Read Aloud Grace Hopper Queen of Computer Code Written by Laurie Wallmark Illustrated by Katy Wu

Grace Hopper, Queen of Computer Code. Written by Lori Walmark. Illustrated by Katie Wu. Software tester. Workplace jester. Order seeker. Well-known speaker. Gremlin finder. Software minder. Clever thinker. Lifelong tinker. Cherished mentor. Ace inventor. Avid reader. Naval leader. Rule breaker. Chance taker. Troublemaker. Amazing Grace. Grace leaned back in her chair and yawned. Once again, she had worked far into the night writing computer code. Grace's latest computer program, one to guide Navy missiles, was almost complete. All that was left was to check her work. Grace reviewed the code line by line, making sure she hadn't made any mistakes. When she finished, Grace sat down her pencil and frowned. The last section of her program, a bit of code that multiplied numbers, looked familiar. She checked back through her work and found she had written that same code before. Over and over and over again. Grace snorted. What a colossal waste of time. There had to be a better way. Why not make the computer do the work? Computers were good at doing boring jobs. I was lazy, as all get out. I never wanted to do anything over again. She figured out a way to store pieces of a program, like her multiplication code, inside the machine. When she needed to use that code in another program, all Grace had to do was tell the computer where to find it. The computer then joined together the many bits of code into one complete program. No one had ever done that before. Grace was the first, even as a child. Grace loved to tinker with gadgets and learn new ideas. She wanted to understand how things worked so she could make them better. When Grace was seven, she unscrewed the back of her alarm clock and took a peek. She reached in and out popped a spring, followed by several gears. One rolled across the floor and under her bed. Grace scooped up the parts and tried to put them back together. No matter which piece she put where, she couldn't get the clock to run. She needed another clock she could study, one that still worked. Grace sprinted from room to room, clock by clock. She fiddled with gears and springs and levers and pins. She arranged them this way and that. Seven clocks later, seven-year-old Grace understood what made clocks tick. When Grace's mother discovered the many jumbles of clock parts scattered around the house, all she could do was laugh. After all, Grace was just being Grace. Once Grace figured out how clocks worked, she moved on to bigger challenges. She followed a complicated blueprint and constructed a dollhouse made of stone, but there were no stairs. How could her dolls get to the top floor? Not a problem for junior engineer Grace. She opened her toy construction kit and laid out everything she'd need. Nuts, bolts, metal pieces, and an electric motor. It took some experimentation, but Grace figured it out. Now her dolls had an elevator to go upstairs. If you've got a good idea and you know it's going to work, just go ahead and do it. Grace delighted in learning different difficult concepts. The harder the better. While her schoolmates were frilly dresses and learned to be young ladies, Grace studied math and science. Her bedroom overflowed with books and scientific experiments. She raced through her high school classes and finished two years early. Grace couldn't wait to start college. More classes, more learning, more fun. On the day her college entrance grades arrived, Grace's hands trembled. She ripped open the envelope and proudly read aloud to her parents the many high marks in math and science. When she reached the grade for Latin, Grace fell silent. Failed. She had failed Latin. Without Latin, Grace couldn't go to college. Without college, Grace couldn't be a mathematician. Without math, Grace couldn't be Grace. Grace waved to her schoolmates as they left for college without her. Nothing would stop her from joining them next year. She held her head high and returned to her studies. Working hard, Grace even conquered Latin. At the end of the year, she passed all her exams. With her trunks packed and her math books in hand, Grace left for Vassar College, an all-women's school. Some of her classes, classmates took classes called Husbands and Wives and Motherhood. But not Grace. Her favorite subjects were math and physics. Grace did more in college than just study. Whenever there was fun or adventure to be found, her personal motto was, Dare and Do. When a barnstormer came to town offering plane rides, Grace rushed to sign up. I squandered all my money. It cost $10 and went up in the plane. She pulled herself up into the seat behind the pilot and adjusted her goggles. With a deafening roar, the propeller sputtered into action. The biplane rattled across the field and lifted off. With each loop the loop through the air, Grace's grin grew wider and wider. Because of Grace's hard work and intelligence, the other students respected her abilities. They often came to her for help with their studies. One day, her fellow students entered the room only to see a bathtub filled to the brim with water. Grace invited a volunteer to step into the bathtub, clothes and all. Water sloshed over the edges and flooded the floor. The students burst into laughter. Grace explained