Editing Grace Hopper (section)

== Career ==
=== World War II ===
[[File:Harvard Mark I sign-up.agr.jpg|thumb|Hopper's name on a duty roster for the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard, which built and operated the [[Harvard Mark I|Mark I]]]]
Hopper tried to be commissioned in the Navy early in [[World War II]], however she was turned down. At age 34, she was too old to enlist and her weight-to-height ratio was too low. She was also denied on the basis that her job as a mathematician and mathematics professor at Vassar College was valuable to the war effort.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.thocp.net/biographies/hopper_grace.html|title=Grace Hopper|website=www.thocp.net|access-date=2016-12-12}}</ref> During the war in 1943, Hopper obtained a leave of absence from Vassar and was sworn into the United States Navy Reserve; she was one of many women who volunteered to serve in the [[WAVES]].

She had to get an exemption to be commissioned; she was {{convert|15|lb}} below the Navy minimum weight of {{convert|120|lb}}. She reported in December and trained at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at [[Smith College]] in [[Northampton, Massachusetts]]. Hopper graduated first in her class in 1944, and was assigned to the [[Bureau of Ships]] Computation Project at [[Harvard University]] as a lieutenant, junior grade. She served on the [[Harvard Mark I|Mark I computer]] programming staff headed by [[Howard H. Aiken]].

Hopper and Aiken co-authored three papers on the Mark I, also known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Hopper's request to transfer to the regular Navy at the end of the war was declined due to her advanced age of 38. She continued to serve in the Navy Reserve. Hopper remained at the Harvard Computation Lab until 1949, turning down a full professorship at Vassar in favor of working as a research fellow under a Navy contract at Harvard.<ref name="KBW">{{cite book |last=Williams |first=Kathleen Broome |title=Improbable Warriors: Women Scientists and the U.S. Navy in World War II |year=2001 |publisher=Naval Institute Press |location=Annapolis, Maryland |isbn=978-1-55750-961-1}}</ref>

[[File: Grace Murray Hopper, in her office in Washington DC, 1978, ©Lynn Gilbert.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Hopper in a computer room in [[Washington, D.C.]], 1978, photographed by [[Lynn Gilbert]]]]

=== UNIVAC ===
In 1949, Hopper became an employee of the [[Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation]] as a senior mathematician and joined the team developing the [[UNIVAC I]].<ref name=Ogilvie /> Hopper also served as UNIVAC director of Automatic Programming Development for Remington Rand. The UNIVAC was the first known large-scale electronic computer to be on the market in 1951.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Camp |first=Carole Ann|date=2004 |title=American women inventors |location=Berkeley Heights, NJ |publisher=Enslow Publishers |isbn=978-0-7660-1538-8 |oclc=48398924}}</ref>

When Hopper recommended the development of a new programming language that would use entirely English words, she "was told very quickly that [she] couldn't do this because computers didn't understand English." Still, she persisted. "It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols", she explained. "So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code."<ref>{{cite web |title=Women in History |url=https://stories.vassar.edu/2017/assets/images/170706-legacy-of-grace-hopper-hopperpdf.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171006153044/http://stories.vassar.edu/2017/assets/images/170706-legacy-of-grace-hopper-hopperpdf.pdf |archive-date=October 6, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Her idea was not accepted for three years. In the meantime, she published her first paper on the subject, compilers, in 1952. In the early 1950s, the company was taken over by the [[Remington Rand]] corporation, and it was while she was working for them that her original [[compiler]] work was done. The program was known as the A compiler and its first version was [[A-0 programming language|A-0]].<ref name="mcgee2004" />{{rp|11}}

In 1952, she had an operational link-loader, which at the time was referred to as a compiler. She later said that "Nobody believed that", and that she "had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic."<ref>{{cite web |last=Schreiber |first=Philip |date=March–April 1987 |title=The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper |url=http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-wit.html |website=Yale University |language=en-US |access-date=April 5, 2023}}</ref>

