Interviewith grace Murray Hopper interviewers: Beth Luebert, Henny Tropp date of interview: 5 July 1972 place of interview: nm

Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977 

36

 

Grace Murray Hopper Interview, July 5, 1972, Archives Center, National Museum of American History 

 

 

And we aren't encouraging imagination. If somebody has imagination and thinks up new 

concepts and new ideas, we are very apt to put a committee around them and cut them 

down to size. We don't tend to grow any giants any more we try to cut them back to the 

average to make them like everybody else. We are afraid of giants, so we are not growing 

any. We need a few giants. 

TROPP: 

Well, in talking about giants, we have to look at the Mark I as one of the early giant steps 

forward. 

HOPPER: 

Right. You could not sell it… 

TROPP: 

Howard Aiken saw that idea. 

HOPPER: 

Right. You could not grow an Aiken, or a Mauchly or an Eckert or a Forrester today. 

Because he would be immediately surrounded by a committee that would cut him down 

to size. 

TROPP: 

Well how did Aiken originally sell the idea for something as revolutionary? 

HOPPER: 

He sold it. He showed logically that it would work. 

TROPP: 

Well lots of people are able to do that and still not sell ideas. What did Aiken have going 

for him? 

HOPPER: 

It was wartime. It was wartime and there was a war coming. All new ideas were being 

implemented. Anything that might help and might be useful (they were grabbing for 

everything?). 

TROPP: 

For additional information, contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [e-mail]

 

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Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977 

37

 

Grace Murray Hopper Interview, July 5, 1972, Archives Center, National Museum of American History 

 

 

Well one of the things as I look back through the literature of the… 

HOPPER: 

And he was a very convincing salesman. 

TROPP: 

…you know, the wartime development of computers is that there was a lot of thinking 

within the American military during the War, that this was going to be a fairly short War 

and they wanted things only that would help immediately. 

HOPPER: 

Not in the Navy. 

TROPP: 

Maybe the Navy was different then but the computer looked like a long range assist. 

HOPPER: 

They had to have it to get those rocket tables. They had to have it. They had to have for 

the radar equipment. They Navy was building them for crypto analysis. They had to have 

it. It was the Navy that helped find the money that set up the RA Office in St. Paul after 

the War was over when they took the whole of Communications Annex and moved them 

to St. Paul. It was the Navy that helped them find the money. I was there when they had 

them go ahead. 

TROPP: 

You have looked at some of those documents haven't you Beth? 

LUEBBERT: 

Yes. 

TROPP: 

The ones that Dr. (Waitland?) gave me. 

LUEBBERT: 

Yes. 

For additional information, contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [e-mail]

 

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Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977 

38

 

Grace Murray Hopper Interview, July 5, 1972, Archives Center, National Museum of American History 

 

 

TROPP: 

Or help me get. He was part of that group. 

HOPPER: 

No. I think in most cases the Services, the people who should have been looking into it, 

were looking into it. The rest of them were like just the rest of the people today. They 

weren't looking into the future and they weren't going to change their minds. 

TROPP: 

Well I'm thinking in terms of the first resistance that Eckert and Mauchly had a year 

before they submitted a proposal and finally got ENIAC going. It was resisted on the 

grounds that it was for some time in the future. 

HOPPER: 

For the last three years, over in the Department of the Navy, there have been a group of 

people that have been saying that we ought to put a mini computer on board ship for 

administrative purposes, an on-line computer console, for administrative work. 

But there's another group of people who have been saying you can't do this. So for three 

years they have been writing each other memos. One saying you want to do this, you 

want to do that. We can do this, we can do that. The other saying you can't do it won't be 

any use to us, don't spend the money on it. 

I told the Admiral one day, I finally said, look, add up the amount of money you are 

spending having those people writing each other memos. For each of those men who are 

writing memos, for their secretaries and the stuff going back and forth. I said, it would be 

much cheaper if you bought a computer and put in on board ship and found out. And he 

said, that's an idea. (LAUGHTER). And so they are going to do it. So this is what you get 

in any bureaucracy, even in wartime. One group of people says let's go this way and the 

other group of people who aren't going to benefit by it or won't be able to cut their budget 

or something, are going to oppose it. And it takes somebody to say, let's stop it and do it. 

It still happens. 

TROPP: 

I guess the reason, one of the reasons I asked you that question was that again look back 

and retrospect is always dangerous, Harvard just seems to be an unlikely place for 

something as revolutionary as the Mark I to have occurred. 

And that's why I wondered about…(voice fades out). 

For additional information, contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [e-mail]

 

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