Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? So? Here in the United States, we are
Speaker 1: observing Memorial Day today, and on this day, the United
Speaker 1: States honors the memory of US military personnel who died
Speaker 1: while serving. The subject of our episode today was in
Speaker 1: the United States Military. She even rose to the rank
Speaker 1: of Rear admiral in the United States Navy. However, she
Speaker 1: did not die while in service. So I want to
Speaker 1: make clear that this episode does not dismiss the countless
Speaker 1: people who have given their lives in service to the
Speaker 1: United States Military, but rather to remember someone who made
Speaker 1: enormous contributions to technology, particularly while a member of the
Speaker 1: US military. And we also associate her with a story
Speaker 1: that usually gets told incorrectly. In fact, I've been guilty
Speaker 1: of telling it incorrectly myself in the past. The person
Speaker 1: I'm talking about is, of course, Grace Hopper, who sometimes
Speaker 1: gets the affectionate nickname Grandma Cooebol. Note I said cobol Cobol,
Speaker 1: not cobold, as in the Nasty Little critters in Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons. Grace Hopper was born in nineteen oh six
Speaker 1: in New York City to a well off family. Her father,
Speaker 1: a Yale graduate, owned an insurance company, and she grew
Speaker 1: up not wanting for anything really. She attended private schools
Speaker 1: and she matriculated at Vassar. She focused her studies on science,
Speaker 1: specifically in physics and in mathematics. She graduated Vassar in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty eight, and then she followed in her father's footsteps.
Speaker 1: She enrolled in Yale for graduate studies. In nineteen thirty,
Speaker 1: she earned her master's degree in mathematics. She continued her
Speaker 1: graduate studies and pursued a PhD. Around the same time,
Speaker 1: she also accepted a job to teach mathematics at her
Speaker 1: alma mater, Vasser. Her mentor during this time was a
Speaker 1: fella named Howard Ingstrom. He was just four years older
Speaker 1: than Hopper herself. So just a quick word about Ingstrom.
Speaker 1: The story is not really about him, but we need
Speaker 1: to at least get an idea of who he was,
Speaker 1: and it is a bit important. While he was a mathematician,
Speaker 1: his actual degrees were in chemical engineering, and then he
Speaker 1: would go on to be one of the co creators
Speaker 1: of the UNIVAC computer. Now, keep in mind at the
Speaker 1: time we're at right now, with Grace Hopper's timeline, we're
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties. The concept of an electro mcanennic
Speaker 1: computer is really just starting to become coherent. Around this time.
Speaker 1: There were people working on it, but these were very
Speaker 1: very early days with the idea of an electro mechanical computer. Now,
Speaker 1: there had been earlier examples of purely mechanical computational machines
Speaker 1: like Babbage's difference engine, Babbage's analytical engine. Those were at
Speaker 1: least concepts that were computational engines that used mechanical components
Speaker 1: to calculate things. Considering where Happer's career would take her,
Speaker 1: having a mentor who was an early contributor to computer
Speaker 1: science and design is meaningful and they would have other
Speaker 1: encounters in the future. But back to Hopper herself. She
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to study with the German American mathematician
Speaker 1: Richard Courrant, whose work in the field of applied mathematics
Speaker 1: was renowned, and she earned her PhD from Yale in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four, and she earned it in mathematics and
Speaker 1: mathematical physics. So then we skip ahead a few years.
Speaker 1: On December seventh, nineteen forty one, Japanese forces bombed the
Speaker 1: US base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The United States,
Speaker 1: which had resisted entering into the conflict we would call
Speaker 1: World War two, found itself drawn into the conflict, and
Speaker 1: Hopper wanted to be part of the war effort, and
Speaker 1: she applied to become enlisted in the Navy. However, the
Speaker 1: Navy rejected her, partly because Grace Hopper was of a
Speaker 1: petite build, diminutive in size some would describe her, and
Speaker 1: also because at age thirty four at this time, the
Speaker 1: Navy considered her to be too old to join the effort. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: she persisted, and Grace Hopper would end up joining the
Speaker 1: US Naval Women's Reserve in nineteen forty three. So while
Speaker 1: she wasn't an active member of the Navy, she was
Speaker 1: an active member of the Navy Reserves, and she received
Speaker 1: an assignment to work on the Bureau of Ship's computation
Speaker 1: project at Harvard University. There, she worked with a Harvard
Speaker 1: graduate named Howard Aiken. When Aiken was a graduate student
Speaker 1: at Harvard, he lamented that his doctoral thesis relied upon
Speaker 1: complex calculations that were tedious to perform by hand, and so,
Speaker 1: like many innovators before him, he decided the best option
Speaker 1: was to find people he could work with to invent
Speaker 1: a device that could do those kinds of calculations automatically.
