Grace Hopper was a talented woman who was largely responsible for the computer technology that is accessible to many people today. She was born on December 9, 1906, as the oldest of three children. Due to her father's belief that his daughters should have the same educational opportunities as his son, and inspired by her mother's love for math, Grace became a very successful student. After attending a private grade school in New York City, Grace entered Vassar College at the age of seventeen. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and began teaching mathematics at Vassar in 1931. She then went on to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University in 1934.

In the 1940s, Grace made some decisions that would forever change her life and the life of anyone who uses a computer. It was at the beginning of the United States' involvement in WWII after Pearl Harbor was attacked, that Grace felt the need to serve her country in the military. She underwent training in Midshipman's School for Women and finished first in her class. She was sworn into the U.S. Navy Reserve in 1943. She was assigned to the Bureau of Ordinance Computation at Harvard University. It was there she was introduced to Mark I, the fifty-one foot long miracle computer of the day. Mark I could store seventy-two words and perform three additions every second. She, with the help of some members of her team, created her first program on the computer. Thus Grace became the third person in the world to program the world's first digital computer. The process of creating programs for Mark I was not easy. It was done using coding sheets that had three columns on the left for code numbers and room for comments on the right. The values were then put on punch tape and fed into the computer. The quantity of numbers made it easy to make a fatal mistake. During this time, Mark I was being used to calculate the angles of the naval guns. The work was tiring and tedious. The advancement in war technology put more and more pressure on Grace. As a result, the computer had to be watched all night while running, requiring workers to sleep at their desks. During this time, Grace coined the phrase "computer bug" when in the summer of 1945, Mark II was being built and then shut down due to a real moth that got caught in the relay. The moth was removed and then taped in the journal where the scientists recorded their progress.

In 1949, Grace left Harvard and took a job at Eckert- Marchley Computer Corporation to work with the new binary Automatic Computer, called Binac. Binac was programmed in C- 10, the basis for most codes after 1949. The programming was done in Octal, causing Grace to learn how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in Octal with great speed. As time passed, Grace began to feel that computers could be made to write their own programs. She wanted non-mathematical people to understand computers. To begin her quest of programming languages, Grace first came up with the A-O system which could translate mathematical codes into machine language. Next, she created the B-O compiler. This compiler, known also as the FLOW-MATIC, was aimed at business applications, such as payroll and billing calculating. By the end of 1956, Grace had the computer Univac I and II understanding twenty English-like statements using FLOW-MATIC. Later in 1957, Grace helped create COBOL, the international language for the computer. She produced a COBOL certifier for Norman J. Ream, special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy.

In 1985, Grace received the rank of rear admiral, becoming the first woman ever to reach that rank in the navy. She passed away on New Year's Day of 1992 and was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. Although she is gone, she will always be remembered for her wonderful speaking and teaching abilities, and the important changes she brought about in the world of computers.