Grace Hopper, UNIVAC, and the First Programming Language 137
M-Saunders (706738) writes "It weighed 13 tons, had 5,200 vacuum tubes, and took up a whole garage, but the UNIVAC I was an incredible machine for its time. Memory was provided by tanks of liquid mercury, while the clock speed was a whopping 2.25 MHz. The UNIVAC I was one of the first commercial general-purpose computers produced, with 46 shipped, and Linux Voice has taken an in-depth look at it. Learn its fascinating instruction set, and also check out FLOW-MATIC, the first English-language data processing language created by American computing pioneer Grace Hopper."
Finally! (Score:1)
Well, in this case it was ballistic flight - more specifically artillery tables. Of course ballistic flight gave way to rocketry which gave way to SPACE FLIGHT!
Oh My - they might have a point.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Bah, you're the only one worried about that.
But anyway, all I wanted to say is to go look at that picture. Look at that control panel! Now that's technology. Switches! Meters! A model 30 (?) teletype with key travel measured in furlongs.
(And, as an aside, for a picture in the 1960's it was remarkably 'diverse'. A woman, a black man and and a skinny geek with a tie. Mayhaps we've not moved as far forward as we give ourselves credit for.)
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And, as an aside, for a picture in the 1960's it was remarkably 'diverse'.
The guy with the suit jacket looks Indian. Who called tech support?
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Interesting)
I've some doubts about quite a lot of the commonly accepted modern wisdom vis a vis women in the workplace back then and even previously. Most of the women in my family worked outside the home back in the 60s and 70s, some even had excellent careers. I would strongly question the narrative that second wave feminism "liberated" women or did much more than take credit for social changes which were well under way regardless due to increasing average wealth and the invention of labour saving domestic devices.
Going back even further, the book "No Votes for Women" explores some of the realities at the time of the Suffragettes and raises the point that we should be perhaps less asking how shitty conditions were for women in the past but rather asking how comparitively shitty it was for men - the answer is usually quite a bit more:
"Almost immediately after the April committee meetings, Helena Gilder detailed the reasons she opposed woman suffrage in a long letter to her dearest friend , Mary Hallock Foote...
She , like many other anti-suffragists, believed in an inextricable link between military service and voting; only a person able to sacrifice himself on the battlefield earned the right to vote."
"In view of the privileges they already had women did not need political rights. Mariana Van Rensselaer articulated her particular views about women in articles for the New York World in May and June 1894;...She considered the enfranchisement of millions of women a risk not worth taking. Women already held more privileges than men under the law.
Specifically, Van Rensselaer wrote, a woman had control of her earnings, her personal property, and any real estate she owned. She could carry on a business or profession, she had no responsibility for her husband’s debts, and she was not required to support him.
She could sue and be sued, and she could make contracts. She had no obligation to serve on juries. With her husband she had equal rights to their children and, yet, he was obligated to support her and her children. Women were entitled to alimony in the event of a divorce, while a man could not ask for alimony.
She was entitled to one third of her husband’s real estate upon his death, but he was not entitled to her property after death if there were no children. Van Rensselaer concluded that the distribution of labor and privileges between women and men seemed fair, that the different roles of women and men were critically important, and that it was “slander” to claim that men did not already take good care of women."
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Re:Finally! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm an old guy, and I'm telling you that what you just said was, well, un-educated. It's hard to come up with a good word for that without sounding pejorative, so I apologize in advance. Anyway, I've heard this before and it's bullshit. It always seems to come from people who were born into wealth or privilege.
It's very much like "slaves got free food and shelter, so what were they complaining about argument".
Did you notice that the list of privileges you laid out are all in relation to a husband? For almost all women before the 1960's the only possible comfortable life was by having a husband. People in power had absolutely no problem with refusing jobs, loans, or admittance to anything by saying to her face "no, you're a female, this is for men ". Trust me on this; I was there.
until the 1960's:
Almost no University or medical school (except women's colleges) would accept her as a student unless she was a blood relative of a faculty member or wealthy donor.
Those that did accept women only allowed them into nursing, teaching, or similar programs. yes, I know there were a few exceptions and those were EXCEPTIONS, so don't give us any examples of someone who got in.
Almost no bank would grant a loan for business or property without the written permission of her husband, unless she was a blood relative of one of the bank's officers.
Almost no career advancement path was available for a woman, but they could do the same work with a lower title. Women could be bookkeepers, but not accountants. They could move from clerk to office manager (of clerks), but not district or regional managers.
