Sperry Gyroscope
What was the name of the employer Jean E. Sammet work for from 1953 to 1958?
Jean E . Sammet Jean E . Sammet ( March 23 , 1928 – May 20 , 2017 ) was an American computer scientist who developed the FORMAC programming language in 1962 . She was also one of the developers of the influential COBOL programming language . She received her B.A . in Mathematics from Mount Holyoke College in 1948 and her M.A . in Mathematics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1949 . She received an honorary D.Sc . from Mount Holyoke College in 1978 . Sammet was employed by Sperry Gyroscope from 1955 to 1958 where she supervised the first scientific programming group . From 1958 to 1961 , she worked for Sylvania as a staff consultant for programming research and a member of the original COBOL group . She joined IBM in 1961 where she developed FORMAC , the first widely used computer language for symbolic manipulation of mathematical formulas . At IBM she researched the use of restricted English as a programming language and the use of natural language for mathematical programs . She was Programming Technology Planning Manager for the Federal Systems Division from 1968 to 1974 , and was appointed Software Technology Manager in 1979 . Sammet founded the ACM Special Interest Committee on Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation ( SICSAM ) in 1965 and was Chair of the Special Interest Group on Programming Languages ( SIGPLAN ) . She was the first female president of the ACM , from 1974 to 1976 . Early life . Jean E . Sammet was born on March 23 , 1928 in New York City . Jean and her sister Helen were born to Harry and Ruth Sammet who were both lawyers . Jean and Helen attended public elementary schools in Manhattan . Sammet had a strong interest in mathematics but was unable to attend the Bronx High School of Science because it did not accept girls . Instead , Sammet attended Julia Richman High School . Sammet chose to enroll at Mount Holyoke College based on the strength of its mathematics program . Sammet majored in mathematics and took education courses , which allowed her to be certified to teach high school mathematics in New York . She minored in political science . After graduating from Mount Holyoke , Sammet pursued graduate studies at the University of Illinois , where she received her MA in 1949 . While taking courses toward a Ph.D. , she was a teaching assistant in the Mathematics department at the University of Illinois from 1948 to 1951 . When Sammet first encountered a computer , in 1949 at the University of Illinois , she was not impressed , considering it an obscene piece of hardware . In 1951 Sammet began looking for a position in education . Sammet was forced to search for positions in New Jersey because New York City was not hiring new teachers . The authorities in New Jersey determined that Sammet was missing two courses from her studies : a course in education and one in the history of New Jersey . Sammet fought this determination , stating that her knowledge of New Jersey history did not strengthen her ability to teach mathematics in high school . This forced Sammet to seek other types of employment . Work . In 1951 , Sammet took a position at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company as a trainee actuary . She agreed to participate in an in-house training program to learn about punched card accounting machines . Sammet took to the electronic accounting machines , but was unable to work with the machines after her training was complete . She left her position at the insurance office and enrolled at Columbia University to pursue a Ph.D . in mathematics . Sammet worked as a teaching assistant at Barnard College during the 1952-1953 school year before she decided that the academic life was not for her . From 1953 to 1958 , Sammet was a mathematician for Sperry Gyroscope in New York . She spent time working on mathematical analysis problems for clients and ran an analog computer . Sammet worked on the Department of the Navy’s submarine program during her time there . In early January 1955 , Sammet began her life as a programmer . Sperry Gyroscope was working on a digital computer , the Sperry Electronic Digital Automatic Computer ( SPEEDAC ) and asked Sammet to be their programmer . Her first task was to write the basic loader for the SPEEDAC , which was a 20-line program that took three days to toggle into the computer by hand in binary . Sammet became the group leader of what was called an “open shop” as Sperry began hiring more programmers . The “open shop” consisted of programmers acting as consultants to the engineers and involved scientists who assisted them in writing and testing their routines . The group produced other system software and focused on scientific and engineering computations . In 1955 Sperry Gyroscope and Remington Rand