Speaker 1: So he was able to work with a relatively young
Speaker 1: company called International Business Machines better known today as just IBM,
Speaker 1: and together they would be able to bring his wish
Speaker 1: into reality. So Iiken would kind of act as the
Speaker 1: director or at least the guide officer, like he's guided
Speaker 1: the development of this machine to perform these calculations automatically.
Speaker 1: The result was a device called the Automatic Sequence Controlled
Speaker 1: Calculator ASCC, but later and better known as just the
Speaker 1: Harvard Mark one. So Hopper joined the Bureau of Ships
Speaker 1: right around the time that the Mark one had been
Speaker 1: shipped to Harvard from IBM. So the Mark one didn't
Speaker 1: look anything like a modern computer does. It was an
Speaker 1: electro mechanical device. It had moving parts like there were
Speaker 1: shafts that would turn and gears that would turn, and
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff like it was. It was a
Speaker 1: real machine, and it also had electrical parts right there
Speaker 1: were electrical switches, there were various relays, and there were
Speaker 1: miles and miles of cables, something like hundred miles it was.
Speaker 1: You know, I've seen different estimates, but yes, hundreds of
Speaker 1: miles of cables connecting all these different components. The whole
Speaker 1: thing collectively weighed more than four tons. If you were
Speaker 1: to look at the deal and get a tape measure out,
Speaker 1: it was about fifty one feet long. It was eight
Speaker 1: feet tall and then two feet deep, right, so like
Speaker 1: you might want to think, it was like fifty one
Speaker 1: feet wide, eight feet tall, and then two feet deep
Speaker 1: something like that. That's a definitely not a desktop computer
Speaker 1: unless you have a truly ginormous desk. This computer could
Speaker 1: store a few dozen numbers, and you could actually then
Speaker 1: use those numbers for multiple calculations. So that was useful, right, right,
Speaker 1: You didn't have to insert the same number every time
Speaker 1: you wanted to do a different calculation. You could actually
Speaker 1: store a number in this device. In fact, more than
Speaker 1: seventy numbers at a time, and I think it was
Speaker 1: something like it was more than twenty decimal points or
Speaker 1: decimal digits that you could store in this per number.
Speaker 1: The length of time it would take to generate an
Speaker 1: answer would depend upon the nature of the calculation, so
Speaker 1: simple operations like addition or subtraction would take around a
Speaker 1: second for this machine to perform. More complex mathematical functions
Speaker 1: could require a minute or more. But it was all automatic.
Speaker 1: At least it was once you input all the data,
Speaker 1: which you would do by using switches. Lots and lots
Speaker 1: of switches. The Mark one had more than a thousand
Speaker 1: switches in various switch banks, so you had to use
Speaker 1: all these in order to input the data you wanted
Speaker 1: to then operate upon. Now to tell the computer what
Speaker 1: you wanted done to the input, remember inputs just one thing.
Speaker 1: You also have to instruct the computer what operation to perform. Well.
Speaker 1: To do that, you would use a program, and in
Speaker 1: those days, a program consisted of you know, punch cards
Speaker 1: in some cases, but in the case of the Mark one,
Speaker 1: it was essentially paper tape that had holes punched into it,
Speaker 1: and you would feed the tape through the computer and
Speaker 1: those holes would allow for specific connections within the computer,
Speaker 1: and in turn that served as instructions for the computer.
Speaker 1: It would perform a specific operation depending upon which contacts
Speaker 1: allowed to go through. So programming a computer meant physically
Speaker 1: punching holes in cards or in tape, and Grace Hopper
Speaker 1: would be one of the first three people to do this.
