Grace Hopper

Hello. My name is Grace. When I was a little girl, I was very, very curious. I loved to find out how things worked. One time, I took apart all seven alarm clocks in my house just to see the whirring gears and bouncy springs inside. My mom thought it was funny, but she asked me to please stick to just one clock from then on.

When I grew up, I joined the U.S. Navy and got to work with one of the first computers ever. It was as big as a whole room. One day in 1947, the giant computer stopped working. We looked inside and found the problem. A real moth was stuck. We carefully took it out and taped it in our logbook. From then on, whenever a computer had a problem, we called it a 'bug'. Finding the problem was called 'debugging'.

I also helped teach computers to understand English words, not just numbers, which made them much easier for everyone to use. I loved solving puzzles and helping people work with these amazing machines. I lived to be 85 years old, and people remember me as 'Amazing Grace'. My work helped create the computers, phones, and tablets we all use to learn and play with today.