merged and became Sperry Rand . This merger allowed Sammet access to the UNIVAC I computer and Grace Hopper . In fall of 1956 , Sammet taught one of the earliest graduate-level courses in computer programming in the Applied Mathematics department of Adelphi College ( now University ) on Long Island . Despite the fact that Adelphi did not have a computer and few textbooks on programming existed at the time , Sammet was able to instruct two courses for two years . Sammet decided to leave Sperry to work for a company with computers as its focal point . The classified job advertisements at the time were separated by gender and Sammet was unable to find a position for a woman in any field she was interested in so she decided to scan the men’s list and found an engineer position at Sylvania Electric Products in Needham , Massachusetts . Sammet was instead hired to oversee software development for the MOBIDIC project by Carl Hammer , the person responsible for Sylvania’s software development . In 1959 , Sammet and five other programmers established much of the design of the influential COBOL programming language , in a proposal written in a span of two weeks that was eventually accepted by Sylvanias U.S . government clients . Sammet published in 1969 . The book gives an overview of 120 programming languages being used in the United States as of the late 1960s . Ties to ACM . Around 1965 or 1966 , Sammet noticed a need for the exchange of intellectual information with others working with languages and software while she worked on FORMAC . She was a member of ACM for a number of years but was not active until she became interested in starting a special interest group that would allow her to speak with other professionals in the field . After a couple of failed attempts at contacting the person in charge of Special Interest Groups and Special Interest Committees at ACM , Sammet contacted George Forsythe , president of ACM from 1964 to 1966 , who named her Chairperson of the Special Interest Committee on Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation . In order to gain interest in SICSAM , Sammet wrote letters to people she identified through publications and what was happening in the field at that time . She identified people at Bell Labs , Carnegie Mellon , and IBM who were in different divisions and groups . Sammet faced resistance from the interest group on numerical analysis in ACM . Roughly five years after SICSAM formed , there was a conference about mathematical software called SIGNUM . Sammet states that she fought her way to give a paper at SIGNUM because the group was not interested in non-numerical analysis of that kind of an activity . With assistance from those interested in SICSAM , Sammet organized a conference held in March 1966 , which was the Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation ( SYMSAM ) . In June 1966 , Tony Oettinger was elected president of ACM and Sammet was elected the Northeast Regional Representative ( 1966-1968 ) . She was also a member of the ACM Council and ACM lecturer ( 1967 , 1968 , and 1972 ) . Bernie Galler was elected president of ACM in 1968 and in August 1968 , Sammet became Chairperson of the ACM Committee on SIGs and SICs . In 1971 she was elected chair of SIGPLAN . She served one year of a two-year term before resigning because she was elected vice president of ACM in 1972 . As chairperson of SIGPLAN , she organized conferences between SIGPLAN and various Special Interest Groups . Sammet has stated that these conferences were organized based on the recognition of how fundamental programming languages were to different aspects within computing . Sammet served as vice president of ACM from June 1972 to June 1974 . Working with the president of ACM at the time , Tony Ralston , Sammet made the finances of ACM a priority . At the time of her vice presidency , ACM was almost bankrupt . Sammet convinced Ralston to hold a member-office forum prior to their annual conference . Sammet encouraged this based on her recognition that ACM had no realistic way of communicating with the membership . Death . Sammet died on May 20 , 2017 in Silver Spring , Maryland after a brief illness . Selected works . - Detailed Description of COBOL , 1960 Awards . - 1975 : inducted as an Honorary Member of UPE ( the International Honor Society for the Computing and Information Sciences ) on October 8 , 1975 . - 1989 : Lovelace Award Recipient , Association for Women in Computing . - 1994 : Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery - 1997 : SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award ( J.A.N . Lee and Jean E . Sammet ) - 2001 : Fellow of the Computer History Museum for her contributions to the field of programming languages and its history . - 2009 : Computer Pioneer Award Recipient ( IEEE Computer Society ) - 2013 : NCWIT Pioneer Award