Grace Murray Hopper's Younger Years - Essay Example

The popular word ‘debugging’ was brought forward by Grace Hopper who she introduced to repair computer issues. Because of her personality and moving effect towards the work that she has done, she was referred to as “Amazing Grace”. In light of her works, the US Navy destroyer USS Hopper has been named after her. Also, the Cray XE6 “Hopper” supercomputer present at NERSC was named in her memory.

Grace Hopper received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University. She began teaching mathematics at Vassar in the year 1931 and then got promoted to the role of an associate professor 10 years later, in 1941. It was in 1949 that Grace Hopper became an employee of Eckert Mauchly Computer Corporation in the role of a senior mathematician where she came in close collaboration with a team that had the task to develop the UNIVAC I. During the early periods of the 1950s, this company was bought out by the Remington Rand Corporation (Richard 1981). This was the time when she was still employed with Eckert Mauchly Computer Corporation that she came up with her original compiler work which was a novelty in those times. This compiler was later named the A compiler and its initial version was called A-0.

A conference by the name of CODASYL was held in 1959 which brought together computer experts and geniuses from related industries and the government. Grace Hopper was appointed as the technical consultant of this committee which essentially laid the basis of COBOL. The new language took some of its ideas from the IBM equivalent by the name of COMTRAN. COBOL aimed to write programs in a language that was closer to the English dictum than the machine-oriented basis. This was the reason why COBOL was seen as the single most ubiquitous business language and is still considered so to this day. As a captain in the Navy, Grace Hopper developed a number of validation software for the new programming language (COBOL) as well as its compiler which was a part of the standardization program that went ahead and helped the entire Navy.

During her time at Harvard University in the year 1947, Grace Hopper along with her associates discovered a moth stuck within a relay. After they had done a small operation, Grace Hopper was able to remark this month as “debugging” the system. She brought the term computer bug to popularity even though she cannot be credited with coining the same. Also, Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid (Dickason 1992). Since generals and admirals used to quite frequently enquire her about the long extent of time it took for the satellite communications to revert, she began handing out certain pieces of wire which used to be nearly 1 foot long. This was due to the measurement done on the light that traveled within one nanosecond. She exclaimed that this length of time in nanoseconds was essentially the maximum speed of signals that might travel within a vacuum. She also suggested that signals would travel slowly within the wires that were set up on her part as a visual aid.

Grace Hopper’s legacy turned out to be quite a popular one for women. Since Grace Hopper introduced mathematics as a ‘cool’ and trendy subject, it started to come out just like she envisioned within women in different parts of the world. This is the reason why her name is considered an inspiring factor in the formation of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. This conference is held on an annual basis which brings designers to the fore through their research and career interests. Mostly this comprises women within the world of computing, doing their best to make their mark. Grace Hopper’s name will always be remembered as a personality that changed the shape of computers once and for all. She demonstrated that women too can make a name for themselves if they tried hard.