Google honors COBOL developer Grace Hopper

The latest Google Doodle honored the birthday Monday of Grace Hopper, the former U. S. naval officer who helped make computer programming more user friendly. Hopper may be best known for her role in creating the Common Business Oriented Language, COBOL, which allowed computers to handle words instead of numbers, revolutionizing programming, CNET.com reported. Hopper, born Dec. 9, 1906, has several computer-era achievements under her belt. As a World War II naval officer, she was one of the first programmers to use Harvard's Mark I computer. After the war, she worked on the UNIVAC, one of the first commercial computers. Hopper also was famous among computer aficionados for coining the phrase "computer bug," CNET.com said. While the term had been used to describe technical glitches, the discovery of a moth in a computer by one of Hopper's team members sparked a surge in its popularity. Hopper died Jan. 1, 1992, at the age of 85 and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., said its doodles are changes made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries and lives of famous artists, pioneers and scientists.