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 

24

 

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

 

 

care what's right or wrong, he's wired this way. If you are going to work with him you 

must realize how he is wired. Dick was, I suppose, was a little ahead of his game. He 

would be like the young people today, what he thought was right, was right with no 

concession to any individual.  If you understood Aiken and understood how he was 

wired, he was excellent to work with. I never had any difficulty. But if you tried to tell 

him what was right, heaven help you. I mean he was wired another way. He was totally 

involved in getting a job done for the Navy and if one of the enlisted men made a mistake 

during the night on the computer or went to sleep or something, bawled the hell out of 

him. Well Dick would say you shouldn't treat a human being that way and as far as the 

Commander was concerned he was supposed to be on duty and doing a job. In fact 

(                 ?) himself sometimes. 

TROPP: 

I think he still does. They still (            ?). (LAUGHTER). 

HOPPER: 

Aiken was doing a job for the Navy. He was a Commander in the Navy. I don't think he 

ever demanded any more of anybody, anything more of anyone then he would have 

aboard ship and it's true we were on dry land but we needed this and required this same 

discipline. Once you realized that and realized what was going on and understood it, there 

was no difficulty. But for instance, you couldn't get Bloch he was just too darn young. He 

couldn't understand it and I would try futilely to explain to him that the Commander was 

wired that way. Now up comes (Berkley?) from (Darwin?) and he's just a civilian 

computer. He doesn't know much about the Navy. He gets scared to death of Aiken so he 

starts sending me little notes. Stamps them, dates and stamps them and writes little 

memos and puts them on the Commander's desk. Well half the time the Commander 

would throw them away. (LAUGHTER).  He come back and say, why didn't you have 

the guts to come and tell me. Because we used to plague the hell out of Berkley. I can 

remember the day when we sent one of those boys, we got one of the rolls of toilet paper, 

we date stamped all the pages and we sent it upstairs and sent Berkley up there, because 

he date stamped everything. (LAUGHTER). We started a tradition before he went to bed 

at night, he would date stamp the sheets so he'd know where he was the next morning. 

(LAUGHTER). 

(Arnold?) was another one that was bracky. See the shore based jobs, they tucked all the 

bracky people in them. 

(Arnold?) was a diet fanatic. He had one stage when he ate raw liver, cut into small 

pieces and you put it in a flask and break an egg in it and drink it. It nauseated Aiken. 

And the next one he got was carrot juice. He stopped eating liver and eggs and started 

drinking carrot juice. 

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 

25

 

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

 

 

Well, he was then Senior Officer (               ?) and the Captain went off, I mean the 

Commander went off to Washington and somehow or other (Arnold's?) carrot juice got 

hidden behind the books in the Commander's bookcase. 

Well when the Commander came back, (Arnold?) went crying to him and complained 

about how the crew had hidden his carrot juice. And Aiken went up to the ceiling and 

said, well if you can't run the crew you shouldn't be a Lieutenant Commander. He was 

then a Lieutenant Commander. You should be able to run, manage, your crew and 

discipline your crew, I'm not going to do anything about it for you. And then later Aiken 

finds the carrot juice in his book case and he carefully took out each can and threw it in 

the waste basket. (LAUGHTER). 

Poor Arnold out behind the glass, looking and watching what happened and he didn't 

even dare protest. 

Ask Bloch incidentally sometime when you are talking to him about the time he made a 

(m       strip?). 

TROPP: 

Okay. 

HOPPER: 

Bloch had a tape all wound up, you know how fast the tapes spun around, (        ?) and I 

said, Dick, you can't do that. Oh yes, I can do that. And I said, Bloch you are going to 

make a (m        strip?) and he did. (LAUGHTER). You couldn't tell Bloch anything 

either. He carefully took the two ends out and fastened it all together and he had a 

(m         strip?). 

He got it out the machine room. It was a long tape and he got one of the enlisted men to 

help him unwind it and he said it wasn't going to be a (m        strip?). I told him it was 

going to be a (m          strip?). He changed the ends. 

TROPP: 

Just one twist, that will do it. 

HOPPER: 

Well, it's the way you pull them out you see and put them on the thing. I said it was 

a…(voice fades out). (LAUGHTER). 

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 

26

 

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

 

 

One catch of course, was that I was older than any of them except the Commander you 

see. In fact, before I got there Bloch and Campbell had tried to bribe each other to sit next 

to me. Because one of them had to sit next to me. 

I think it ended up that, I think Campbell paid Bloch five bucks to sit next to me. 

(LAUGHTER). They heard this darn old gray haired old school teacher was coming. 

(LAUGHTER). 

As a matter of fact, the off time involved such things as, we were all quite used to getting 

kind of irked at Bloch and a Navy officer can't go out of doors without his cap. So when 

it came four o'clock and they knew Bloch wanted to go out on a date, he couldn't find his 

cap and nobody would tell him where his cap was. 

As a matter of fact it was (             ?), it was up on the pipes in the machine room. 

(LAUGHTER). 

And finally we discovered the backyard of the Army Store Room which was next to the 

area the computer was in and they had lots of nice paper and stuff. Very hard to get paper 

and stuff during wartime. And (Verdunk?) and I found a whole carton of nice graph paper 

and we were liberating it and the Commander came up and asked us what we were doing. 

We said we were getting some graph paper. And I can remember what he said, he said, 

well you better leave one pack. The Army may not be able to count but they can tell the 

difference between none and some. (LAUGHTER). 

So he made us leave one pack. (LAUGHTER). So that any time off was very brief and it 

was usually, it turned into pranks of one sort or another, I would say. A comic relief 

almost. Like the cap and the toilet paper and things like that. 

TROPP: 

In some of the cartoons I noted, you drew and the comic nurse… 

HOPPER: 

Did I give you the one of the machine unit chewing up the table? 

TROPP: 

No. 

HOPPER: 

I guess that' still …(voice fades out). I drew a whole set of things in which I had the, I 

had little cars traveling through the machine and each car was worried in why and why 

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

 

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