Yes, there were women that got careers and did well. My mother was one of those, but had to fight bald-faced anti-female discrimination constantly. No one should go through what she did just to get her job done. She was an exception, probably a 5-sigma IQ and also raised as a tomboy, and also had a husband who backed her up. Very few people can't bring to a fight what she was born with; she was one of the exceptions.
But for every one of those there were countless others who had the door slammed in their face or stabbed in the back for the sole reason they were female.
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I found his post to question conventional wisdom, but it's certainly not "un-educated". You seem to be responding to someone else's post, or someone else's opinion. Being "an old guy", perhaps you're simply making the same response that's won you praise over your entire life. i.e. "women have had to fight for rights and were actively discriminated against". That seems to be your entire response. While what you say is true, the conversation has shifted among generations now, so perhaps you need to make
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Except that's not the matter in question. Could a woman in 1950 get a job? Sure. As a secretary, or a nurse, or a kindergarten teacher. The feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s opened the door to women taking employment on an equal basis with men. Of course that job's not done yet; and there are elements of the feminism movement that have gotten distracted wit
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It's a little naive and 'uneducated' to think women have the same capabilities as men, their biological soup is completely different...mostly.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Dang, my other response got posted as AC. It's pretty obvious it was me.
I found his post to question conventional wisdom, but it's certainly not "un-educated". You seem to be responding to someone else's post, or someone else's opinion. Being "an old guy", perhaps you're simply making the same response that's won you praise over your entire life. i.e. "women have had to fight for rights and were actively discriminated against".
As a side note, I haven't won praise over my entire life because I was on the wrong side for a very long time. The reformed sinner is the most annoying; that's me.
That seems to be your entire response. While what you say is true, the conversation has shifted among generations now, so perhaps you need to make note of that.
I really think you need to go back and re-read what the OP said (especially if your response is it's simply "un-educated"). He's simply questioning whether the the gains women have gotten came through second wave feminism or through other means.
And he's right to question whither the gains came, and it's complex and interesting topic.
I think there's a lot of truth to that. A lot of women went to work because of economic need, not because of ideology. Economically having half the work force idle isn't advantageous. Essentially a lot of women got jobs because the family needed the money, not because they read "the second sex", or because Gloria Steinhem existed.
And I think you're correct there as well. I do agree that the feminist movement was not responsible for women wanting to get jobs.
However, a big part of the problem was that previously women were prevented from getting many jobs due to legally allowed anti-female bias. They did not apply to schools that did not accept their applications, and they did not apply for jobs that they knew would would be denied. The feminist movement did much to fix those laws.
You can disagree if you like, and that's fine, but having a different opinion on where change comes isn't un-educated.
Nowhere did the OP make any claims that banks wouldn't give out loans, or that women weren't discriminated against. That's an argument I think you've been making for years, and people of your generation have fought you on. The OP is younger than you, and comes from a very different background and likely takes very different opinions than people of your generation. So taking him to task and putting him in the place of a member of your generation kind of misses the point, and the point that the OP was trying to make.
Well, you got me there - I may be making assumptions about where he's coming from that aren't there.
However, here's what he said:
>quote>I've some doubts about quite a lot of the commonly accepted modern wisdom vis a vis women in the workplace back then and even previously. Most of the women in my family worked outside the home back in the 60s and 70s, some even had excellent careers.
That's what puts it in my ballpark.
He is implying that because some women (his relatives) had good careers back in the 60's and 70's the commonly accepted wisdom is in doubt.
That is the part I'm saying he is uneducated on. As I said before, there's not a good word that doesn't sounds pejorative. On second thought, I could have said "you don't know what you're talking about."
Anyway. It's nice that he had relatives that had good careers, but my point is that for MOST women they could NOT have many careers due to institutionalized anti-female bias on many levels. That is the part I'm saying he is uneducated on. Anti-female bias was still legal and still the standard in the 60's and was only beginning to go away in the 70's. The removal of legally allowed anti-female bias (or rather the creating the laws that prohibited bias) was largely done by the feminist movement - they are the people who got the work done.
Also, I strongly
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It's very much like "slaves got free food and shelter, so what were they complaining about argument".
Aaand we're off. Women as historical slaves. Let's take a closer look at that, shall we?
NO, that's not what I said. I did NOT say women were historical slaves.
I am comparing the points made by of Gilder and Rensselaer (that women had certain advantages in society) to the similar points made by slavery apologists.
