6 minute read
Across the Spectrum
Admiral Grace Hopper, who led the Navy into the age of computers, was born in New York City on Dec. 9, 1906. Like Maria Mitchell, she had a father who encouraged her to study whatever she wanted. So she majored in math at Vassar, went to Yale and got a Masters and a Ph.D. and returned to Vassar as an associate professor in mathematics. In 1943 she went into the Navy and was assigned to the ordnance computation project at Harvard, where she worked on the first computer in the United States, the Mark I. She later noted that, "This miracle of modern science could store 72 words and perform three additions every second." She later worked on the Univac 1--about half the size and operating a thousand times faster! And she then went on to faster and more sophisticated computers until she died in 1992. Grace Hopper ... came to be called the "Grand Lady of Software," "Amazing Grace," and "Grandma COBOL." After World War II she left active duty and worked for Sperry Rand on the Univac I, but she stayed in the naval reserves and retired in 1966 at the age of 60. She didn't stay retired very long, because in 1967 she was recalled to active duty and promoted to captain by President Lyndon Johnson. In 1983 she was given flag rank as a commodore and in 1985 she was promoted to Rear Admiral,
Grace Hopper Special Collections, Vassar College Libraries
making herone of the few women admirals in the history of the United States Navy. She retired for a second time in August 1986 at the age of 80, in a ceremony aboard the U .S.S. Constitution in Boston. She then worked for Digital Equipment until a few months before her death at age 85. Grace Hopper's contributions to the nation were not forgotten, and on Sept. 6, 1997 the U.S.S. Hopper (DOG 70), a highly computerized Aegis class destroyer, was commissioned in San Francisco. This marked the first time since WW II, and the second time in naval history, that a warship was named for a woman from the Navy's own ranks. Grace Hopper is famous in the computer world for several reasons. One day when she was working on the Mark Il she found that an error was caused by a moth trapped in a relay. She removed it very carefully and taped it into the log book. Since then, computer problems are called "bugs," and the process by which they are fixed is called "de-bugging." Her most important contribution to the computer industry was her development of a programming language called COBOL--Common Business Oriented Language. Before COBOL, computer programming was a laborious process. During her lifetime, Admiral Hopper was given an incredible number of awards and honors, including 25 honorary degrees. She devoted much of her time to speaking to young people, and repeatedly said, "the most damaging phrase in the English language is: But we've always done it that way." To make her point about this, she always had a clock in her office that ran counterclockwise! When she lectured she frequently brought a long piece of wire or rope by which she visually explained such things as microseconds ( a millionth of a second) and nanoseconds ( a billionth of a second). She used the wire to show her students that an impulse traveled a foot in a nanosecond. When she died, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full honors, one of her friends said, "Well, Grace is now six nanoseconds under."
"The five 'W's" (12/16/99)
Nancy Alden
Not many people have the privilege of writing a column every week that appears in seven papers in my county, especially a column as wideranging as one that goes across the spectrum. I really do enjoy doing it, and am very pleased when a stranger, or a friend, tells me that they read it regularly, or at all! Years ago, when I was a journalism major, I was the editor of the college paper, and remember spending a part of each week at the printer's shop proofreading text that had been set on a linotype machine. I was always intrigued by how those machines worked. The operator would type on one for a while and then, after much clinking and clanging, a line of hot type would come sliding down a slot and eventually there would be your story. It was very easy to get burned by hot lead. I got to be pretty good at reading type upside down and from right to left. I learned about font sizes and picas and writing headlines that fit into columns. We were taught that a news story had to have "the five w' s --who, what, why, when and where, and sometimes how." We also learned that you should not interject any personal opinions into a story and that there were such things as "the laws oflibel." In those days television was brand new and largely unavailable. People depended on the newspapers and the radio for information about what was going on in the world. I took photographs and used a World War I surplus 4x5 Speed Graphic camera and did my own black-and-white processing. Several times I burned my fingers on hot flash bulbs. Word
processors and fax machines weren't part of the scene, and everything was very manual. There were several perks to being the editor, and the one thatlenjoyed the most was writing the editorials. I still have some of them, and am still very proud of my youthful opinions. IdenouncedtheKuKluxKlan(this was in South Carolina)andreceivedabookfromalocalJewishmerchantaboutthenewstate of Israel written by Ralph McGill, theeditoroftheAtlantaJournal and a great Southern liberal. I still have the book. I also lit into Senator Joseph McCarthy and denounced him as a demagogue, which is what he turned out to be. And I was one of the few Southerners who approved of President Truman's firing of General Douglas MacArthur. Hearing the news on the radio that HST had in fact defeated Mr. Dewey for President remains one of the memorable days ofmylife. Another advantage to being the editor was that I assigned myself the job of interviewing some interesting people who visited our campus. I played bridge with Ely Culbertson and still have an ace of spades that he autographed. WhenAliceMarblecameto lecture I had a good talk with her, and then we had a "hit" on the tennis court. She showed us how you could get a serve in while down on your knees! I interviewed numerous famous musicians and dancers, lecturers and politicians. Strom Thurmond was the govemorofSouth Carolina at that time, and he alwayscrunetothecampuson thedaythatwehadouroffice coffee hour because he liked to talk to the "guhls." He still does. One of the lecturers that I remember most vividly was a man named Hodding Carter, who was the editor of an unusual newspaper in Greenville, in the Mississippi Delta. He had a liberal attitude about racial matters which, of course, was then and still is a hot-button issue down there. There weren't many Southern newspaper editors of his kind in those days, or probably today, and he was a real inspiration to me.
I applied for and got a commission in the United States Navy, where I met a man named John Alden, who spoke for himself. My career as a pioneering newspaper correspondent was postponed for several decades, and that it why it is so much fun for me today! As we get into the new millennium, let's hope that newspapers are not consumed by virtual electronics and that the "five w' sand the occasional how" will still be taught.
