One of the true computer pioneers was a gentle, yet outspoken, woman who chose a career in the US Navy. Admiral Grace Hopper was one of the brilliant minds who helped shape technology as we know it today. During my long career in IT, I was lucky enough to rub shoulders with some of the best–having watched Steve Jobs rehearse his Next presentation at the Inforum in Atlanta, having met a young Bill Gates (and his entourage) at Comdex in the 1980s, and even having corresponded via email with Michael Dell. But certainly the highlight of my brushes with celebrity involved eating lunch with Grace Hopper.
In the mid 1970s, I had the good fortune to be hired into a Dept of Army intern program as an education specialist. I was assigned to a facility that trained Defense Logistics Officers. One of my assignments was to learn and teach this new computer technology and I received training to the hilt. It included weeks of Info systems hardware, Systems Administration, and even COBOL programming on an IBM 360/50. At one point we developed the first formal training on computer security and I got to go to the FBI Academy in Quantico for research. Our class became very popular and we expanded it to a week. To entice students, we inserted a guest lecturer spot at the end to tie everything together. And guess who we were able to secure for our speaker–Admiral Hopper!
She was a small dynamo with quick eyes who radiated sparks of energy. She was expert at working a crowd and her talks were mesmerizing. She was the presenter I wanted to be. On one of her trips, the young intern (me) was tasked with escorting Admiral Hopper while she was on campus. It was a plum assignment and I was tickled. At one point we found ourselves virtually alone in the cafeteria. She usually created quite a scene and was surrounded by a gaggle of young officers but this day was different. Most students were still in class. I was both thrilled and terrified at the prospect of entertaining her by myself. She picked out her lunch and I brought it to the table and went for beverages. When I returned we began small talk. It did not take her long to make me feel at ease.
But we need a little history lesson before we resume our story. Admiral Hopper worked on some of the earliest computers during the 1930s and 1940s. CPUs are just arrays of switches and the early CPUs used large physical relays which click-clacked away as it computed. These machines were programmed with plug boards where the programmers strung wires to connect the relays. It was tedious work and the people who did it were little human computers themselves. This was Grace Hopper’s early world. So one day she found herself troubleshooting her program and nothing made sense. Her plug board did not have any errors and she became suspicious of the machine itself. She took a screwdriver and removed a panel to check the relays. Her “Aha!” moment came when she found a dead moth that prevented a relay from closing properly. So she extracted the moth with some tweezers and documented the findings in her programming notebook. She displayed her wry sense of humor by taping the offending moth to the page with the comment, “relay #70 in error due to bug (moth).”
At that time, there were many errors in programs but Grace was the first to document an actual “bug”. And that is how history was born.
But the best is yet to come. She would have been an amusing footnote to history if the “bug” was her only contribution. No. Her contribution would be much greater. In fact, she is considered by many to be the originator of the higher level language concept. Without higher level languages and their associated compilers and interpreters we would all still be weaving wires on plug boards. The clever Grace Hopper just got mad. She was tired of serving the machine and asked out loud–“If this thing is so smart, why can’t I just talk to it and let it figure out the hard stuff!?! And by talk, I mean talk. In English sentences.” And that was her contribution to technology–the COBOL language. And not just COBOL, but the concept of higher level languages in general. Computers, which were designed by engineers, were too complicated to be used generally. It took an out of the box thinker to turn the problem around and force the computer to essentially program itself.
And this genius, who was by now in her early 70s, was who I found myself alone with at lunch. She was a founder of the technology world that I found myself in. I was a young man who wanted to get ahead and provide for my family. This technology stuff looked like a fertile field to work. But how? My question to her was a simple one. “Admiral Hopper, you have been very successful in this field. What is your secret? What advice would you give a young man starting out?” She looked at me straight in the eye and began her speech.
It’s all about hard work. My whole career has been based on just a few ideas. One or two of them were pretty good. But my ideas were just the beginning because the world is full of geniuses with good ideas. My success was due to the diligence and persistence of my efforts. I worked hard on things I believed in. You have to be willing to take those ideas and work hard to bring about change. And it really helps if you can enlist others and get them enthusiastic enough to help you because good things always take lots of effort.
The rest of our conversation was a blur but I have always remembered her response to my question. Grace Hopper is certainly one of the most memorable people I have ever met. I will never forget the lunch we had together.