Grace Brewster Hopper was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. She was a pioneer of computer programming. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and used this theory to develop the FLOW-MATIC programming language and COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today. She was also one of the first programmers on the Harvard Mark I computer. She is credited with writing the first computer manual, “A Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator.”
Hopper in 1984
Hopper's name on a duty roster for the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard, which built and operated the Mark I
Hopper in a computer room in Washington, D.C., 1978, photographed by Lynn Gilbert
Hopper at the UNIVAC I console, c. 1960
COBOL is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments. COBOL is still widely used in applications deployed on mainframe computers, such as large-scale batch and transaction processing jobs. Many large financial institutions were developing new systems in the language as late as 2006, but most programming in COBOL today is purely to maintain existing applications. Programs are being moved to new platforms, rewritten in modern languages or replaced with other software.
The COBOL 60 report to CODASYL (April 1960)
COBOL program deck of punched cards, from the 1970s