A Few I Wish To Be Remembered

This was intended to be a Memorial Day Post, but, I didn't make it home until late.  Since the person I wish to write about is long deceased, she probably won't complain.

There are many different images that Americans associate with Memorial Day:  The Tomb of The Unknown Soldier, Arlington National Cemetery and raising the flag at Iwo Jima are but a few.  Mostly, we think of those men and women, fighting and dying in some war overseas.  All of our military heroes didn't serve in that manner, and all that served in that manner were not heroes.  I'd like to introduce you to a hero, that you may never have heard of, yet her legacy is amongst the most impressive of any who have served our country.

She was born in New York City in 1906.  As a child she was intensely curious, dismantling alarm clocks to figure out how they worked.  At the age of 17 she was admitted to Vassar, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, with a Bachelors Degree in Mathematics and Physics, in 1928.  She followed with a Masters Degree in 1930 and a PhD. in Mathematics in 1934, both from Yale.  She taught at Vassar from 1931 until 1943 when she took a leave of absence to join the US Naval Reserve.

This woman's name was Grace Hopper.  More about her accomplishments in a moment.  In 1966 she retired from the US Navy at age 60, but was recalled to active duty the following year. In 1971, she again retired, and was recalled again in 1972.  In 1986 she was involuntarily retired from the US Navy, at the rank of Rear Admiral, just 4 months short of her 80th birthday.  After retirement she worked as a consultant for Digital Equipment Corporation until her death in 1992.

During her long and distinguished Naval service, Admiral Hopper worked on some of the earliest computers.  She helped design the UNIVAC 1, developed the first compiler and helped to develop the COBOL computer language.  She also introduced the concept of machine independent programming.  At the time, every computer understood just it's own machine language and nothing else.  Without machine independent programming computer software would not exist and computers would still be something only the large corporations could afford.

Her ideas were an important factor when DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) decided to develop DARPANet, which was the original name for the internet.  Rather than the building sized computers she worked with, she envisioned smaller computers connected to a large scale network.  She is also credited with coining the word "debugging" after a problem with the Mark II computer at Harvard University was found to be caused by a moth caught in a relay.

What does all of that mean?  Without her work in the development of computer hardware and software, the personal computer might not exist.  At the time, the majority of the people developing computers felt they were only good for simple calculations, but she envisioned them doing so much more.  Her list of accomplishments is impressive, but even more impressive is that she achieved such success as a woman in an almost exclusively male world.

I intended to also do a detailed history of Admiral Hyman Rickover in this post, but that would require too much space.  It's hard to cover a Naval career that lasted for 63 years under 13 different Presidents (Woodrow Wilson to Ronald Reagan), in just a few paragraphs.  I'll just briefly touch upon his career.

Admiral Rickover was placed in charge of the program to develop nuclear energy for naval and commercial use in 1949.  In only 5 years he was instrumental in the development, building and launching of the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear powered ship/submarine.  He also helped develop the first pressurized water, commercial, nuclear power plant.  Admiral Rickover, known as the father of the nuclear navy was in charge of the naval reactors program until forced to retire in January of 1982.

To date, there have been approximately 300 nuclear power plants used by the Navy over a 60 year span without a single nuclear incident (nuclear incident is relatively minor.  Three Mile Island was a very minor nuclear accident, Chernobyl was a major one).  This is all thanks to Admiral Rickover's belief that the very best was the least he would accept.  During his tenure as head of the nuclear propulsion program, he personally interviewed every officer involved in the program, oversaw the design and construction of every nuclear powered vessel, and personally oversaw the development of the training program, NPS (Nuclear Propulsion School).  He refused to budge on admissions standards or on criteria, to complete the program and become a nuclear propulsion plant operator.

During my Navy service, I just missed a close encounter with Admiral Rickover, due to a family emergency.  Before being retired, Admiral Rickover made one last tour of the training facilities.  At the time, I was a student at NPTU-IF (A1W) (the military loves acronyms: Naval Propulsion Training Unit Idaho Falls, A1W training plant.  "A" for aircraft carrier, "W" for Westinghouse and "1" because it was the first A#W training plant).  During the two weeks prior to the visit, training was mostly halted while students and instructors painted, polished and cleaned.  The Admiral walked in, toured the plant, told them they should have spent their time fixing problems instead of painting and ordered the plant shut down until a major overhaul could be completed.  This put my training, along with 100 of my classmates, in limbo.  After a detailed plan was developed, and the worst of the problems were fixed, we were allowed to start the plant up and finish our training before the overhaul.

Unfortunately, Admiral Rickover stood in the way of a campaign promise.  President Reagan had set a goal of a 600 ship navy, but the nuclear propulsion program could not provide enough operators at the standards required by Admiral Rickover.  He also made the mistake of complaining (this was a man who literally screamed at more than one President.  His complaints were not to be ignored.) about cost overruns in shipbuilding contracts.  Technically he was responsible for the overruns, because when he found shoddy work had been done, he made the shipbuilder do it over, until it was done right.  The government sided with the contractors, paying out over $600 million in cost overruns to Electric Boat.  A short time later, the Electric Boat general manager was indicted on racketeering charges for demanding bribes from subcontracting companies.  He is still a fugitive in his native country of Greece.

Take a few moments when you have the time and learn a little bit about these two people.  There are many more like them who, even though they didn't stand directly in the line of fire, had a huge impact on our military and our country.