Grace Hopper co-invented and programmed one of the first computers ever made even before creating the first compiler. Was there anything this woman couldn't do?
Hopper, along with Howard Aiken designed the MARK series of computers at the Harvard University in 1944. This computer looked nothing like the PCs of today. It was a huge, noisy machine with clicking metal parts which stood at 55 feet long and 8 feet tall. The computer was of a massive weight of 5 metric tons and contained nearly 760,000 individual parts.
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| A picture of the MARK 1 computer |
Hopper was a US Navy rear Admiral and this computer was used by the US Navy for gunnery and ballistic calculations, among others. The computer was in operation up until 1959. The computer was controlled by pre-punched tape, which was how the early code was written. It could carry out simple mathematical operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division with previous result memory.
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| Admiral Hopper typing code for the MARK 1 |
The computer had unique subroutines for logarithms and trigonometric functions and could use numbers containing 23 decimal places! The data was stored and counted mechanically using 1200 rotary dial switches, 3000 decimal storage wheels and 500 miles of wire. Its electromagnetic relays were in place to classify the machine as a relay computer. The output was displayed on an electric typewriter type device. This was a massive system which had only slightly more functions than the scientific calculators used today. The Mark I was very slow by today's standards also, requiring 3-5 seconds for a simple operation such as multiplication.
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This was such a giant step forward in engineering technology. Decades of research, work and innovation contributed to the computers used today, however without Grace Hopper, the revolution would not have begun
By Sophie Wicks
References
[1] http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa052198.htm
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