Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age

A Hollywood biopic about the life of computer pioneer Grace Murray Hopper(1906--1992) would go like this: a young professor abandons the ivy-covered walls of academia toserve her country in the Navy after Pearl Harbor and finds herself on the front lines of thecomputer revolution. She works hard to succeed in the all-male computer industry, is almost broughtdown by personal problems but survives them, and ends her career as a celebrated elder stateswomanof computing, a heroine to thousands, hailed as the inventor of computer programming. ThroughoutHopper's later years, the popular media told this simplified version of her life story. InGrace Hopper and the Invention of the InformationAge, Kurt Beyer reveals a more authentic Hopper, a vibrant and complex woman whose careerparalleled the meteoric trajectory of the postwar computer industry. Both rebellious andcollaborative, Hopper was influential in male-dominated military and business organizations at atime when women were encouraged to devote themselves to housework and childbearing. Hopper'sgreatest technical achievement was to create the tools that would allow humans to communicate withcomputers in terms other than ones and zeroes. This advance influenced all future programming andsoftware design and laid the foundation for the development of user-friendly personalcomputers.

Kurt W. Beyer is a former professor at the United States Naval Academy and lectures regularly on the process of technological innovation.