Grace Hopper - the first hacker
Click for larger image
Date: Sometime after 1951??
Context: Grace Hopper examining a UNIVAC computer, holding a COBOL manual in her hand. Grace hopper invented the first compiler - the A-0, in 1949.
It used symbolic mathematical code to represent binary code combinations. In an interview, she was asked what compelled her to invent the compiler. She was educated to be a mathematician, and messing around with on-off switches to vaccuum tubes was really annoying to her, and thus was born the first compiler. She hoped it would allow mathematicians like her to do real work and stop screwing around with computers. The COBOL language is a distant child of this first compiler, and a language which she also played a large role in developing.