Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age (Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation)

The career of computer visionary Grace Murray Hopper, whose innovative work in programming laid the foundations for the user-friendliness of today's personal computers that sparked the information age. A Hollywood biopic about the life of computer pioneer Grace Murray Hopper (19061992) would go like this: a young professor abandons the ivy-covered walls of academia to serve her country in the Navy after Pearl Harbor and finds herself on the front lines of the computer revolution. She works hard to succeed in the all-male computer industry, is almost brought down by personal problems but survives them, and ends her career as a celebrated elder stateswoman of computing, a heroine to thousands, hailed as the inventor of computer programming. Throughout Hopper's later years, the popular media told this simplified version of her life story. In Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age , Kurt Beyer reveals a more authentic Hopper, a vibrant and complex woman whose career paralleled the meteoric trajectory of the postwar computer industry. Both rebellious and collaborative, Hopper was influential in male-dominated military and business organizations at a time when women were encouraged to devote themselves to housework and childbearing. Hopper's greatest technical achievement was to create the tools that would allow humans to communicate with computers in terms other than ones and zeroes. This advance influenced all future programming and software design and laid the foundation for the development of user-friendly personal computers. Contents ......Page 8 Series Foreword ......Page 10 Acknowledgements ......Page 12 1 The Myth of Amazing Grace ......Page 16 2 The Rebirth of Grace Murray Hopper ......Page 38 3 The Origins of Computer Programming ......Page 60 4 The Harvard Computation Laboratory ......Page 88 5 The Beginning of a Computing Community ......Page 122 6 The 1947 Harvard Symposium on Large-Scale Digital Calculating Machinery ......Page 156 7 Staring Into the Abyss ......Page 190 8 The Education of a Computer ......Page 228 9 IBM Answers Remington Rand's Challenge ......Page 262 10 The Development of Problem-Oriented Languages ......Page 278 11 Distributed Invention Matures: Grace Hopper and the Development of COBOL ......Page 292 12 Inventing the Information Age ......Page 326 Notes ......Page 340 Index ......Page 396 The myth of amazing Grace The rebirth of Grace Murray Hopper The birth of computer programming The Harvard Computation Laboratory The beginning of a computing community The 1947 Harvard symposium on Large-Scale Digital Calculating Machinery A new beginning, again The education of a computer IBM answers Remington Rand's challenge The development of problem-oriented languages Distributed invention matures : Grace Hopper and the development of Cobol Conclusion Glossary Guide to sources. This is a biography which explores the career of computer visionary Grace Murray Hopper, whose innovative work in programming laid the foundations for the user-friendliness of today's personal computers.

The career of computer visionary Grace Murray Hopper, whose innovative work in programming laid the foundations for the user-friendliness of today's personal computers.