so last admiral grace hopper we call her amazing grace. world war ii happens she has a degree in mathematics from yale naturally brilliant she is teaching mathematics at the university she knows she wants to be in the war effort. the problem is the navy is not bringing in women. she only weighs 105 pounds. the minimum weight to get in the navy is 120. she starts drinking milkshakes. [laughter] that's a good problem to have. eventually she puts on enough weight but what really happens we need her brilliant mind because she invented the idea of computers with the first mainframe 8 feet wide and 50 feet long and we have to figure out how to program this thing programming doesn't exist computer science doesn't exist she invents all of that with a small group of people. she writes code wall still used today i started programming myself in the seventies that is grace hopper. she was tiny, energetic always had a smile on her face, the young grace hopper. someone he wanted to have a beer with. she was terrific because she was unafraid to try every

last one, grace hopper. we call her amazing grace. world war ii happens, a phd in mathematics from yale universi university. she's teaching mathematics at the university and knows that she wants to be in the war effort. the problem is the navy isn't bringing it with the. she only weighs 105 pounds. the minimum wage to ge wait to e navy is 120 pounds. she starts drinking milkshakes. [laughter] we need your brilliant mind because we are inventing the idea of computers. we've built the first mainframe which issh 8 feet wide and 50 ft long. we've got to figure out how to program this thing. computer science doesn't exist. shshe then toldshe then told upl group of people. she writes the code while still used today. i started programming this myself in the 1970s and met grace hopper. she was tiny, energetic, always have a smile on her face, the young grace hopper, someone you wanted to have a beer with. she was terrific because she was unafraid to try anything new, intellectual curiosity was her character trait. right about now you want to

when the mathematician grace hopper, who had a phd from yale in mathematics, was assigned to program the mark when computer at harvard in 1944, she was given no extracts -- instruction theshe reverse engineered machine she had been assigned to, working nights, sleeping under her desk, studying wiring diagrams and taking components apart until she felt she understood the workings as well as, if not better than, some of the engineers who had built the machine. the same was true for the six women assigned to the first electronic programmable computer by the u.s. army at the university of pennsylvania. here, we're talking about programming at the machine level. when you talk programming now competing sitting at the program, typing symbols. this is not what programming was in the 1940's. this is a computer the size of the room. . to program a machine like this, you had to crawl around inside this giant room sized machine making an ephemeral connections in time with touch cables and punchcards. it was something that was very physical, replacing burned-out vacuum tubes, and fixing shorted e

born in russia, when he is 6 years old, last admiral, grace hopper. in the navy we call her amazing grace. world war ii happens, she is a phd in mathematics from yale university, preternaturally brilliant, teaching mathematics at a university. she knows she wants to be in the war effort. the problem is the navy is not bringing women in. she only weighed 105 pounds. the minimum wait to get into the navy's 120 pounds. she starts drinking milkshakes. a good problem to have. eventually she put on enough weight but what really happens is we need her brilliant mind because we are inventing the idea of computers which we built the first mainframe which is eight feet wide and 50 feet long and we've got to figure out how to program this thing. the idea of programming doesn't exist. she invents all that with a small group of people. she writes cobol, still used today. i started programming in cobol myself in the 1970s and met grace hopper. she was tiny, energetic, always had a smaller on her face. the younger a stopper, somebody she wanted to have a beer with. s

after the war, grace hopper and her peers went on to careers in the early computer industry, heading up the programming teams of the very first commercial company -- computer company in the u.s. emcc was responsible for a computer called the univac, which in the 50's was synonymous with the word computer. people said univac to mean computer in the 1950's. because the only people in the world who knew how to program , and the best in programming were women, they ran the software side of things entirely. they headed the software side of the operation. they did the univac's logical design, wrote its construction set, they wrote custom programs for every client at every installation, and they debugged those programs when necessary. which was a huge workload. and in fact, it is because they were so overworked doing this job at the beginning of the commercial computer industry that women like grace hopper and her contemporaries first started to push the art of programming forward by looking for ways to simplify and streamline what was becoming a really tedious and complex process. so durin

he also served as the head of calhoun college, now renamed grace hopper college. and was a professor of african american studies at yale. he joined northwestern as provost and professor of history and african-american studies three years ago. in the time since dr. holloway agreed to join us today, he has been appointed president of rutgers university. you can applaud. [applause] which is a small college, about 20 miles down the road from princeton, where woodrow wilson spent the last 20 years of his academic career. clearly this is a very high honor, and we all congratulate you. dr. holloway's acclaimed research on black intellectual history make same, as i said, -- makes him, as i said, the perfect person to address today's difficult subject, woodrow wilson and race. over the decades the wilson center has not shied away from this topic, and we are well aware it continues to be controversial. but we will all learn something today. i know that i will, and i am really delighted that you have agreed to talk about woodrow wilson. following dr. holloway's lecture, dist