The Future Belongs to Those Who Believe In The beauty Of Their Dreams.
Grace Hopper was born with a desire to discover how things worked. At age seven, her curiosity led her to dismantle every clock, in her childhood home! When she grew up, she eventually completed a doctorate in mathematics at Yale University. During World II, Grace joined the navy and was assigned to the navy’s computation project at Harvard University. There she met “Harvard Mark I,” the first fully functional digital computing machine. Once again, Grace set about to learn how something worked.
Unlike the clocks in her childhood home, however, ”Harvard Mark I” was composed of 750,000 parts and 500 miles of wire! While most experts believed computers were too complicated and expensive for anyone but highly trained scientists to use, Grace had her own idea. Her goal was to make them easier to operate, so more people could use them. Her work gave rise to the programming language COBOL.
As late as 1963, each large computer had its own unique master language. Grace became an advocate for a universally accepted language. She had the audacity to envision a day when computers would be small enough to sit on a desk more powerful than Harvard Mark I, and useful in offices, schools, and at home. At the age of seventy nine, she retired from the navy with a rank of rear admiral. But more important to her, she had to see her dream of personal computers come true!
