Customer Reviews

Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age (Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation series)

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This book brought home to me the difference between history and biography. As a 50-year computer veteran (wrote my first program in 1959) I appreciated many of the firsts and trends that the author highlights. However, I got very little sense of Grace Hopper the person behind the technical and organizational achievements he celebrates. As an example, did she really just casually discard a marriage in order to enlist in the Navy? We're told she had a wonderful sense of humor but in the entire book there's only one example of an office prank she instigated. The author packs the last 20 years of her life into the last 25 pages of the book, and much of that was interspersed with retrospective material. Surely there was more to Cmdr Hopper's life in those years than her honors and awards, but we see none of it.

As history, however, the book misses one of Hopper's most important contributions -- the notion of an industry-wide standard. Hopper's work to convene the CODASYL group was the first of a long line of standards efforts (including ICANN and the rest of the Internet infrastructure) without which the Information Age would have withered for lack of cross-enterprise fertilization.

This is a great book. While it is from an `Academic' press, it is not at all pedantic or overbearing. In fact, it is a fascinating story of Grace Hopper and the amazing contribution that she and her team made to the development of computers. It also provides an insight into that development unlike any other. The fascinating aspect of this is that much of what we do today - from flow charting to debugging had to be invented and it was - by Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper. If you are at all interested in understanding the amazing tale of our computer development and the amazing impact that Grace Hopper had on that development, this is a must read!

What a fascinating woman. What a fascinating era. Kurt Beyer brings her story to life and explains much about the early days of computers and programming that most of us don't know and simply take for granted. Beyer blends history, technological information and human interest into this worthwhile read. Thank you.

An inspiring read for anyone who aims to achieve in spite of burdensome social constructs and overwhelming internal conflicts. By telling the story of Hopper's amazing journey to the top of the homogenous programming field, Beyer has presented us with a new and contrasting picture of the early years of computer innovation. This story of success, service and determination, in addition to the very readable prose not often associated with academic publications, make this an absolute read for even those with the slimmest of interest in technology.

This book launches on a flat note, but sails away after that on a great voyage. As intended, the story centers on Grace Murray Hopper, whose life is displayed as a major focal point of the emerging field of computer programming. After reading this book, I discovered a woman whose strength was in her marvelous adaptability in the years between 1944 and 1960, when computer hardware went through at least two generations, and programming changed from plugboard wiring to high-level source code.
Kurt Beyer does a good job of conveying the feeling of constantly being at the forefront of this technology, of always facing the unknown. Hopper used her imagination, creativity and knowledge to sculpt part of computer science out of that unknown. She did this better than others because she was also able to marshal the genius of others more successfully than most CEO's of the day (or of today, I suspect). And that included attracting brilliant women programmers, perhaps the first instance of a new field of study emerging with women as intellectual peers.
The book is well researched, judging by the bibliography as well as the many personal quotes we read. But you don't get a drippy Oprah bio of her family life and feelings. Instead, you get a story that Hopper herself would have enjoyed, I think.
On the other hand, I wish that the author had inserted a bit more of Hopper's technological accomplishments. We should see some of the machine code of the Mark I for evaluating the cosine function, and the flow charting used in the UNIVAC. Why not show an example of a COBOL program (I remember studying it)? It's probably on the web, but it should also be in a book like this. Speaking of the web, you might enjoy Mr. Beyer's lecture at [...]
Two small gripes. The first is a general one. Biographers and editors of people in mathematics, the sciences, and the technologies should be conversant in one of those fields. To make an analogy, a good biographer of Victor Hugo should be expected to have read the masterful novels, in French. Beyer seems to be in the proper field, since he flew F-14's. But still, the square root function is not a transcendental function. Other gaffes are strictly editorial, and inexcusable. "Tan" is a color, Mr. Editor, not a substitute for the "tangent" function in standard English. Allowing the illogical "the number of n derivatives," when what is required is "the number n of derivatives," is just as crass as allowing "ain't no way, baby," but the wrong phrase appears twice. This is because the wrong phrase looks like fine technical jargon to editors who don't know mathematics. The moral is, if you don't know the language, then you'll fake editing it, every time.
The second gripe is about Chapter 1, the flat note. Beyer bogs us down in socio-literary mumbo-jumbo about the writing of historical biographies, and almost scuttles his own book. It reads as if some feminist editor planted an earwig in his brain, and it took this chapter to excise both it and her. Take my advice, Chapter 1 is annoying and irrelevant; start with Chapter 2, and enjoy reading about an American original.

I bought this for my husband for his birthday. He is a computer engineer. He read the book in three or four days and enjoyed it. We bought a second copy for my sister for Christmas.

Think you have it hard in the corporate or academic world these days? Think again. Grace Hopper's courage, ability to grasp professional situations and make the best of them, and her ultimate contribution to computing today are absolutely awe-inspiring. Kurt Beyer has also highlighted the importance of individuals in the making of history, not just political and social forces. Individuals can STILL make a difference!

This book is a great read and very interesting. I think that every current programmer should read this book because much of what we do day in and day out started with Grace Hopper and her team in the Harvard Computation Laboratory. It was very intriguing to see the very beginning of computers and how Grace believed, even when so many others didn't, that computers could be and should be made available to more than only scientists and universities. And all those who love the open source movement have Grace Hopper to thank for it because she was the one who decided that the entire community of programmers should have the chance to improve upon a piece of software. Programming is still a very new profession and it is beneficial to see where it all started. It is very well written and kept me interested and wanting more throughout the whole book. I didn't want to put it down. I recommend this book to any technology lover whether they be a programmer, business analyst, or IT manager.

Excellent book for someone who has been a programmer. It shows the beginning of programming languages, compilers, flow charts all though the eyes of the first woman in computers, Grace Hopper.

The book was a little slow in the beginning and then picks up speed.

It also helps understand how different management styles played a role in early computer development.

Difficult to write a review of this book because the eight existing reviews have already expressed a lot of my thoughts.

I was trained on UNIVAC computers in 1962. Eventually, spent 21 years of my life programming computers. Got a chance to chat with Grace Hopper a couple of times in her Pentagon office back in 1970.

This book does a masterful job of telling how it all came about especially from the perspective of someone who's done a lot of programming.

When I got involved with UNIVAC computers in 1962, the invention of the basics of the digital computer and high order programming languages were essentially complete. I found it fascinating to read about the early machines and the struggle by the programmers to communicate with them and to get the results they needed. The technical descriptions of the machines involved don't tell me as much about what's really going on as the descriptions of the early efforts to program them.

A great read. A much needed combination of biography and history.