Such a sweet find- THE AMAZING GRACE HOPPER on Letterman!
It’s only 10 minutes and definitely worth watching! Some of my favorite bits:
On going to bed instead of celebrating when she officially left the Navy after 43 1/2 years of service on 31 August 24:00:
“There’s something you learn in your first boot camp or training camp— If they put you down somewhere with nothing to do, go to sleep.”
On joining the service:
L: “What interested you about going into the Navy at 37?”
H: “Well, World War II, to begin with…” (laughter)
“That’s been one of the hardest things to tell people in this country— there was a time when everybody in this country did one thing together.”
On working on the first big computer in the US:
L: “You worked on the original computer in this country, right?”
(bit of talk about her work on the Mark I at Harvard)
L: “How did you know so much about computers then?”
H: “I didn’t. It was the first one.” (much laughter & clapping)
While showing a physical representation of a nanosecond (billionth of a second):
H: “That is the maximum distance that light or electricity can travel in a billionth of a second.”
L: “No faster, no farther…”
H: “When an admiral asks you why it takes so damn long to send a message by satellite, you point out to him between here and the satellite, there are a very large number of nanoseconds…” (illustrating with the “nanosecond” in her hand)
Explaining picoseconds, a thousandth of a nanosecond, and holding up a little packet:
“The best way to get ‘em is go to McDonald’s or Wendy’s or somewhere and get a small packet of picoseconds— they have the label ‘pepper’ on them, but they’re really picoseconds.”
Posted via tumblr: http://sindyjlee.tumblr.com/post/72791358104 published on January 09, 2014 at 12:17PM