Perhaps, I did a bad job of what I was stating. I am comparing the type of argument, not the living conditions. Once again, I am NOT stating that women were historical slaves. For one thing, in western society at least, marriage was voluntary.
Did you notice that the list of privileges you laid out are all in relation to a husband?
Yes, that was the point I was making. Wives in comparison to husbands, people of equivalent social status except one has more priveleges than the other, and it turns out that it wasn't the husband. This came from a woman of the time incidentally, and an awful lot of women agreed with her. Of course they were probably also incensed at the attitudes of the suffragettes towards poor folk and those of colour.
The point I'm making is that these advantag
look, it's the moron AC again (Score:5, Insightful)
no one has claimed only space exploration spinoffs gave us computer tech. once again you raise a straw man and then set it on fire.
However, ICBM and space exploration certainly did drive integrated circuit technology for computers. First computers built of Jack Kirby's solid state integrated circuits used by the air force in Minuteman II guidance system
Re:look, it's the moron AC again (Score:4)
nope, too expensive at the time, over $400 a chip with a few gates, for those mundane uses. The computer made of them is the point of the argument, only military could afford it at the time. The commercial chips came later
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ICBM go into space.
Those commecial uses you mention came later after the military use, 1963 and later to be specific.
And of course many, many other advances in computers driven by the space program since the military use.
try again, try harder, you're losing the argument
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I guess this doesn't count, because it wasn't in the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
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Leo doesn't count because it uses discrete components only, no integrated circuits.
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you lost the thread pal
I was talking of "mundane uses" of the integrated circuits that were FIRST used to make computers for space-going (though suborbital) ICBM
the computers you mention are made non-integrated discrete components, I'm talking about the improvements to computers like integrated circuit technology that were driven by space
typical anti-space nutter, ignorant of science and technology and the history of either
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So according to you, companies could afford transistor computers, but somehow we needed space to afford ICs?
The Apollo Guidance Computer bankrolled Fairchild's IC plans, taught Fairchild engineers to do actual IC QA properly (which was probably the most important outcome to them), and consumed something like 60% of ICs produced in that era or so. So, yes, there was a significant boost from the space program to the IC ecosystem at that time.
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That's the way it's always been; war drives innovation, or at least the funding of it, for good or bad.
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I believe the preferred term is 'astro-nut'.
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But your apparent sentiment seems correct - in the grand scheme, if the technologies were delayed by 5 or 10 years it wouldn't really matter. It's commercial use and the corresponding economies of scale which really make a difference.
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Maybe we can dispel the myth that only "space exploration spinoffs" gave us the technology to create computers. That's a common myth among Space Nutters.
Congratulations on the strawman you just beat the crap out of.
whopping 2.25 MHz (Score:2)
Still faster than my first 8080....
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Faster than my first two computers, too, but neither of them weighed thirteen tons! Also, storage access would have been a much bigger problem than clock speed, seeing as how they used mercury switches to store bits.
I found this article about Univac [usatoday.com] fascinating, an account of Univac vs. humans.
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Not mercury switches, mercury delay lines.
Not really (Score:2)
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also, the Univac I did two instructions per clock cycle
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I meant didn't do, it did about 2000 ops per second
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Talking pure CPU speed here, not 'actual performance'
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Nevertheless, the 8080 probably ran faster due to lower memory latency.
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Nevertheless, the 8080 probably ran faster due to lower memory latency.
Also less down time to replace burnt out vacuum tubes.
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Nanosecond (Score:2)
Grace Hopper and the Tech Ethos (Score:1)
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waddaya talking about, see those geek glasses and big honking nose, she wasn't sliding along on beauty, wan't hired for her looks. she got ahead on brains and accomplishment like a true geek icon
Nanoseconds (Score:5, Interesting)
My mother was one of the first female programmers at Honeywell back in the `70s. Back then, IT companies recruited their programmers from the ranks of mathematicians (like mom).
Grace Hopper was a big hero to her, and one of the things I remember best is mom coming home with a short length of wire given out by Adm. Hopper at a speech -- sized to represent the distance electricity would travel in a nanosecond.
Mom is still coding, by the way, writing custom software for my dad's business in Python/Django/PostgreSQL. Dad complains that she's obsessed with the programming and won't do anything else. Sounds like me...thanks for the genes, mom!
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Offtopic: on the speed of electricity (Score:2)
a short length of wire [...] sized to represent the distance electricity would travel in a nanosecond.
