Nanoseconds Associated with Grace Hopper
Object Details
- date made
- 1985
- distributor
- Hopper, Grace Murray
- 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
- web subject
- Mathematics
- Subject
- Women's History
- See more items in
- Medicine and Science: Mathematics
- Women Mathematicians
- Computers & Business Machines
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
- ID Number
- 1985.3088.01
- catalog number
- 1985.3088.01
- nonaccession number
- 1985.3088
- Object Name
- nanosecond
- nanoseconds
- 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
- Record ID
- nmah_692464