[HLUG] Grace Hopper.

George DiceGeorge dicegeorge at hotmail.com
Sun Oct 19 10:16:57 UTC 2014


aha,
I get it now.

Its actually quite a good 'joke',
(but not quite a joke)
unlike the Doctors 2DIS pun last night!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04mhqf1/doctor-who-series-8-9-flatline

[george]

-----Original Message----- 
From: geoff bagley
Sent: Sunday, 19 October, 2014 07:17
To: herefordshire at mailman.lug.org.uk
Subject: Re: [HLUG] Grace Hopper.

Grace Hopper was a lady who served as an officer in the US Navy.
She eventually reached the rank of Admiral!
She was a notable computer scientist, and was given the job of writing
the first COBOL  compiler.  This was so that no one individual
commercial firm should own COBOL.

She also gave lectures on compurer science. I had the privilege of
attending some of these.

In the case I quoted, she was making the point that the ultimate
speed of a computer was limited by propagation time along the
connecting wires.  In order to illustrate this fact,she handed out to
each attendee, a piece of wire eleven and three quarters inches long
with the quip " A nano-second for you,  etc"  (coutesy of Ma Bell).


I am sorry if I made a mess of this anecdote first time !

Geoff


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