Adm Grace was: Best Quote on Computer Architecture?

In article <uvGdnVZjoKh4ImHbnZ2dnUVZ_qmlnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Rob Warnock <rpw3@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
+---------------
| H. E. Taylor wrote:
| > Admiral [Dr?] Grace Hopper holding her pointed index fingers up
| > about a foot apart and saying, "A nanosecond is about this long."
|
| Didn't she use to hand out foot-long pieces of string to illustrate
| the same thing?

String?
String?
+---------------

Actually, it was wire. She liked to whack off 11.8" of old-style
25-pair telephone cable [now known as "Cat-3", but nobody used
that term back them], strip off the outer gray plastic jacket,
and wave the bundle of (now loose) "nanoseconds" around, somewhat
like the ends of those "modern" decorative fiber-optic table lamps.

Her whack?
I think as an admiral, or even a Capt., I'd think that she'd assign some
one, a yeoman?, to do the whacking. 8^)

After her talks she would usually leave the "nanoseconds" up near
the podium so the first 50 people to come up could take one home. ;-}

Let's see: 11.8" @ 2.54 cm [exactly] = 29.972 cm, surprise, surprise! ;-}
p.s. In wire electricity propagates at *much* less than C-in-a-vacuum
[as little as 0.5 C in 60 ohm microstrip or stripline], but let's not
let such mundane details spoil the joke...

I would almost bet the likelihood that someone raised that with her.
The question or speculation would be what her response would be
like give you, and just you, say, half a foot of wire.
Then she'd go back to handing out feet (vacuum).

--
.

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