Speaker 1: So she was one of the first three computer programmers
Speaker 1: for the Harvard Mark one computer. Now she wasn't just
Speaker 1: a programmer, She never was just a programmer. She was
Speaker 1: also an instructor. Remember, she had come from a background
Speaker 1: of teaching. She taught at Vassar before she joined the
Speaker 1: Navy Reserves. So it became her job to write a
Speaker 1: user manual for the Mark one. The story goes that
Speaker 1: I Can initially didn't want to give Hopper very much
Speaker 1: responsibility because he mistakenly believed that due to the fact
Speaker 1: she was a woman, she would be limited in that capacity.
Speaker 1: And then Hopper proved him wrong, and so then he said,
Speaker 1: all right, you know what, you know what you're doing,
Speaker 1: write the instruction manual for the Mark one. Now, as
Speaker 1: you might imagine, the complexity of the Mark one required
Speaker 1: a pretty long instruction manual. From what I understand, the
Speaker 1: manual had more than five hundred and fifty pages of instructions. Yikes. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind again it's an electro mechanical system, really complicated.
Speaker 1: Literally lots of moving parts, which means there's lots of
Speaker 1: potential points of failure. So it makes sense that any
Speaker 1: comprehensive manual would need to be long. But can you
Speaker 1: imagine being put in charge of writing a comprehensive instruction
Speaker 1: manual for such a complicated machine. She did it, and
Speaker 1: she would work on various projects that would contribute either
Speaker 1: directly or indirectly to the war effort. So the lab
Speaker 1: she worked in, the calculations they were performing using this computer,
Speaker 1: they were for all sorts of things, including things like numbers,
Speaker 1: tables for stuff like rocket trajectories or specific types of artillery,
Speaker 1: so that soldiers in the field would have a reference
Speaker 1: and they would know what settings to use when they
Speaker 1: were targeting enemies. Right like you know where the enemy is,
Speaker 1: or you're told where the enemy is in relation to
Speaker 1: where you are, you have to actually make the calculations
Speaker 1: of how to position, say a piece of artillery, how
Speaker 1: to position the gun barrel, so that when you fire,
Speaker 1: you're actually going to hit that target and not something else,
Speaker 1: Right Like, you don't want to end up hitting a
Speaker 1: civilian building. You're aiming at a military unit or or
Speaker 1: something like that. You need these tables so that you understand,
Speaker 1: based upon the equipment you're using and the firepower behind it,
Speaker 1: that you are actually going to hit the thing you're
Speaker 1: aiming at. That's the kind of calculations that Hopper's team
Speaker 1: was working on, and some of the work that was
Speaker 1: done with the Harvard Mark one would also end up
Speaker 1: being used by the Manhattan Project that was the top
Speaker 1: secret mission to develop the atomic bomb. They also would
Speaker 1: depend upon calculations made by the Mark one. Now, at
Speaker 1: the conclusion of World War Two, Hopper would choose to
Speaker 1: stay with Harvard. She was given the opportunity to go
Speaker 1: back to Vassar, but she decided she would stick with
Speaker 1: Harvard and work on computer systems. We're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break, but when we come back, we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about the contributions Grace Hopper made to computing. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. So, as I mentioned before the break, after
Speaker 1: World War Two, Grace Hopper decided that she was going
Speaker 1: to stay at Harvard, at least briefly. She would stay
Speaker 1: there so she was an intrinsic part of the team
Speaker 1: that developed the Mark two, the successor of the Mark one,
Speaker 1: so a more complicated and sophisticated computer. She also worked
Speaker 1: on the design of the Mark III, which obviously followed
Speaker 1: the Mark two, and at this point Harvard was still
Speaker 1: receiving support from the US Navy, which had a vested
Speaker 1: interest in having access to sophisticated computational machines. Around this time,
Speaker 1: we get to a story that has been mangled quite
Speaker 1: a bit in the past. In fact, even Yale's own
Speaker 1: page about Grace appears to have a mistake in it,
Speaker 1: because the Yale page says that this incident that we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about happened in nineteen forty five, but
Speaker 1: according to other sources that talk about the actual log
Speaker 1: book that recounts this event, it happened on a specific
Speaker 1: day two years later, on September ninth, nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 1: So again, this is a story that has been told
Speaker 1: and retold many times, and a lot of those retellings
Speaker 1: are inaccurate, probably not intentionally inaccurate, but it just has happened,
Speaker 1: And like I said, in the past, I've repeated some
Speaker 1: of those inaccuracy. So I'm going to try to be
Speaker 1: as careful as I can to recount what actually happened.