You cannot see such a piece of wire. Electrons drift [wikipedia.org] at a speed in the order of 0.0002m/s, giving you a wire length in the order of 10^-13 meters.
Electromagnetic waves "travel" roughly at the speed of light. But when someone talks about the travel of electricity, the thing that people think about is the flow of electrons, not the electromagnetic waves.
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(on top of that, there are no electromagnetic waves travelling along a wire conducting DC current)
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But there are no true DC currents, real current flow is not of constant amplitude and not of infinite duration in time. Therefore, real DC current in the real world always has EM waves associated with it.
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(on top of that, there are no electromagnetic waves travelling along a wire conducting DC current)
DC current is not used to transmit information. Even if your message is "00000000000000000..." you would use data compression, Manchester encoding, RS-232, or something else with an embedded clock or framing.
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How do you think electrons repel each other?
Electromagnetic fields, which do not "travel" in any reasonable sense.
The speed of light thing is actually more complicated if you involve relativity and quantum field theory and stuff, which is why I used the word "roughly" to protect myself exactly from people who pretend to know physics. If I had said "exactly at the speed of light", some theoretical physicist would have made some remark about this or that field theory or standard model solution or whatever kind of physics that I don't quite understand.
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Speak for yourself, eh? I don't think it ever once even remotely occurred to me that someone meant the flow of electrons when they talked about the travel of electricity. I have always thought of the travel of electricity as the flow of the electromagnetic waves.
(Note: I am not an electrical engineer and have not studied electricity intimately.)
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I have always thought of the travel of electricity as the flow of the electromagnetic waves.
Then how does DC electricity "travel" from your phone charger to your phone? (again, there are no electromagnetic waves, even though there may be fields. a wave is a changing field.)
HFT places use microwaves or fiber for this reason (Score:2)
ultra low latency over microwave and laser link (Score:3)
not fiber. point to point laser and microwave links.
I believe you are referring to ultra-low-latency trading.
They prefer microwave links to fiber because the microwave signals propagate faster through air than light does through a glass fiber. Light travels through glass fiber at about 65% of c, which is also pretty comparable to the velocity of a electric signal in a transmission line (.65 to .75 c) (which is where Admiral Hopper ties in)
Microwave signals propagate though air at damned close to the speed
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She knows that. See this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
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I think you mean a time domain reflectometer. A VNA would be a terrible choice.
"computer" mean person before 1948 (Score:2)
Re:Nanoseconds -That never happened - (Score:2)
Or Grace hopper was wrong.
Electric current moves in the range of a millimeters per second.
A nanosecond long travel range would be invisible to the human eye.
Perhaps you meant 'electric signal'?
Sunday Reads (Score:1)
Long, interesting and informative and unapologetically technical essays like this are why I get up early and brew coffee in the morning,
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Evidence - you don't need to grow up (Score:1)
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Easy to say. When Grace was around she wasn't competing against Indian, Chinese, Brazilian and Russian university students being pumped out by the thousands every year.
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I really believe that coding is "in the blood." The problem with countries like India and China is that the economic rewards force people without the "knack" to go into the field -- and suck badly at it. So not only are you competing with someone who works for 1/10th of your salary but they suck at it but go to great lengths to hide that fact
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you're not nearly as special as you think you are. if they are able to "hide that fact" successfully, it means that there is nothing remarkable about what you're doing.
grow up, you pathetic fantasist. "coding" is not a particularly heritable property, and there is no fucking "knack". that was just something in a Dilbert cartoon.
not FLOWMATIC per se (Score:5, Interesting)
Grace's big contribution from the time wasn't the particular FLOWMATIC language but rather she conceived of the compiler. And note her languages were intended to be legible even to non-programmers, what an usual concept eh?
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Yes, regretted by programmers since, tasked with fixing the well-intentioned programs coded by non-programmers.
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Bah -- just remember who invented computer science: chemists, physicists and mathematicians!
Unlike Richard Stallman, it was WWII heros like Grace Hopper that helped make us 'free' to make software!
Thats right, computers were invented by 'squares' not by hippies and their 'information wants to be free' Gen X children ;)
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And note her languages were intended to be legible even to non-programmers, what an usual concept eh?
And that's how we ended up with COBOL.
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And that's how we ended up with COBOL.
Which has proven itself over and over again. It's stable, reliable, and easy to maintain. COBOL runs the world [baselinemag.com], for good reasons.
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It's stable, reliable, and easy to maintain.
lol is it re-entrant?
