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[quote user="SilverSpike"] Well, here is the answer and a brief history lesson:<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p> In the mid-1960s the Adjutant General's office began phasing out punch card systems. At USAREUR (United States Army, <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:place>Europe</st1:place>) headquarters in <st1:place><st1:City>Heidelberg</st1:City>, <st1:country-region>Germany</st1:country-region></st1:place> RCA 301 and 501 computers replaced card systems. EAM Operators became Computer Programmers, learning how to write in a new computer language called COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language).<o:p></o:p> Grace M. Hopper, a naval lieutenant in the 1940s, was a chief architect of COBOL in the late 1950s. Admiral Hopper (deceased) is a legend in the computer science field. She is remembered for coining the term "Bug." When ENIAC-the giant electronic brain-suffered a system crash, an operator extracted an electrocuted moth between two vacuum tubes. Grace taped the dead insect into the daily log with the note, "There was a bug in the system."<o:p></o:p> A big welcome back to all the returning regulars in the CS!  [#welcome]<o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p> Cheers,<o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p> Ryan[/quote] I got a chance to meet Admiral Hopper in 1984.  She was brillant and had a great sense of humor.  Her thinking on computer issues were light years ahead of most but she had the ability to explain the most complicated ideas in an easy to understand way.  I still have one of her "nano-seconds", a piece of wire the length of which was the distance an electron traveled in one nano-second.  It was one of her many tools she used to many the complex understandable.
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