Grace Hopper: She taught computers to talk

By: 60 Minutes Overtime Staff
Topics: 60 Rewind

Believe it or not, the world of computers didn't begin with Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

Back in 1983, Morley Safer sat down with 76-year-old U.S. Navy Captain Grace Hopper who, at the time, had the distinction of being the oldest woman in the Armed Forces. But that was far from the only reason she merited a 60 Minutes profile. Way back in 1944, Hopper helped design the legendary Mark series of computers at Harvard University. (Take a look at the Mark 1 here.)

Hopper is perhaps best known for figuring out the way to make computers "talk." As Morley put it in his piece: "She is more than just a superb mathematical talent; it was Grace Hopper who helped teach the machines a language, stopped them from speaking in undecipherable numbers, enabled them to speak in English or French or German or whatever language you choose."

And, if you've ever used the expression "bug" to describe a computer malfunction or software problem, you've got Ms. Hopper to thank as well. In 1947, something went haywire in the Mark II computer system. Upon closer inspection, a dead moth was discovered in the wiring and removed. From that point on, Hooper said, when anything went wrong with the computer, everyone said "it has a bug in it." (To see the infamous moth in question, click here.)

Not long after this piece first ran on 60 Minutes, Hopper was promoted to commodore, and when that post was merged with rear admiral in 1985, she became Admiral Hopper. She passed away on January 1, 1992 and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

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by Epsori March 9, 2012 7:02 PM EST: In 1978 at Groton Sub School I attended her famous nano second lecture. She stimulated me to learn computers, programming, and more. I named my daughter Emily Grace in honor of Admiral Hopper.

So few even know of her today. She changed my life.; Reply to this comment


by jaykay3141 March 4, 2012 9:28 PM EST: Admiral Hopper, a/k/a "Granny COBOL", was one of the true geniuses of computer science. I never knew her personally but one of my college mathematics professors was a colleague of hers, and not coincidentally, the only other woman commodore at that time. Adm. Hopper had a way of communicating with those who weren't necessarily science experts, such as her famous "nanosecond", a 30cm piece of wire that represented (roughly) the distance travelled by a photon in that length of time.

There are also dozens of stories about her, including one possibly apocryphal tale that she couldn't make her checkbook balance and finally had to take it to her bank for help. They couldn't make any sense out of her arithmetic either until she realized she'd been doing the arithmetic in octal (base 8, used by computers) instead of base 10.

As a long-time math and computer science person, I do wish that she had created a language less verbose than COBOL. The fact that so much code is still written in COBOL may be a tribute to her intelligence but IMO it vies for inefficiency with this country's continuing use of feet and pounds while the entire rest of the world uses SI units.; Reply to this comment


by flexsf March 4, 2012 9:08 PM EST: This woman was remarkable and while only four minutes was given too her to create this documentary, her life, and what she achieved in it, have filled up numerous books. She was born in New York City in 1908, and earned her doctorate in Mathematics. She was a Harvard Mathematician when the Navy initially denied her entry because of her sex. Ultimately, her greatest contribution to computer science was language. She converted the computer's binary language (consisting of 0's and 1's) to a language we could understand. When we hear the expression "bug in the system" it was coined by Dr. Hopper. One day, while inputting rocket trajectories during WWII, a light bulb went out on the Mark I. When she replaced it, she concluded a bug had crawled into the system, and burned out the light.

Conversely, she was a chain smoker, and a raging alcoholic. She died in January 1992 after the Super Bowl. I wonder what she would think of her Republican party today?; Reply to this comment

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