Speaker 1: Keeping in mind that this story has been told so
Speaker 1: many times that it's very possible that there is no
Speaker 1: one hundred percent accurate version of the story. But here's
Speaker 1: how it goes. So the Mark two team at Harvard
Speaker 1: were running into problems. The Mark two computer was producing
Speaker 1: error after error, and it was doing so consistently. So
Speaker 1: there was something wrong and it didn't matter how many
Speaker 1: times they ran the calculation through. They were getting the
Speaker 1: same errors at the other side, which meant something somewhere
Speaker 1: in the computer system was hanky. I mean, maybe a
Speaker 1: connection was loose, maybe a wire had broken. Like there
Speaker 1: was no way to know unless you cracked the sucker
Speaker 1: open and really took a look. So that's what Hopper's
Speaker 1: team did. They began to look through the Mark two
Speaker 1: computer to see what was going on, where was this
Speaker 1: problem actually occurring. Then they found it. A moth had
Speaker 1: been trapped inside the Mark two computer and it got
Speaker 1: zapped in a relay and thus it was blocking a signal. Right,
Speaker 1: the relay could not relay signals because there was a
Speaker 1: a dead moth in the way. So they removed the
Speaker 1: x insect and they actually taped it into the log
Speaker 1: book they were keeping where they were. You know, they
Speaker 1: would write down whenever they had errors you know, they
Speaker 1: would log them so that they could work the errors out.
Speaker 1: So they taped the dead moth into the logbook, and
Speaker 1: they included the amusing note of quote first actual case
Speaker 1: of bug being found end quote. So the shorthand for
Speaker 1: this story is that Grace Hopper invented the term bug
Speaker 1: when it comes to a problem that's in a computer
Speaker 1: program or even in a computer system. But that's not
Speaker 1: entirely accurate. So the term bug meaning something is going
Speaker 1: wrong inside a mechanical or electrical system, something is creating errors.
Speaker 1: That pre dates the nineteen forty seven incident. That was
Speaker 1: a term that was already in use in various engineering circles.
Speaker 1: And that makes sense, like it has to have already
Speaker 1: existed or else that log entry doesn't make sense. Right,
Speaker 1: The log entry was first actual case of a bug
Speaker 1: being found, So that implies that the term bug was
Speaker 1: already being used to describe errors. It's just that in
Speaker 1: this particular case the bug was a literal bug. So
Speaker 1: a lot of historical accounts now say Grace Hopper was
Speaker 1: the first to apply the term bug to a problem
Speaker 1: within a computer system, not just an electrical system or
Speaker 1: mechanical system, but a computer system itself, and effectively she
Speaker 1: coined the phrase computer bug. That's possibly true. It's at
Speaker 1: least more accurate than just saying she coined the phrase bug,
Speaker 1: because that's not true. Also, we should mention that it's
Speaker 1: really her team, Like to this day, there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of co of who first made the joke about
Speaker 1: it being a bug. She also gets the credit for
Speaker 1: the term debugging, and initially that makes sense because her
Speaker 1: team literally had to debug a computer system by removing
Speaker 1: the moth from the relay. However, the term debugging was
Speaker 1: already being used in other circles as well. In fact,
Speaker 1: it appears in a nineteen forty four letter that Jay
Speaker 1: Robert Oppenheimer wrote to Ernest Lawrence, for example, that happened
Speaker 1: three years before the Great Moth incident in the mark
Speaker 1: to computer, So debugging was already a thing too. You
Speaker 1: could argue maybe she was the first to use debugging
Speaker 1: in relation to a computer system. And maybe she was,
Speaker 1: or at least her team was. Now, as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, Grace Hopper never claimed that she or
Speaker 1: her team coined the term's computer bug or debugging, that
Speaker 1: this was something of a narrative that develop around her
Speaker 1: but she was not responsible for it. She never made
Speaker 1: those claims. Now, I think it might be because the
Speaker 1: actual story of a real bug causing problems in a
Speaker 1: computer is so amusing that folks want it to be
Speaker 1: the origin story for the term itself, right, because it's
Speaker 1: such a good story. Wouldn't that be awesome if that's
Speaker 1: why we say computer bug? And it's still a great story, right,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic, and it really did happen to Grace Hopper's team,
Speaker 1: So not taking anything away from that, it's just that
Speaker 1: it's not where we get those phrases. It's just an
Speaker 1: amusing example of it being literal in this sense. Now,
Speaker 1: we're not done with Grace Hopper, not by a long shot,
Speaker 1: because her contributions went far beyond a close encounter of
Speaker 1: the moth kind. That's just the amusing story folks like
Speaker 1: to tell that. It relates to Grace Hopper's contributions in
Speaker 1: computer science. So Hopper faced professional challenges. Despite her impressive
Speaker 1: work to both the war effort during World War Two
Speaker 1: and to computer programming in general, the Navy denied her
Speaker 1: a regular commission, so she decided to leave active service.
