Dictionary of Computers - Hopper, Grace

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US computer pioneer whose most significant contributions were in the field of software. She created the first compiler and helped invent the computer language COBOL. She was also the first person to isolate a computer ‘bug’ and successfully debug a computer.

After doing postgraduate work at Yale, Hopper returned to her original university, Vassar, as a member of the mathematics faculty. She volunteered for duty in World War II with the Naval Ordinance Computation Project. This was the beginning of a long association with the navy, resulting in her being appointed to the rank of rear admiral in 1983. She was then the oldest officer on active duty in the US armed forces. In 1945 Hopper was ordered to Harvard University to assist Howard Aiken in building a computer. In those days, computers had to be rewired for each new task and Hopper frequently found herself entwined in the wiring of the computer. One day a breakdown of the machine was found to be due to a moth that had flown into the computer. Aiken came into the laboratory as Hopper was dealing with the insect. ‘Why aren't you making numbers, Hopper?’ he asked. Hopper replied: ‘I am debugging the machine!’ This first computer ‘bug’ was removed with tweezers and is preserved at the Naval Museum in Virginia in the laboratory logbook, glued beside the entry for 15.45 on 9 Sept 1945.

After the war, Hopper joined John Mauchly and Presper Eckert, who had set up a firm, eventually to become the Unisys Corporation, to manufacture a commercial computer. Her main contribution was to create the first computer language, together with the compiler needed to translate the instructions into a form that the computer could work with. In 1959 she was invited to join a Pentagon team attempting to create and standardize a single computer language for commercial use. This led to the development of the COBOL language, still one of the most widely used languages. Hopper died in Arlington, Virginia, on 1 January 1992.

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