Google honors Grace Hopper today

[Don Shepherd]

One of the inventors of COBOL, Grace Hopper, would have been 107 today, and Google has a cartoon about her.

With all of the discussions of "bugs" in the Prime, let's take time to honor the lady who coined the term.

[Bill (Smithville, NJ)]

Hi Don,

You beat me to it.

A great Computer Pioneer.

I have a one hour video of a talk she gave. I had turned on the TV to the local College Channel and there was this talk she was giving. Fortunately, I was fast enough to get the video tape machine rolling and captured all but the opening minutes.

The part I enjoy the most was when she described the difference between a microsecond and a nano second. She used a great visual of a length of wire - 984 feet long for the microsecond and 11.8" long for the nano second. She said that the coil of "microsecond" wire should be hung around every programmer's neck so they wouldn't forget whenever they waste a microsecond.

At the end of the talk, she handed out nanoseconds.

The quality of the video is fairly low, but I've never found a copy on the web. If anyone would like to see it, I could make it available. It's a very fascinating talk.

Bill

[Pal G.]

Entertaining video of Grace on Letterman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-vcErOPofQ

[htom trites jr]

Adm. Hooper spoke at Michigan State while I was there; a classy lady. I got to be one of the dozen students who were tasked with cutting a couple of hundred nanoseconds to hand out. :)

[Walter B]

Quote:

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... 984 feet long for the microsecond and 11.8" long for the nano second.

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Good grieve, now it becomes clear why people in GOC have such difficulties with SI.

d;-)

[Harold A Climer]

Quote:

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Good grieve, now it becomes clear why people in GOC have such difficulties with SI.

d;-)

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I do not know how long ago Admiral Hopper gave the lecture talked about in this topic and your reference to SI vs. the English system,but I still have students who can not tell the difference between a meter and a two meter stick in some of my General Science and Physics labs.
In the standing waves on a string experiment we use a 2 meter stick to measure the length of the vibrating string, they think it is a meter stick and wonder why they get an incorrect result.
Some these kids are Pre-Med too. I really hope they never make it a doctors.

[Bill (Smithville, NJ)]

Walter,

Quote:

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people in GOC

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What is GOC?

I did a search and came up with:

Gwinnett Online Campus

Gareth O'Callaghan

General officer commanding

Gun Owners of California

Governor's Office for Children

General Optical Council

Gynecologic and Obstetric Consultants of Greater Cincinnati (GOC)

Guardians of the Children (GOC)

German Open Championships

Gem of Champions

Global Operations Conference

Government Of Canada

Or maybe you are referring to following from Urban Dictionary:

Pronounced as "Gock" n. - A friend without a home and therefore sleeps on your couch for extended periods of time. G Guy O On C Couch

Or maybe something else?

Bill

[Walter B]

Oops, I thought that's easy: God's Own Country.

d:-)

[Bill (Smithville, NJ)]

Okay.

Now I get it. From The Web, a few of "God's Country":

The earliest recorded use of the phrase as applied to New Zealand 

God’s Own Country, often abbreviated to Godzone or less often Godzown, 

is a phrase that has been used for more than 100 years by New Zealanders to describe their homeland. 

adopted as a slogan by the tourism department of the Kerala state government in India

The phrase found sporadic use to describe several American regions.

It was used by the Confederate army to describe parts of Tennessee in the 1860s.

The phrase was also used to describe California in the 1860s,

and by Clement Laird Vallandigham to describe the land of the Mississippi plains 

None of these remained a widely used to describe a region, 

though it is still occasionally used to describe the United States overall

used to describe the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland by Edward du Bois

Scotland is also referred to as 'God's Country' because of the beautiful landscapes and countryside

In the United Kingdom the phrase is commonly used by people to describe Yorkshire, 

England's largest county. This is used interchangeably with God's Own County.

Still many areas. Not so easy.

I'm assuming you are referring to the last one above?

But this thread has now degenerated into a totally off-topic subject. (partly my fault.)

This distracts from the wonderful work that Grace Hopper did for the computing (and as a result the calculator) community.

Bill

Edited: 10 Dec 2013, 1:05 p.m.

[Walter B]

I refered to the country with the most references above - the land of Grace Hopper, what else?

d:-)

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

Edited to delete the "way off-topic" part.

OVER!

Edited: 10 Dec 2013, 7:20 p.m. after one or more responses were posted

[Walter B]

This thread went way off topic!

Let me try to bring it back on trace by rephrasing:

Quote:

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... 984 feet long for the microsecond and 11.8" long for the nano second.

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Good grieve, now it becomes clear why people in the USA have such difficulties with SI.

d:-/

Edited: 10 Dec 2013, 5:03 p.m.

[Don Shepherd]

I doubt that anyone who ever heard Grace Hopper make this statement had any problem at all understanding exactly what she was saying.

What's your beef?

Oh, and it's "grief," not "grieve".

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

Quote:

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Let me try to bring it back on trace by rephrasing:

Quote:

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... 984 feet long for the microsecond and 11.8" long for the nano second.

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Good grieve, now it becomes clear why people in the USA have such difficulties with SI.

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I only wonder why she didn't use exact 1000-foot and 12-foot lengths. I don't see how this ranting about people in the USA sticking to U.S. Units brings it back on topic, though. I try to abide to the saying "When in Rome, do as Romans do", that's why I've never complained about dimensions and weights not being in SI Units here, for instance.

Best regards,

Gerson.

Edited: 10 Dec 2013, 7:02 p.m.

[Ken Shaw]

Touché!

Your open-mindedness is appreciated by at least one other forum member who is tiring of pedantic digressions.

[CR Haeger]

... 984 feet long for the microsecond and 11.8" long for the nano second.

Hmmm, according to my HP Prime, this works out to ~1.0x the speed of light. Check my math please, I also graduated from Michigan State :)

Best,
Carl

PS - darn, turned in my calculations 30 minutes late....

Edited: 10 Dec 2013, 7:48 p.m.

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

Wonder no more. Thx!

[John B. Smitherman]

Walter, your shots at the US and Americans get old and boring. Otherwise, I enjoy your posts and really appreciate your contributions to this forum.

Regards,

John

[Harold A Climer]

Quote:

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Walter, your shots at the US and Americans get old and boring. Otherwise, I enjoy your posts and really appreciate your contributions to this forum.

Regards,

John

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I am an American and a Physics/Math/Geology teacher. I complain about the lack of science/math knowledge of my students as well as the public at large in this country;and is seems it is only getting worse.
I point out a very large problem about not knowing, or it seems caring about using the SI system, is the time that NASA/JPL lost a Mars probe because programmers thought they were using the English system instead of SI units.
My students do not know the difference between a meter stick and a two meter stick. I hope none of these kids actually get to be Doctors or Engineers.
Hopefully none of them ever designs a bridge you are traveling over.

[Bill (Smithville, NJ)]

I'm going to close out my comments on this thread with the following:

When I originally posted 984 feet and 11.8", which were direct quotes from Grace Hopper's talk, I half expected to receive some discussion on whether these were accurate measurements. I half expected some members to discuss how they would be calculated (speed of light, resistance of wire, etc.) and what the possible range of values might be.

I never expected a nonsense remark about the ability of a country to understand SI units.

By the way, Grace Hopper did give the parameters that she used to arrive at those measurements.

Closing Out,

Bill

Edited: 10 Dec 2013, 8:24 p.m.