Speaker 1: She would remain a reservist until nineteen sixty six. More
Speaker 1: on that when we get there, But she was no
Speaker 1: longer an active service member of the US Navy at
Speaker 1: this point. Not long after she stepped down from active
Speaker 1: service with the Navy, she actually chose to leave Harvard
Speaker 1: as well because she had been denied tenure, and it
Speaker 1: also became obvious to her that she was not going
Speaker 1: to get promoted there despite all the work she was doing.
Speaker 1: That she was just hitting a glass ceiling super hard
Speaker 1: and there was no real chance of her getting beyond it.
Speaker 1: So rather than bang her head and or accept her
Speaker 1: fate and not get any further in her career, she
Speaker 1: decided in nineteen forty nine, she left Harvard University and
Speaker 1: she went to join a computer company, a fledgling computer
Speaker 1: company called the Eckert Mauchlee Computer Corporation or EMCC. The
Speaker 1: following year, a typewriter company called Remington Rand would acquire EMCC.
Speaker 1: And this is where we're going to get into a
Speaker 1: very complicated history of a very important computer system. All right.
Speaker 1: So EMCC, or Eckert Mauchley Computer Corporation, had taken its
Speaker 1: name from its two founders, Jay Presper Eckert and John Mouchley. Now,
Speaker 1: these two had built another early computer. This one was
Speaker 1: called the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer or ENIAC, at
Speaker 1: the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC was also an important computer,
Speaker 1: or at least it was to be a important computer
Speaker 1: during World War Two. The actual development and construction of
Speaker 1: ENIAC took quite a long time, but ENIAC is one
Speaker 1: of those famous early electrical computers or electronic computers, i
Speaker 1: should say. Now. Following that achievement, the two men found
Speaker 1: themselves at a fundamental disagreement with the University of Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: over the matter of patent rights, and this led the
Speaker 1: pair to leave the University of Pennsylvania and then go
Speaker 1: and found their own company. Thus, EMCC and EMCC designed
Speaker 1: a new computer called the Binary Automatic Computer or BINAK,
Speaker 1: which is essentially just a footnote in history. There's very
Speaker 1: little about BINAK out there. It's possible that the machine
Speaker 1: was literally never used for anything. However, it did arguably
Speaker 1: leave the Bureau of the Census to then seek out
Speaker 1: EMCC to create a new computer design, which the company
Speaker 1: would refer to as UNIVAC. And Grace Hopper would join
Speaker 1: EMCC around this time and would be important in the
Speaker 1: work and development of UNIVAC, specifically in programming for the UNIVAC.
