Microsoft Word Hopper Grace oral history. 1980. 102702026. final doc

 

 

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But it means changing people’s minds. It means upheavals in some organizations. The big 

speed-up will come when the next generation of young people come who have grown up with 

this stuff. We still have too many people at the tops of things in awe of their great big computer. 

And they’ve been so busy that they haven’t had time to find out about the new stuff.  

Pantages:  

Changing people’s minds runs straight through your career. Everybody that I 

talked to said you were very good at that. But you ran into some stumbling blocks. 

Hopper:  

You always run into some stumbling blocks. There are always people out there 

who are screaming about the future, and they just live out there and yell about the future and try 

to explain to people why it is to their advantage to do things differently. And it takes you a little 

time to change people’s minds. You have to show them why it’s going to be to their advantage. 

COBOL’s Ancestors and the Rise of Data Processing Programming 

Pantages:  

 Going back to your time with Eckert and Mauchly and then Remington Rand –

Remington Rand wasn’t stodgy, but it was a company that wasn’t conscious of programming.  

Hopper:  

Well, Art Draper was and he was sent down from Remington Rand as the 

manager in Philadelphia…of the Univac operation. And he listened. 

Pantages:  

What happened? At this point, you came in and you were working for Mauchly. 

And then a couple of years later, Remington Rand came in. What happened during this? 

Hopper:  

They split the two groups, and Mauchly’s group went toward the mathematic 

engineering side and my group went toward the data processing side.  

Pantages:  

When you went to work for Mauchly… 

Hopper:  

We were still doing mathematical scientific engineering problems. But it was the 

influence of Betty Holberton’s sort/merge generator and the beginning of the swing toward the 

data processing problem. The first one I did was on finding out how long extended insurance 

would go on once someone stopped paying their premiums. In life insurance they still do that. In 

most policies, they use the cash value to pay for extended insurance until that runs out. Then 

there was a slow but sure swing toward data processing. And I found the data processing more 

interesting. I had all the math and everything, but the data processing was more fun because it 

had people in it, and because you had things like union contracts that made sense but were not 

logical from a mathematical point of view.  

Pantages:  

What customers did you work with? 

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Hopper:  

One of the first ones we went to was Carborundum, putting in the computer. 

Those were all started with UNIVAC I.  

Pantages:  

Earlier on, what was it like working with Mauchly? What kind of influence did he 

have? What arguments did you have with him? 

Hopper:  

I don’t know as we ever really had any arguments about it.  

Pantages:  

The reason I said that was that you said you and Mauchly didn’t see eye to eye 

about compiler development. 

Hopper:  

His group was heading in one direction and mine was heading in another. There 

was competition there. But it wasn’t from Mauchly; it was the people working for him. People like 

Tolly Holt.  

Pantages:  

What was Mauchly like in terms of the things you learned from him, exchanged 

with him?  

Hopper:  

Oh Mauchly was always willing to try anything. If it sounds at all reasonable, try it. 

So many people say “no” to begin with. He never did that. He always encouraged you to try 

things. If you had a bright idea, try it. He let people try things, let them have computer time, and 

time to do things. He encouraged innovation, the technical terminology I guess. He knew we 

were in a new world. He had full recognition of that. And he never let personalities bother him. 

He was nice to everybody, encouraged everybody, he was a good leader. 

Pantages:  

Were there concepts you picked up from him? 

Hopper:  

I don’t think of any. 

Pantages:  

Your group was the Automatic Programming Group.  

Hopper:  

I didn’t name it that. The sales department did. I didn’t feel it was automatic 

programming because the individual still had to design it. It just made the computer do it, that’s 

all. I always disliked that phrase. We still had to tell the compiler what to compile. It wasn’t 

automatic. The way the sales department saw it was we had the computer writing the programs; 

they thought it was automatic.  

Pantages:  

It was a glamorous concept.  

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Hopper:  

Typical of sales. 

Pantages:  

Now, you were a saleslady. 

Hopper:  

Only of ideas, though. I’ve always seen computers as a tool, as much as a 

screwdriver or a lever or anything else 

Pantages:  

Someone told me that the way you got management to accept an idea was to go 

out and get some users interested in it and they’d sell it for you. 

Hopper:  

I did that one once. US Steel, Westinghouse, Metropolitan Life thoroughly backed 

the idea of English-language programs. We might not have done it if we hadn’t had them with 

us.  

Pantages: 

 What else was marketing management reticent to do, because they couldn’t 

comprehend it? 

Hopper:  

I don’t think that it was so much they couldn’t comprehend it… because they had 

been selling punch card equipment and typewriters for years. I think nobody knew what it was 

going to be like to sell a computer. I don’t think anybody had any concept before we really got 

started just how much it was going to take to write the software for any given job, and I don’t 

think anyone fully realized how much the maintenance job was going to be. I don’t think the 

whole impact of the computer was fully realized until after they got out there. And I don’t think 

anybody realized – either in the companies, not just Univac, but IBM and all the rest of them – 

what an impact computers would have on management of the company that started to use one. 

And thought that through. So there were an awful lot of things to cope with. Because it not only 

affected the people who ran the computer and wrote the programs, but it could ultimately affect 

the structure of the company using the computer. I don’t think anyone was aware of that ahead 

of time until they got out there. It had to happen before you learned to cope with them. 

Pantages:  

How did your thinking evolve in that time? The English-language compiler was a 

natural demand from your standpoint. 

Hopper:  

I think I always recognized as soon as I started working with people and talking 

with people that there were some people who were totally oriented and perfectly happy using 

symbols, and there were other people who were not. That’s where English came from. You talk 

to people in general and some of them will take abbreviations and symbols and manipulate 

them like mad and others won’t at all. Some people get to be mathematicians and some get to 

be managers, or something. There are two kinds of people, some symbol-oriented and some 

not.  Sounds simplistic but it’s really true.  

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