Description
Kathleen Broome Williams looks at Hopper's entire naval career, from the time she joined the WAVES and was sent in 1943 to work on the Mark I computer at Harvard, where she became one of the country's first computer programmers. Thanks to this early Navy introduction to computing, the author explains, Hopper had a distinguished civilian career in commercial computing after the war, gaining fame for her part in the creation of COBOL.
The admiral's Navy days were far from over, however, and Williams tells how Hopper-already past retirement age-was recalled to active duty at the Pentagon in 1967 to standardize computer programming languages for Navy computers. Her temporary appointment lasted for nineteen years while she standardized COBOL for the entire department of defense. Based on extensive interviews with colleagues and family and on archival material never before examined, this biography not only illuminates Hopper's pioneering accomplishments in a field that came to be dominated by men, but provides a fascinating overview of computing from its beginnings in World War II to the late 1980s.
About the Author
Kathleen Broome Williams, a graduate of Wellesley College and Columbia University, holds a Ph.D. from City University of New York. She is the author of Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea, a North American Society for Oceanic History award winner, Secret Weapon: U.S. High-Frequency Direction Finding in the Battle of the Atlantic, and Improbable Warriors: Women Scientists and the U.S. Navy in World War II, which won a History of Science Society book award. Currently, she is a professor of history at Cogswell Polytechnical College in Sunnyvale, California, and lives in Oakland, CA.
Book Information
ISBN 9781591149781
Author Kathleen Broom Williams
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint Naval Institute Press
Publisher Naval Institute Press
Weight(grams) 399g
Dimensions(mm) 226mm * 152mm * 20mm