History of Feminism

Met her twice when I was working as a systems manager in NYC in the mid-80's. She was still handing out her nanosecond lengths of wire. She had these made as an illustration of exactly why various types of satellite communications took the amount of time they did when she was explaining it to politicians and non-technically inclined upper-level officers.

She also had them make a 'microsecond' piece of wire. The microsecond coil of wire about 984 feet long, which was used it as an illustration of how much was being wasted when a programer said something like, 'It only takes a microsecond longer this way'.

I also have a package of 'picoseconds' that she handed out when she was working for Digital Equipment Corporation in the last few years of her life...it's a packet of ground pepper with the DEC logo on it.

Here's Adm. Hopper explaining nanoseconds:

The original 'bug' was a moth that had gotten into the system and was blocking the reading-holes in the paper tape reader. It was removed and taped into the system log as the 'bug' that was causing the intermittent problems they were seeing. This artifact is, I believe, available at the Smithsonian.