Speaker 1: But in the fall of nineteen forty nine, the primary
Speaker 1: financial backer for EMCC died in a plane crash. So
Speaker 1: once their financier essentially had died, EMCC was kind of
Speaker 1: in financial trouble. They weren't sure whether they could last
Speaker 1: long enough to build out the UNIVAC. That's when Remington
Speaker 1: Rand came along and acquired EMCC. Rimmington Rand was, really,
Speaker 1: like I said, a typewriter company. They made office typewriters,
Speaker 1: but they saw the opportunity to get into the computer
Speaker 1: world by purchasing EMCC. However, there's always a bigger fish,
Speaker 1: so things are about to get way more complicated. I'll
Speaker 1: explain what I mean by that after we come back
Speaker 1: from this quick break. All right, we're up to nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one. Grace Hopper has been part of EMCC and
Speaker 1: then Remington Rand, which purchased EMCC for a few years,
Speaker 1: and that's when the company completed work on the first
Speaker 1: UNIVAC computer. It would eventually be known as the UNIVAC one,
Speaker 1: but at the time they just called it the Univac.
Speaker 1: Kind of like how in World War One. People referred
Speaker 1: to it as the Great War because if they had
Speaker 1: started calling it World War One while they were fighting it,
Speaker 1: that would have been, you know, very pessimistic. Calling Univac
Speaker 1: the UNIVAC one would have been very optimistic. So they
Speaker 1: built the UNIVAC, and unlike other computers, this was not
Speaker 1: a computer that was just meant to be a one
Speaker 1: and done like. They made multiple UNIVAC one computer systems.
Speaker 1: The first one went to the United States Census Bureau
Speaker 1: because that's kind of where all this work got started,
Speaker 1: but the company made other ones for other clients, including CBS. Famously,
Speaker 1: CBS would use the UNIVAC one to predict the outcome
Speaker 1: of the nineteen fifty two presidential election, but when they
Speaker 1: got the results, they didn't trust it because the Univac
Speaker 1: had said that Eisenhower was going to win handily, that
Speaker 1: it was going to be a landslide victory for Eisenhower,
Speaker 1: but the conventional wisdom at the time was that this
Speaker 1: was going to be a much closer presidential race. However,
Speaker 1: it would ultimately turn out that the UNIVAC prediction was right, like,
Speaker 1: not exactly right. They didn't get to the very you know,
Speaker 1: the very voter or anything like that. But it was
Speaker 1: way more correct than the guests that it was going
Speaker 1: to be a tight race. And that ended up really
Speaker 1: elevating univacs prestige because once CBS said, Okay, well it
Speaker 1: turns out our computer predicted a landslide. We just didn't
Speaker 1: believe it. But it turns out the computer was right.
Speaker 1: That's amazing press for your computer system. Right. So, Rimington
Speaker 1: Rand slash EMCC would continue to develop the UNIVAC platform,
Speaker 1: and then Rimington Rand made another acquisition. It acquired a
Speaker 1: competing computer company called Engineering Research Associates or ER. So
Speaker 1: Rand acquired ER in nineteen fifty two. Now, one of
Speaker 1: era's founders was Hopper's old mathematics mentor, Howard Ingstrom. Rand
Speaker 1: effectively ran EMCC and ERA as separate entities. Right, so,
Speaker 1: while both companies were under the corporate umbrella of Remington Rand,
Speaker 1: they still were kind of competing against each other. They
Speaker 1: were making different computer designs. That, however, would change in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five. I told you this gets complicated. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty five, Rand merged with another company called
Speaker 1: Sperry spe r r Y, and then the new company
Speaker 1: was known as Sperry Rand. Now, at this point EMCC
Speaker 1: and ERA divisions would be merged together to form a
Speaker 1: new division called Sperry UNIVAC. One of the folks at
Speaker 1: ERA really didn't like that because it meant that ERA
Speaker 1: had to drop a lot of the work it had
Speaker 1: been pursuing. This guy was known as Seymour Cray. He
Speaker 1: left the Sperry Rand Company and decided to make his
Speaker 1: own computer company. It's called Cray Computers. That's another story.
