Grace Hopper was a pioneer computer scientist before such a profession ever existed. Brought up in comfortable surroundings in Manhattan and schooled at Vassar, Hopper brought her sharp intellect, organizational powers and an unrelenting drive to her work. She started her career at the Harvard Computation Laboratory at the beginning of World War II, working under “Commander” Howard Aiken, who Beyer portrays as a headstrong, demanding and unsympathetic manager – who would do anything for you if you were completely devoted to him and your work, or nothing at all if you antagonized him. And as Beyer shows, the latter was typically much easier to accomplish than the former.
Against all odds, Hopper, a woman in what was an overwhelmingly male environment, gained Aiken’s trust, admiration, and even his friendship in the several years they were colleagues. At the time, the laboratory was overseen by the U.S. Navy, where Hopper would spend many of her future years, retiring officially in 1967 as a Rear Admiral. The Navy was interested in computers to aid in ballistics, and other military applications, and Hopper spearheaded many of their efforts.
At Harvard, Hopper developed and refined the process of “debugging” a computer and “hacking,” – the latter of which, in its early days, was simply the writing of computer code. She also, at Aiken’s request, wrote the manual for their Mark I computer. In 1947, at Aiken’s directive, Hopper helped oversee the convening of the Harvard Symposium on computers, which for the first time blended academics in the budding computer field with industry executives to brainstorm, network, and discuss industry innovations. It was a seminal event in post-World War II high tech.
Following the War, Hopper worked first for the Eckert-Mauchly computer firm – the innovators of the ENIAC computer. Under financial duress, the firm was later acquired by the Remington Rand Corporation, where Hopper was a primary participant in the UNIVAC computer project. The UNIVAC subsequently went head-to-head with IBM’s 705 computer series, and as Beyer writes, IBM’s superior financial position gained through its access to MIT’s SAGE system (a broad-based U.S. anti-missile network) helped IBM to surpass Remington Rand for good. IBM’s gaining of the MIT contract is shown to be a turning point in the commercial application of computer technology. It was due in part to such stresses that Hopper both succumbed to, and eventually conquered an addiction to alcohol that at one point landed her in a Philadelphia jail on a drunk and disorderly charge.
Beyer writes convincingly about Hopper’s ability to turn convention on its head by not only surviving, but thriving as one of the very few women in computer science. And her development of COBOL computer language, which had primarily business applications, was arguably her greatest legacy. After retiring from the Navy, she concluded her computer career at Digital Equipment Corporation. Hopper also complemented her career by giving countless lectures on computer science. Her whole ethos was to communicate advances in computer science to wherever and whenever she could.
The variety of source material Beyer uses is impressive, and for the most part his narrative is entertaining and informative – though there are technological passages throughout that will seem arcane to the lay-reader. But overall, Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age succeeds as the authoritative account of this extraordinarily gifted and accomplished computer pioneer.
