EMCC, or Eckert Mauchley Computer Corporation, had taken its 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:44.320 name from its two founders, Jay Presper Eckert and John Mouchley. Now, 0:21:44.359 --> 0:21:48.720 these two had built another early computer. This one was 0:21:48.760 --> 0:21:54.640 called the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer or ENIAC, at 0:21:54.640 --> 0:21:58.879 the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC was also an important computer, 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:01.680 or at least it was to be a important computer 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:05.680 during World War Two. The actual development and construction of 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:09.479 ENIAC took quite a long time, but ENIAC is one 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:14.200 of those famous early electrical computers or electronic computers, i 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:18.840 should say. Now. Following that achievement, the two men found 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:24.040 themselves at a fundamental disagreement with the University of Pennsylvania 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:27.679 over the matter of patent rights, and this led the 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:30.680 pair to leave the University of Pennsylvania and then go 0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:35.960 and found their own company. Thus, EMCC and EMCC designed 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:41.119 a new computer called the Binary Automatic Computer or BINAK, 0:22:41.200 --> 0:22:45.280 which is essentially just a footnote in history. There's very 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:48.560 little about BINAK out there. It's possible that the machine 0:22:48.600 --> 0:22:53.200 was literally never used for anything. However, it did arguably 0:22:53.280 --> 0:22:56.560 leave the Bureau of the Census to then seek out 0:22:56.680 --> 0:23:00.840 EMCC to create a new computer design, which the company 0:23:00.840 --> 0:23:05.280 would refer to as UNIVAC. And Grace Hopper would join 0:23:05.400 --> 0:23:09.800 EMCC around this time and would be important in the 0:23:09.840 --> 0:23:15.399 work and development of UNIVAC, specifically in programming for the UNIVAC. 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:19.440 But in the fall of nineteen forty nine, the primary 0:23:19.520 --> 0:23:24.240 financial backer for EMCC died in a plane crash. So 0:23:25.520 --> 0:23:32.119 once their financier essentially had died, EMCC was kind of 0:23:32.160 --> 0:23:36.879 in financial trouble. They weren't sure whether they could last 0:23:36.960 --> 0:23:41.040 long enough to build out the UNIVAC. That's when Remington 0:23:41.160 --> 0:23:44.960 Rand came along and acquired EMCC. Rimmington Rand was, really, 0:23:45.080 --> 0:23:49.640 like I said, a typewriter company. They made office typewriters, 0:23:49.680 --> 0:23:52.639 but they saw the opportunity to get into the computer 0:23:53.520 --> 0:23:58.400 world by purchasing EMCC. However, there's always a bigger fish, 0:23:58.920 --> 0:24:03.280 so things are about to get way more complicated. I'll 0:24:03.320 --> 0:24:05.960 explain what I mean by that after we come back 0:24:06.119 --> 0:24:19.000 from this quick break. All right, we're up to nineteen 0:24:19.119 --> 0:24:22.479 fifty one. Grace Hopper has been part of EMCC and 0:24:22.480 --> 0:24:26.840 then Remington Rand, which purchased EMCC for a few years, 0:24:27.160 --> 0:24:30.320 and that's when the company completed work on the first 0:24:30.600 --> 0:24:34.880 UNIVAC computer. It would eventually be known as the UNIVAC one, 0:24:35.160 --> 0:24:37.639 but at the time they just called it the Univac. 0:24:38.640 --> 0:24:41.200 Kind of like how in World War One. People referred 0:24:41.200 --> 0:24:43.280 to it as the Great War because if they had 0:24:43.320 --> 0:24:45.639 started calling it World War One while they were fighting it, 0:24:45.960 --> 0:24:50.040 that would have been, you know, very pessimistic. Calling Univac 0:24:50.119 --> 0:24:53.280 the UNIVAC one would have been very optimistic. So they 0:24:53.280 --> 0:24:56.119 built the UNIVAC, and unlike other computers, this was not 0:24:56.200 --> 0:24:58.080 a computer that was just meant to be a one 0:24:58.160 --> 0:25:03.280 and done like. They made multiple UNIVAC one computer systems. 0:25:03.520 --> 0:25:06.320 The first one went to the United States Census Bureau 0:25:06.480 --> 0:25:09.160 because that's kind of where all this work got started, 0:25:09.640 --> 0:25:14.959 but the company made other ones for other clients, including CBS. Famously, 0:25:15.480 --> 0:25:19.440 CBS would use the UNIVAC one to predict the outcome 0:25:19.520 --> 0:25:23.479 of the nineteen fifty two presidential election, but when they 0:25:23.520 --> 0:25:26.680 got the results, they didn't trust it because the Univac 0:25:27.119 --> 0:25:31.080 had said that Eisenhower was going to win handily, that 0:25:31.119 --> 0:25:34.120 it was going to be a landslide victory for Eisenhower, 0:25:34.400 --> 0:25:37.760 but the conventional wisdom at the time was that this 0:25:37.960 --> 0:25:41.800 was going to be a much closer presidential race. However, 0:25:42.200 --> 0:25:46.600 it would ultimately turn out that the UNIVAC prediction was right, like, 0:25:47.040 --> 0:25:50.760 not exactly right. They didn't get to the very you know, 0:25:50.840 --> 0:25:53.879 the very voter or anything like that. But it was 0:25:54.000 --> 0:25:56.280 way more correct than the guests that it was going 0:25:56.320 --> 0:25:59.399 to be a tight race. And that ended up really 0:25:59.440 --> 0:26:04.280 elevating univacs prestige because once CBS said, Okay, well it 0:26:04.280 --> 0:26:08.080 turns out our computer predicted a landslide. We just didn't 0:26:08.080 --> 0:26:10.040 believe it. But it turns out the computer was right. 0:26:10.160 --> 0:26:14.840 That's amazing press for your computer system. Right. So, Rimington 0:26:14.920 --> 0:26:19.080 Rand slash EMCC would continue to develop the UNIVAC platform, 0:26:19.640 --> 0:26:24.640 and then Rimington Rand made another acquisition. It acquired a 0:26:25.000 --> 0:26:30.520 competing computer company called Engineering Research Associates or ER. So 0:26:30.680 --> 0:26:34.560 Rand acquired ER in nineteen fifty two. Now, one of 0:26:35.040 --> 0:26:41.680 era's founders was Hopper's old mathematics mentor, Howard Ingstrom. Rand 0:26:41.800 --> 0:26:47.080 effectively ran EMCC and ERA as separate entities. Right, so, 0:26:47.440 --> 0:26:52.040 while both companies were under the corporate umbrella of Remington Rand, 0:26:52.800 --> 0:26:56.320 they still were kind of competing against each other. They 0:26:56.320 --> 0:27:00.639 were making different computer designs. That, however, would change in 0:27:00.720 --> 0:27:04.159 nineteen fifty five. I told you this gets complicated. So 0:27:04.200 --> 0:27:08.240 in nineteen fifty five, Rand merged with another company called 0:27:08.320 --> 0:27:12.920 Sperry spe r r Y, and then the new company 0:27:13.000 --> 0:27:17.480 was known as Sperry Rand. Now, at this point EMCC 0:27:17.760 --> 0:27:21.639 and ERA divisions would be merged together to form a 0:27:21.720 --> 0:27:25.960 new division called Sperry UNIVAC. One of the folks at 0:27:26.000 --> 0:27:29.119 ERA really didn't like that because it meant that ERA 0:27:29.880 --> 0:27:32.040 had to drop a lot of the work it had 0:27:32.080 --> 0:27:36.520