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 

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

 

 

not? People sitting in them and things like that. Explained how the machine worked. That 

was the Mark II. 

TROPP: 

I think on Monday we were sitting there laughing again over some of your definitions. 

Things that you wrote, some of the verse. 

HOPPER: 

I had a whole set of cartoons on the different parts of the computer. I had a lot of different 

kinds of bugs. The (         ?)mechanism was of course the dragon who chewed the holes 

…(voice fades out). 

And I had one set of gremlins. Of course gremlins were (                      ?), they came over 

on the planes that came back. And I had one gremlin that had a nose that picked up holes 

and put them back in the tape. (LAUGHTER). 

You see if the tape got on the floor, if there were any hole on the floor and the tape got on 

the floor, those things would get back into position on the tape and stay there. And 

frequently we did find bugs that were nothing but the fact that a hole had gotten back into 

the hole. So this one gremlin had a snout that was just like the things you used to lift 

around coal or wood stoves and he put the holes back in the tape. 

I had a whole bunch of gremlins. They used to live on a blackboard with some of my 

…(voice fades out). 

But that was the relief if anything. It was very much affected by and aimed at the things 

that were going on. You see, getting food was a difficult proposition. There was a dead 

end street around from the Laboratory, there was a "greasy spoon" as I suppose you 

would call it. A cafeteria, most of the time we had to eat there. 

We were all in rooming houses because the subway didn't run on account of, at night, on 

account of after midnight I guess, or eleven o'clock, on account of the wartime. 

So we couldn't live over in Boston, we had to live in Cambridge and there was nothing 

but rental houses. I remember they were quite a way from the Supply School. We had no 

way of cooking anything or doing anything, so getting food was quite important and once 

a week we sent one of the enlisted men around to the (              ?) building to get us 

cigarettes and such things we could get. 

But we didn't have ration stamps because we were supposed to eat at the main mess 

which we could never get to. We only got ration stamps when we were on leave, and it 

was rough rounding up food. 

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 

28

 

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

 

 

All of living was difficult. There wasn't any time to explore the future. There wasn't 

anything too important about it. Tomorrow was the nearest we thought about it then… 

(voice fades out). 

TROPP: 

I guess, then in terms… 

HOPPER: 

Day to day, very much. 

TROPP: 

…of the environment, when I talk to people, realizing that they were in the middle of a 

major revolution, this really doesn't happen until after the War. The realization… 

HOPPER: 

No. We were in the same revolution, if you will, as radar. Remember this was all starting, 

we knew about it. 

TROPP: 

All of them are related. 

HOPPER: 

All this tremendous wartime development, weapon development, as far as thinking 

beyond it to its civilian application, not yet. No, it was after the wartime development. 

TROPP: 

As you look back now from all your experience in and around computers, back to Mark I, 

what would you say it's most significant contributions were and what do you think are 

some of the main things that got lost? 

HOPPER: 

Before I go back to that, there was something (ahead?) because I went home on leave and 

I told my dad about what we were doing and what the computer was like. 

Now dad had been in the insurance business since he got out of college in May of (94?). 

He was, his father was President of the Great American Insurance Company which was 

then (                  ?), and then dad went in (              ?) here and then later became an 

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 

29

 

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

 

 

insurance broker with his brother. And he saw, he mentioned to me when I went home on 

leave, the concept of using the computers in insurance. 

Now whether he had gone to New York and mentioned that to any of the insurance 

companies, I'll never know, but that was the first mention that I ever heard of using the 

computer in industry. It was from my own father. 

TROPP: 

Was he thinking in terms of record keeping, question answering, this kind of thing? 

HOPPER: 

Yes. Record keeping and computing premiums and getting premium notices out. 

TROPP: 

I think what you're talking about is also indicative of Aiken's… 

HOPPER: 

That was back in 1944. 

TROPP: 

…Right, of Aiken's thinking even during that same period, because somebody mentioned 

either Bloch or Campbell, talking to him about getting higher speed printers, and his 

reaction was… 

HOPPER: 

We did run that one problem eventually you know. 

TROPP: 

…Yes, but his reaction to higher speed printers was, why bother to have it printed any 

faster than somebody can read it. The idea that you might want to print something so that 

a million people might read it simultaneously had not occurred to him. 

HOPPER: 

That would not be part of record keeping. You still don't need it. 

TROPP: 

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

 

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