In 1954 Hopper was named the company's first director of automatic programming.<ref name=Ogilvie/> Beginning in 1954, Hopper's work was influenced by the [[Laning and Zierler system]], which was the first compiler to accept algebraic notation as input.<ref name="Beyer_ch10">{{cite book |last=Beyer |first=Kurt W. |year=2012 |title=Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=9780262517263 |chapter=10}}</ref> Her department released some of the first compiler-based programming languages, including [[MATH-MATIC]] and [[FLOW-MATIC]].<ref name=Ogilvie />

Hopper said that her compiler [[A-0 System|A-0]], "translated mathematical notation into machine code. Manipulating symbols was fine for mathematicians but it was no good for data processors who were not symbol manipulators. Very few people are really symbol manipulators. If they are, they become professional mathematicians, not data processors. It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols. So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code. That was the beginning of [[COBOL]], a [[computer language]] for data processors. I could say 'Subtract income tax from pay' instead of trying to write that in octal code or using all kinds of symbols. [[COBOL]] is the major language used today in data processing."<ref>{{cite book |last=Gilbert |first=Lynn |date=1981 |title=Women of Wisdom: Grace Murray Hopper |url=https://books.apple.com/us/book/grace-murray-hopper/id1197529986 |publisher=Lynn Gilbert, Inc.}}</ref>

=== COBOL ===
[[File: Grace Hopper and UNIVAC.jpg|thumb|Hopper at the [[UNIVAC I]] console, c. 1960]]
In the spring of 1959, computer experts from industry and government were brought together in a two-day conference known as the Conference on Data Systems Languages ([[CODASYL]]). Hopper served as a technical consultant to the committee, and many of her former employees served on the short-term committee that defined the new language [[COBOL]] (an acronym for '''CO'''mmon '''B'''usiness-'''O'''riented '''L'''anguage). The new language extended Hopper's FLOW-MATIC language with some ideas from the [[IBM]] equivalent, [[COMTRAN]].  Hopper's belief that programs should be written in a language that was close to English (rather than in [[machine code]] or in languages close to machine code, such as [[assembly language]]s) was captured in the new business language, and COBOL went on to be the most ubiquitous business language to date.<ref name="KWB">{{cite book |last=Beyer |first=Kurt W. |year=2009 |title=Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-01310-9}}</ref> Among the members of the committee that worked on COBOL was [[Mount Holyoke College]] alumna [[Jean E. Sammet]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Lohr |first=Steve |date=June 4, 2017 |title=Jean Sammet, Co-Designer of a Pioneering Computer Language, Dies at 89 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/technology/obituary-jean-sammet-software-designer-cobol.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/technology/obituary-jean-sammet-software-designer-cobol.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |access-date=April 5, 2023}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

From 1967 to 1977, Hopper served as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy's Office of Information Systems Planning and was promoted to the rank of [[Captain (United States O-6)|captain]] in 1973. She developed validation software for COBOL and its compiler as part of a COBOL standardization program for the entire Navy.<ref name="KBW" />

=== Standards ===
In the 1970s, Hopper advocated for the Defense Department to replace large, centralized systems with networks of small, distributed computers. Any user on any computer node could access common databases on the network.<ref name="mcgee2004">{{cite book |last=McGee |first=Russell C. |year=2004 |title=My Adventure with Dwarfs: A Personal History in Mainframe Computers |url=http://www.cbi.umn.edu/hostedpublications/pdf/McGee_Book-4.2.2.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070613163123/http://www.cbi.umn.edu/hostedpublications/pdf/McGee_Book-4.2.2.pdf |archive-date=2007-06-13 |url-status=live |publisher=Charles Babbage Institute |location=University of Minnesota |access-date=May 7, 2014}}</ref>{{rp|119}} She developed the implementation of [[standardization|standards]] for testing computer systems and components, most significantly for early [[programming language]]s such as [[FORTRAN]] and COBOL. The Navy tests for conformance to these standards led to significant convergence among the programming language dialects of the major computer vendors. In the 1980s, these tests (and their official administration) were assumed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), known today as the [[National Institute of Standards and Technology]] (NIST).