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yes, if REENTRANT compiler directive used in Micro Focus COBOL, or RENT directive on IBM COBOL
Coined the term 'bug' (Score:4, Funny)
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other critters have caused problems in electrical systems, we might be saying a snake or rat or spider.
in not entirely unrelated concept, we have the molly-guard thanks to the toddler Molly who pushed the big red button on an IBM 4341 at UIUC twice in a day.
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Not to mention all the work she did for Kung Fu.
"When you snatch the pebble from my had you will be ready Grace Hopper."
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No she didn't.
The journal entry reads "first example of an actual bug", which clearly indicates that the term was already in use.
If you look in the OED, the first use of "bug" to mean a technical glitch of some sort dates from 1870-1899.
To be fair, Hopper never claimed to have originated the term.
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I have several folders dedicated to just that.
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Never heard of klystrons and magnetrons and traveling wave tubes and vacuum flourescent displays? my god you are ignorant of current 21st electrical technology!
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OK, this has almost got to be a troll (tipoff being "old light bulbs", that sounds like someone posing as a newb/idiot), but, WTF??
The glass is to enclose the vacuum inside, hence the phrase "vacuum tube". Inside there are filaments just like a conventional light bulb. These usually heat a plate, which can then emit electrons via thermionic emission. This emission can be controlled by altering the voltages on the various parts. This permits many applications like amplification.
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had to look that up because I haven't heard of vacuum tube.
It sort of resembles your head, only with a lot of electrodes inside.
2.25 MHz, sort of (Score:2)
Yeah, but if you're wondering, it took about 1,000 clock cycles per instruction...
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yeah they should have used red mercury instead of mercury in those delay line memory tubes!
Can't. Resist. Optimizing. (Score:2)
"(1) COMPARE PRODUCT-NO (A) WITH PRODUCT-NO (B) ; IF GREATER GO TO OPERATION 10 ; ."
IF EQUAL GO TO OPERATION 5 ; OTHERWISE GO TO OPERATION 2 .
(2) TRANSFER A TO D
What's wrong (if useless is wrong) with this code?
Godz, I can't believe I'm trying to correct Hopper's code!
It weighed 13 tons, had 5,200 vacuum tubes, and to (Score:2)
The first programming language? (Score:2)
Good God, look at that code (Score:2)
How can you fit that much spaghetti in 17 lines??
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Now a-days we use OOP to get similar bloat:
NORMAL
print(a + b)
BLOATED
am = new math.ArithmeticManager()
opA = new math.Operand((float) a)
opB = new math.Operand((float) b)
am.addOperand(opA)
am.addOperand(opB)
am.operator = new math.operators.Addition()
am.executeMathOperation()
system.io.output.print(am.mathOperationResult())
Several errors in TFA (Score:2)
While the section on Admiral Hopper looks correct to my knowledge, there were some hitorical flaws.
The UNIVAC I was produced after Remington Rand purchased EMCC, though Grace Hopper did work for EMCC prior to its acquisition a year after she started work there. The UNIVAC I was built by Remington Rand. Four years later, Remington Rand merged all three of their computer related operations into the UNIVAC division. The following year Remington Rand merged with Sperry to become Sperry Rand and the UNIVAC divi
Konrad Zuze (Score:2)
Konrad Zuse, who also built the first Turing-complete computer, designed the first high-level computer language, Plankalkul, in 1945 (though no compiler was implemented until 1998.)
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Oblig Simpsons (Score:1)
and smelled like a stake! UNIVAC-nero! (whip crack)
Re:That's ADMIRAL Grace Hopper (Score:5, Informative)
no, Rear Admiral, Lower Half. But during WW II, her rank was Lieutenant, Junior Grade. She retired with rank of Commander in 1966. But then returned to service and was promoted to Captain in 1973, and by act of Congress Commodore in 1983. That rank had its name changed to the RA, LH in the 90s
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Rear Admiral, Lower Half...
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In the Navy, you never qualify an officer's rank unless describing them officially. A Lieutenant, JG is addressed as "Lieutenant". Lieutenant Commander Smith is simply "Commander Smith". And ${anything} Admiral Jones is just "Admiral Jones". It was impolitic to remind an officer that they were the low-rent version of the "full" version of their rank.
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Whoosh. (You guys are +5ing bad facts again). The point the AC is trying to make is that Admiral Grace Hopper has a title, and it should be used to honor her career.
Also, the Commodore to Rear Admiral changed occurred in 1985, and Admiral Hopper was involuntarily retired in 1986.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]