Nanoseconds Associated with Grace Hopper
Nanoseconds Associated with Grace Hopper
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- Description
- This bundle consists of about one hundred pieces of plastic-coated wire, each about 30 cm (11.8 in) long. Each piece of wire represents the distance an electrical signal travels in a nanosecond, one billionth of a second. Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992), a mathematician who became a naval officer and computer scientist during World War II, started distributing these wire "nanoseconds" in the late 1960s in order to demonstrate how designing smaller components would produce faster computers.
- The "nanoseconds" in this bundle were among those Hopper brought with her to hand out to Smithsonian docents at a March 1985 lecture at NMAH. Later, as components shrank and computer speeds increased, Hopper used grains of pepper to represent the distance electricity traveled in a picosecond, one trillionth of a second (one thousandth of a nanosecond).
- Reference: Kathleen Broome Williams, Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004.
- Object Name
- nanosecond
- nanoseconds
- date made
- 1985
- distributor
- Hopper, Grace Murray
- Physical Description
- plastic (overall material)
- metal (overall material)
- Measurements
- overall: 1 cm x 32 cm x 8 cm; 13/32 in x 12 19/32 in x 3 5/32 in
- ID Number
- 1985.3088.01
- catalog number
- 1985.3088.01
- nonaccession number
- 1985.3088
- subject
- Mathematics
- See more items in
- Medicine and Science: Mathematics
- Computers & Business Machines
- Women Mathematicians
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Comments
Around 2000 Ron Dewitt was on my EDS IBM POS Helpdesk in Raleigh, NC. I was 40 years old, he was perhaps 60. Ron gave me a wire he said he got from Grace Hopper, a "nanosecond." I have that wire on my person as we speak. I enclosed it in a glass tube with cork ends. I tell my computer science enthusiast friends about it. I just sent them the link to this page. Thank you for providing the information.
David Parham
Tue, 2019-09-10 08:58
OMG putting these up at 1:1 size then making a webpage that says "calibrate your atom " with an image of a laser pointer. You can watch the nanoseconds!
Treon Verdery
Thu, 2016-01-21 20:42
Mary Pickett
Wed, 2021-03-10 08:47