Grace Hopper Lecture
The NSA kept 1 lecture in a vault for 40 years. In 2024 they released it. It’s Grace Hopper explaining the future of computing in 1982.
The channel that posted it: the National Security Agency’s own YouTube.
Hopper stands at a podium in Navy uniform, a captain, and talks to a room of NSA staff for 90 minutes across 2 reels.
The title: “Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People.”
She compares the computer industry to the early automotive one, all custom parts and no standards, and argues software will become the hard problem, not hardware. She was right by decades.
She invented the first compiler and gave COBOL its shape. She kept a clock that ran backwards on her wall to prove rules can be questioned.
The tapes were too degraded for normal release, so the agency restored them before posting.
40 years in an NSA archive. 90 minutes. Now free.
