[Ads-l] Grace Murray Hopper Honored by Yale

Shapiro, Fred fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Sun Feb 12 03:40:52 UTC 2017


Yale University has announced that it is renaming the Calhoun College dormitory "Grace Murray Hopper College."  Honoring Hopper, an important pioneer in computer programming, is a great choice (as opposed to the unfortunate recent choice of the does-he-really-need-another-honor/what-is-his-connection-to-Yale Benjamin Franklin as the namesake of a new Yale college).  But I am curious whether Hopper's principal claim to popular fame, the colorful but wholly erroneous claim that she coined the term "bug" for defects in computer hardware or software, will be repeated by the media or Yale in connection with the naming.


Fred Shapiro

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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