Speaker 1: It might mean something to you if you know the
Speaker 1: names of old supercomputer systems. Yeah, we'll have to tell
Speaker 1: the story of Cray Computers in another episode. So anyway,
Speaker 1: at this point, the head of the division that was
Speaker 1: Sperry UNIVAC was a guy named Leslie Groves. Now, Groves
Speaker 1: had been an officer with the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Speaker 1: He was actually in charge of the construction of the
Speaker 1: Pentagon back in the nineteen forties. He also served as
Speaker 1: the military's director for the Manhattan Project, and he went
Speaker 1: on to oversee the early days of what would become
Speaker 1: the United States nuclear weapons program. But he had also
Speaker 1: reached an impasse with the US government. He was told
Speaker 1: outright he was never going to get the appointment he wanted,
Speaker 1: and in the late nineteen forties he decided to leave
Speaker 1: military service. He received the rank of lieutenant general just
Speaker 1: before he retired, and then he entered civilian life and
Speaker 1: he joined Sperry and became a vice president of that company.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned that again because this episode goes out
Speaker 1: a Memorial Day and Sperry Rand this computer company had
Speaker 1: a really healthy representation of former Armed Forces personnel working
Speaker 1: as engineers. There. In fact, this was not unusual across
Speaker 1: computer companies of the time that the engineers who were
Speaker 1: at the forefront of the United States development of computers
Speaker 1: were people who had previously worked in that respect for
Speaker 1: the Armed Forces. Now, as I said, Hopper was involved
Speaker 1: with the work on UNIVAC primarily from a programming side,
Speaker 1: and her team would create something that would push computer
Speaker 1: science in general and computer programming in particular into a
Speaker 1: new era and to make it way more accessible for
Speaker 1: new programmers. And this was the first compiler. All right.
Speaker 1: So I've talked in the past about how machines do
Speaker 1: not understand languages the way we do. So when you
Speaker 1: get down to the basic operational level, machines don't understand
Speaker 1: human language right, Like, you can have a conversation with
Speaker 1: chat GPT and the appearance is that the machine understands
Speaker 1: what you're saying, But this is actually after several layers
Speaker 1: of abstraction. When you strip it all away, machines understand
Speaker 1: machine code. Typically we're talking about binary code, so that
Speaker 1: means at the basic level of computing, you're dealing with
Speaker 1: zeros and ones. Machines can process this information efficiently, but
Speaker 1: it's not easy for humans to work with that. Now,
Speaker 1: early programming languages were really mathematical codes, and we're very,
Speaker 1: very close to giving to machine code itself. Grace Hopper
Speaker 1: had this dream of making a system where humans could
Speaker 1: write instructions for computers in a more easily accessible language,
Speaker 1: something that was closer to the language like English. Now
Speaker 1: a lot of are contemporaries dismiss this as just wishful thinking, like, yes,
Speaker 1: it would be nice if you could program in a
Speaker 1: language closer to English, but it would also be nice
Speaker 1: if I had my own private plane and could fly
Speaker 1: anywhere I wanted to do, any time of day. It's
Speaker 1: just a pipe dream. How can you bridge the gap
Speaker 1: between what humans find easy to do when it comes
Speaker 1: to communication, and what machines are capable of, and Hopper's
Speaker 1: team got to work on creating a solution. Now. That
Speaker 1: solution came in two important parts. One is programming language. Now,
Speaker 1: programming language creates a level of abstraction from machine code
Speaker 1: to make programming less of an arduous task, but not
Speaker 1: all programming languages are alike. A low level programming language
Speaker 1: is really just a few degrees separation from machine code itself.
Speaker 1: It's still pretty challenging to learn. It is a slog
Speaker 1: to really get a firm grasp on how to program,
Speaker 1: which in turn means you can be really limited in
Speaker 1: what you can do right that you have the potential
Speaker 1: to do much more interesting programming, but you have a
Speaker 1: limitation because the language itself is so difficult to work with.
