Nanoseconds Associated with Grace Hopper

Object Details

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.
Location: Currently not on view

1985

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

See more items in: Medicine and Science: Mathematics; Women Mathematicians; Computers & Business Machines

National Museum of American History

GUID (Link to Original Record): https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746a5-2dc6-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa