Hopper and the Compiler

There are slides devoted to this topic: Lecture 6b, pp. 48-50.

Websites

For an eloquent and concise introduction to Hopper’s life, personality and accomplishments (technical and otherwise), read this brief biography copied from the 1994 proceedings of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Visit the History of Computers site to read “The First Compiler of Grace Hopper,” a short article focused mostly on the programmer’s accomplishments.

For more information on Hopper, read the transcript of the Smithsonian Institution’s interview with Hopper, held by the Lemelson Center for the study of Invention and Innovation.

Videos

Skip to around the 9 minute mark of this 45-minute video to watch an interview with Kurt Beyer, the author of Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age.

If you’ve got less time, check out this one-minute video biography of Hopper for a quick introduction to her life.

Articles

Presented in 1952 to the Association for Computing Machinery, Grace Murray Hopper’s “The Education of a Computer” covers the possibilities for streamlining computer programming – in other words, making computers smarter, and letting humans do less grunt work. The lecture is pretty technical.