the reason for the tidal wave. The volume of the student's body pushed out the same volume of water. The result? One soggy student wrapped in a towel and one math lesson never forgotten. Our young people are the future. We must provide for them. When Grace moved on to graduate school at Yale University, there was only one other woman in the class. That didn't bother Grace in the least. Grace wanted to share her passion for math, so she took a job teaching at Vassar College. Her classes were always both practical and fun. Even though Grace loved teaching, America was now at war and needed the best mathematicians to design weapons. Patriotic Grace wanted to help her country, so she tried to enlist in the Navy. That proved to be a problem. Based on the Navy's requirements for new recruits at the time, Grace was too old and too skinny to enlist. She was 36 and weighed only 105 pounds. Grace could be very persuasive, however. It took her more than a year, but Grace convinced the Navy they needed her. Faithfulness in all things. My motto is, you see, the world will be a better place when all agree with me. Because of her superior math skills, Grace was assigned to write programs for one of the first computers ever built, the Mark I. Only a few people had ever programmed before, so she had to learn how to do it on her own. One late summer day, a co-worker burst into Grace's office. The new computer, the Mark II, had stopped working. She gasped. This had never happened before, not with any of her programs. Grace thought it had to be a prank. After all, she loved playing jokes on her co-workers. Maybe the other engineers were getting their revenge. But they weren't. The computer really wasn't working. For hours, Grace and her team reviewed the code, but could find no error. It was as if the green ceramic gremlin that always sat in Grace's office had come to life and sneaked into the machine to make mischief. That was it. Maybe the problem wasn't in her program. Maybe it was in the computer. Grace jumped to her feet and hurried down the hall. The immense computer room usually thrummed with the click of metal switches and roar of paper tape. Today, all was silent. I have an insatiable curiosity. It's solving problems. Every time you solve a problem, another one shows up behind it. That's the challenge. Grace and her team searched everywhere for the problem. Grace used her pocket mirror to check inside the machine. She angled it this way and that. No matter where the engineers looked, they didn't see anything wrong. No loose wires or stray sparks, not even a naughty gremlin. The engineers were stumped. They had checked everything. What could be causing the problem? Then someone saw it. A moth was trapped inside, blocking a switch from working properly. One of the engineers borrowed Grace's eyebrow tweezers and removed the dead moth. The computer started up again with no problem. Being a good scientist, Grace and her team taped the moth into the logbook to record their unusual finding. They added a note, first actual case of a computer bug being found. Ever since then, because of Grace's sense of humor, computer glitches have been called bugs. Early computers didn't understand letters or words, only programs with lines and lines of ones and zeros. As Grace worked on a brand new computer called the UNIVAC-1, she thought about ways to make programming even easier. Not everyone is comfortable thinking in numbers as she. Grace wanted anyone to be able to use computers, not just scientists or engineers. Grace glanced at the wall clock she had rigged to run backward. It reminded her to use her imagination. Unconventional thinking was often the key to solving problems. Humans are allergic to change. They like to say, we've always done it this way. I try to fight that. To allow her brain a chance to consider new ideas, Grace took a break from programming. She doodled cartoons of gremlins and dragons and other fantastical creatures. While she drew, she asked herself questions. Why should people have to learn computer language? Why couldn't computers learn people language? They could. Grace invented a program that let people use words to tell the computer what to do. Her program, named Flowmatic, included simple English commands like multiply, flowmatic, translated, multiply, and the other commands into instructions the computer could understand. Let people write their programs in English. It was common sense. This was much easier than programming pages of ones and zeros. With the help of Grace's program, she and her co-workers were able to write code more quickly and with fewer errors. When Grace was 60 years old, the Navy forced her to retire. They said she was too old to serve. It was the saddest day of my life. Within a few months, they realized their mistake and asked her to return for a short six-month assignment. This short assignment lasted for 20 years. Grace, now an admiral, finally retired from the Navy for the second time. At age 80, for almost 50 years, Grace Hopper, the queen of computer code, dedicated her life to solving computer problems. No wonder people called her Amazing Grace. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe and like so you don't miss another story. If you have a story you'd like me to read, leave a note in the comment section below.