Nanoseconds Associated with Grace Hopper
date: label: date made
content: 1985
name: label: distributor
content: Hopper, Grace Murray
notes: label: Description
content: 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.
label: Description
content: 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).
label: Description
content: Reference: Kathleen Broome Williams, <I>Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea</I>, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: web subject
content: Mathematics
label: Subject
content: Women's History
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Mathematics
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content: Women Mathematicians
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content: Computers & Business Machines
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1985.3088.01
label: catalog number
content: 1985.3088.01
label: nonaccession number
content: 1985.3088
objectType: label: Object Name
content: nanosecond
label: Object Name
content: nanoseconds
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: plastic (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: metal (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 cm x 32 cm x 8 cm; 13/32 in x 12 19/32 in x 3 5/32 in