The phrase I have seen repeatedly to clarify this point is that Hopper should be remembered as the "Grandmother of COBOL" rather than the "Mother of COBOL." That fits with what Brian is quoting -- that she pioneer high level language technology and promoted its particular applicability to business data processing. That would not be the same thing as leading the COBOL effort or designing the language, though she did push for its adoption. In GoTo, Steve Lohr quotes Sammet on page 52 as saying Hopper was "not the mother, creator, or developer of COBOL." Lohr reports on the same page that Dan McCraken was told by Hopper herself to call her the "grandmother of COBOL" rather than its mother. Tom -----Original Message----- From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Brian Randell Sent: Monday, October 06, 2014 12:39 PM To: Sigcis Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] COBOL history Hi: I don't have the time or energy to read the entirety of Jean Sammet's "The Early History of COBOL" (In "The History of Programming Languages", Academic Press, 1981, pages 199-277) but even a quick glance at this shows Grace Hopper's footprints all over the COBOL project. Some quotes I particularly noted: "In my view, Grace Hopper did more than any other single individual to sell the concept of higher level languages from both a technical and administrative viewpoint" [Applause] - from Jean Sammet's introduction to Grace Hopper, the conference keynote speaker (page 6) "It is beyond the scope of this paper to do even a superficial study of all the work that precedes COBOL. However, it is worth noting the preliminary definition of a data processing compiler by Grace Hopper (1955) which contains the following two crucial sentences as part of the description of the compilation process. 'in the case of a *verb*, the catalog entry will lead to a generator or subroutine and its satellite routines in a volume of the library. In the case of a *noun*, the catalog entry will lead to a standard item design and its satellite routines in a volume of the library.' In my opinion, these sentences are crucial, since they point the way to a data description that is separate from the executable code." (page 217) "A key point in the development of any language is to see what influenced it . . . The major influences [on COBOL] were the two languages - FLOW-MATIC from Remington Rand Univac done under Grace Hopper's direction - Commercial Translator being done at IBM by a group under the general leadership of Ray Goldfinger, who was working for Bob Bemer at the time." (pages 247-248) I have no doubt that Grace Hopper was one of the major contributors to the whole COBOL project. Cheers Brian Randell School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/staff/profile/brian.randell _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members