Grace Murray Hopper:The Spark for the Information Explosion Essay
599 Words3 Pages
Many people today complain about how slow their computer is. They claim it takes forever to boot up, has slow internet, and can’t run the latest game. But, can you imagine if you didn’t have a computer at all? Nowadays, computers have revolutionized almost everything: mail, news, business, marketing, schools, and even gaming. They are trusted with humanly-impossible tasks and are many people’s main gateway to the real world. Have you ever given thought to who is to thank for all of this? Was it Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs? No, and no. It was actually Navy Rear Admiral, and overall genius, Grace Murray Hopper-also nicknamed “Amazing Grace”. Born December 9, 1906, she was the eldest of three children, and was filled with curiosity from a…show more content… In order for the machine to work, Hopper had to tell the computer exactly what calculations to make in the exact order they needed to be made in. Hopper programmed it to carry out trajectories, logarithms, . Not only this, but the computer read information only in a complex code-so programming it was no easy task. Hopper worked dawn to dusk many days alongside 7 colleagues. She spent nights working out tough problems, having to logically and dynamically think through how the computer functioned and figure out how to tell it to do the mathematics in its own language. Not to mention, all the times she had to go back and redo code that didn’t work once tested. After much work and dedication, Grace Hopper completed the Mark 1 computer, and confirmed it for Navy use on ships in the war (Gorman). Grace Hopper worked hard in everything that was required of her, and then some. Not only did she program the Mark 1, but she created a programming language that would be used in businesses everywhere. This language-known as COBOL, was a language that made it easier for computers to communicate and made programming ten times easier-utilizing words or phrases instead of numbers. Hopper wanted a universal language so that all computers used by businesses could use the same programs and such, and there would be no problems running different languages for different programs, because there would be one central language. Because this was a more creative aspect, she so