Speaker 1: A high level programming language has more layers of abstraction,
Speaker 1: so it makes it easier for humans to grasp and
Speaker 1: to work with, and you're also less likely to introduce
Speaker 1: bugs like programming bugs. Obviously that still happens, but it's
Speaker 1: slightly easier to avoid. But to make a programming language useful,
Speaker 1: you have to have a way to translate those instructions
Speaker 1: from the more human friendly programming language to the useful
Speaker 1: machine code that the computer system actually relies upon. To
Speaker 1: that end, Hopper's team built the first compiler, and the
Speaker 1: compiler does pretty much what I just described. It takes
Speaker 1: code that's written in a programming language and compiles that
Speaker 1: into machine readable instructions. The early programming languages, like I said,
Speaker 1: we're essentially mathematical code like Fourtran is an example very
Speaker 1: close to mathematical code. Hopper's team developed a programming language
Speaker 1: that began to approach something similar to English, and this
Speaker 1: was a huge step. It was a non trivial development
Speaker 1: in the world of computer science. Hopper's team named the
Speaker 1: language Flowmatic. Unlike predecessor's like Fortrand, Flowmatic's use of English
Speaker 1: commands remove some of the barriers to programming. It was
Speaker 1: still a challenge to learn. It wasn't like the easiest
Speaker 1: thing in the world to work with, but the learning
Speaker 1: curve became way way less harsh when you started to
Speaker 1: introduce this more English structure type of programming language. Flomatic
Speaker 1: would essentially become the inspiration for a future programming language
Speaker 1: called Common Business Oriented Language or COBOL, which we mentioned
Speaker 1: at the top of the show. Or COBOL if you prefer.
Speaker 1: And Hopper really liked Cobol, and she promoted it and
Speaker 1: worked on compilers for the Cobol language, and that helped
Speaker 1: make Cobol a widely used language in academia, in the
Speaker 1: private sector, in the military, and her work really made
Speaker 1: huge results. People would later attribute her promotion of Cobol
Speaker 1: as a major factor in the language's success, because by
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies it would become the most commonly used
Speaker 1: programming language out there, and people say Grace Hopper's contributions
Speaker 1: were a large part of that. Now, as I mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier in this episode, Hopper was in the Navy reserves
Speaker 1: until nineteen sixty six, so she had left active service,
Speaker 1: but she had remained in the reserves for two decades
Speaker 1: until she was required to retire due to age restrictions,
Speaker 1: and she would reference her retirement from the Navy as
Speaker 1: the saddest day of her life. Her rank at the
Speaker 1: time was commander. And then seven months later, the Navy
Speaker 1: came back to her and said, Grace, could you help
Speaker 1: us out again? And after retiring as a reservist, Grace
Speaker 1: Hopper would rejoin the Navy as an active service member.
Speaker 1: Her responsibilities primarily included streamlining the Navy's approach to computers
Speaker 1: and to find a way to manage the multiple computer
Speaker 1: systems and computer languages the Navy was reliant upon, because
Speaker 1: by this time, the Navy had invested in multiple computer systems,
Speaker 1: working with lots of different people who took different approaches,
Speaker 1: and it just became complicated and difficult to coordinate projects
Speaker 1: because you had different systems working with very different computer languages,
Speaker 1: they were not inherently compatible. So Grace Hopper was there
Speaker 1: to try and make sense of it all and to
Speaker 1: make it more efficient and streamlined. She would spend nearly
Speaker 1: two more decades as an active service member of the Navy,
Speaker 1: and she got the nickname Amazing Grace. She also continued
Speaker 1: to work for UNIVAC until nineteen seventy two. Throughout her career,
Speaker 1: she earned countless distinctions, way too many for me to
Speaker 1: list in this episode. At the age of seventy nine,
Speaker 1: she finally retired from the Navy for realsi's no takebacks.
Speaker 1: By that point, she had attained the rank of Rear admiral,
Speaker 1: and at that point she was also the oldest active
Speaker 1: service member in US military, which is pretty pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 1: As I said, she got numerous awards and distinctions, both
Speaker 1: while she was alive and posthumously. She has received awards
Speaker 1: from US presidents, from various universities, from various professional associations.
Speaker 1: An incredibly important person in the world of computer science.
Speaker 1: She lived until the ripe old age of eighty five.
Speaker 1: She passed away on New Year's Day nineteen ninety two
Speaker 1: and was buried an Arlington cemetery with full military honors.
Speaker 1: So truly a phenomenal figure in the history of computer
Speaker 1: science and a testament to what you can achieve when
Speaker 1: you have ambition, and you have skill and talent, and
Speaker 1: you have dedication to your craft. A phenomenal life's story,
Speaker 1: and so I am glad to have dedicated an episode
Speaker 1: to Grace Hopper. I hope all of you out there
Speaker 1: are well. I hope those of you who are observing
Speaker 1: Memorial Day have a peaceful day of reflection. And I
Speaker 1: will talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.