Remembering Grace Hopper On Her 114th Anniversary

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2024-12-09 23:00:13

Today sees the start of Computer Science Education Week and the 2024 Hour of Code. These educational event are timed to coincide with Grace Hopper's birthday on January 9th, 1906 due to her concern for teaching computer programming young people. This is an issue touched on in a newly available recording of a lecture she delivered in 1982, worth watching as it will make you laugh out loud.

Grace Hopper gave the lecture titled “Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People,” on August 19, 1982, at which time she held the rank of Captain in the United States Navy Reserve and her job role would these days be termed "Outreach" or "Evangelism". She delivered it at the NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters to an audience of NSA employees. It was then stored in the video archives of the National Cryptographic School.

Now that the videos of the lectures are accessible to all, the story of their recovery is itself worth telling. The organization we have to thank is Muckrock, a non-profit that helps individuals and organizations file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to government agencies. in October 2021 Michael Ravinsky filed a request for a copy of the videos. It took until May 2024 for this to be declined on the grounds of "no responsive documents". Ravinsky countered that they were listed in the NSA's TV Center Catalog and he was then told that the video tapes that might contain the lectures were in a format that NSA no longer had the ability to view or digitize. When this response was publicized it led to Hackaday putting out an appeal for hardware to be made available and to NSA approaching NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) for help and this led to successful retrieval of the footage.