Grace Hopper: Computer Scientist

Grace Hopper: Computer Scientist — page 3
computer company had asked Hopper to write coding instructions to run programs on its Binary Automatic Computer BINAC which was being developed for Northrop Aircraft Corporation’s secret Snark Missile project BINAC was able to perform high-speed arithmetic and was the world’s first computer that contained stored programs It contained approximately 700 vacuum tubes and was too large to easily move once it was set up Each workday the 42-year-old Hopper lived in a world of octal converting base-ten numbers into The First Computer English mathematician Charles Babbage is credited with being among the first people to talk about building a calculating machine In the early 1820s Babbage was frustrated with the unreliability of printed tables used for calculations Such tables commonly were used for everything from navigation to banking to construction Yet the tables were not perfect They contained errors caused by miscopying or miscalculations Babbage dreamed of a way to automate creation of these tables which would remove such errors He believed machines unlike humans would not make mistakes in their calculations In 1822 he drew up designs for a difference engine that would add numbers However because he lacked funding and a skilled machinist who could craft it to his specifications he was not able to build it Babbage had assistance in his work from young mentee Ada Lovelace In writing about Babbage’s designs Lovelace described how codes could be created so the machine could handle letters and symbols as well as numbers She also came up with the theory of looping which is when a computer repeats a series of instructions For these and other contributions Lovelace is often referred to as the first computer programmer 6