In article ,
says...
But don't leave out Admiral
Hopper. She was a major player in getting those electronical
thinkums to do useful work. I'd hate to be in a command bunker
somewhere trying to calculate an incoming missile's impact point by
hand.

??

Hopper is best known for her work in implementing and, especially,
evangelizing COBOL, a language poorly suited to real-time, physics-heavy
programs.

SAGE was an Air Force/IBM project, using, iirc, machine language.
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

The loss of the American system of checks and balances
is more of a security danger than any terrorist risk.
-- Bruce Schneier