Grace Hopper Is The Computer Queen | Letterman

our first guest tonight has credits that are far too impressive for any guest on this program uh this woman recently retired from the United States Navy as a rear Admiral and was until that time the nation's oldest active military officer she is also a Pioneer in the computer field as well as a brilliant and Charming woman please welcome Admiral Grace Hopper a little messy I'm sorry thank you very much for uh being here have you uh have you ever been debate here thank you have you ever seen this program I'm afraid it's too late for

me I have to get up at five to be at the office at seven you get up at five to go to work at seven well it's a long ways from Arlington Virginia across the river and down through Washington we used to have a boat that went from the Pentagon downtown the Navy yard but Mr Carter took it away oh president Curtis did he commandeered for private parties or what no he decided that was using too much energy oh I see it was a conservation measure uh so then you you're working a full day now

for a private firm right yes Equipment Corporation digital equipment get that in there good outfit okay and how long ago did you did you leave active service 31 August at 21 20 400. now see that's it says the 2400 in the artist too 2400 is midnight oh midnight yeah was was there a a wild celebration at midnight when this took place no yeah you were asleep so so you went to bed in the service and you woke up out of the service well there's something you learned in your first Boot Camp or training camp if

they put you down somewhere with nothing to do go to sleep I think that may be office policy for us upstairs too um now now Grace you mentioned boot camp now when did you go through Navy 1844 44 and what what kind of Smith college huh was it tough physically demanding mentally demanding all those youngsters that came in with me they could still memorize things and I'd forgotten how I see so you you can't memorize the old you can't derive the organization of the Navy you have to memorize it uh so you were older than

most of the other uh enlisters just barely got in I was 37. 37 now what interested you about going into the Navy at 37 well World War II to begin with there was a time when everybody in this country all did one thing together yeah and and you just wanted to get over there and fight Nazis well the other thing I had to go Navy because my great grandfather was a rare Admiral and if I hadn't gone in the Navy he probably would have risen from my his grave and haunted me yeah so it's a

tradition in your family yeah uh and then and and but before that you also I was a college professor yeah and you worked on the original computer in this country right I was very fortunate the Navy owed me to the first big computer in the United States Mach 1 and Harvard it was called Mark one at Harvard now in those days the thing was 51 feet long eight feet high and eight feet deep and that was the pocket model that's right um you could put it on a little tiny corner of a chip now yeah

now how did you know so much about computers then I didn't how did you first one yeah foreign in fact I had to learn a lot of things one day Commander Aiken came around to my desk and says you're going to write a book I said I can't write a book he said you're in the Navy now so I wrote a book you had to write a book and that was outlining the entire Manual of the computer yeah yeah and that process yeah now I know nothing about computers and you know everything about computers you're

they've called you everything all I can yeah but is there anybody who would know more I want to expect some of these good youngsters coming along no more but you're known as the queen of software is that right now you know that quite a bit about that that conjures an image of somebody who has a lot of Tupperware parties I could give you a nanosecond okay no I see I don't even know what that is Grace well you see we started with milliseconds thousandths of a second and then we went to microseconds millionths of a

second and now we talk about nanoseconds that's a billionth of a second but only told me billionth of a second and I didn't know what on Earth they were talking about it didn't make sense to me so one day I called up with engineering said cut off a nanosec and send it over to me so I've got a bundle of them here and you can pick your color oh they come in color see I didn't realize that nanoseconds now in the old days you only had your choice of white or gray I think now now

Gracie I understand that this is a visual that is the maximum distance that lighter electricity can travel in a billionth of a second no no faster no no no farther when an admiral asks you why it takes them damn long to send a message by a satellite you point out to him that between here and the satellite there are a very large number of nanoseconds I guess so all right I'll tell you what we gotta we have to pause here grace we'll be right back we'll we'll continue talking about this then we'd have to feed

them dinner uh welcome back to the show this is uh Admiral Grace Hopper is it rear Admiral or just Admiral rare Admiral lower half uh what one star now what is what does that term denote rear Admiral lower half shame is a brigadier general but does the rear apply to a is it a nautical term well it's rare Admiral vice admiral and finally Admiral so it's just where he's positioned he or she is positioned on the chart have there been any other female rear Admirals there are two more once the head of Great Lakes training

and the other is the head of the nurse Corps but you were the first no no no four or five or six ahead of me how many years did you have in the Navy 43 and a half and and can I ask you how old you are now I'll be 80 in December 80 in December I think that's something let's take a look at this Photograph tell me what this occasion was this was when I was promoted to Commodore uh-huh which later was renamed Greer Redmond I see and President Reagan did it all by himself

to him and got up on my toes and said sir may I ask may I tell you something and he looked at me funny as I'll get out as if I was going to threaten something I said I'm older than you are he got out of left you could have heard all the way across the country yeah I'm guessing he didn't mind at all he probably has not heard that much has he um now um take another second here and try to explain to me why a nanosecond means anything in computer reason it means something

is is because everybody wants answers better answers faster and you get them out of the computer so you got to make the computers faster but this is as fast as this is the fact is fast as they'll go now of course they've been talking about nanoseconds for several years but now they're talking about picoseconds and a pack a second is a thousandth of a nanosecond imagine talk cutting that into two thousand it's a thousandth of a billionth of a second yes it's a quadrillionth of a second yeah the best way to get it to go

to Wendy's or McDonald's or somewhere and get a small packet of picoseconds they have the label pepper on them but they're really they're really picoseconds I see that's that's a good illustration have you had any uh any difficulties uh making the transition from all those years as a military person to civilian life they should have a course in how to in civilian dressing here I've been wearing nice round toed flat heel shoes and all of a sudden they want to put me on Spike yields and I fall off and I missed a round toes and

there's nothing but moccasins yeah and then I tried to get some pantyhose and the first pair of bagged at the calf and the second pair cut me in half and the third pair did both how do you get a pair of pantyhose that fit well I can tell you this time I'll tell you a little later how you do that where's your way up to it uh so Navy issue pantyhose were better than civilian panties no we're pantyhose I've got uh socks on okay so do I uh Grace I'm glad that you had had some

time to come up here from Washington and visit with us it was a pleasure to see you congratulations on every question sure we have time for a quick question is your ancestry Welsh Scottish or Irish you know I'm not certain I think it's more your hair and eyes I'd guess Welch all right I'm not going to argue with you I'm gonna make a joke out of that either well I don't know I've said serious is it a serious question well it's very important okay what does that mean exactly well it depends on which kind of

sense of humor you have well that's uh been lousy here lately but I ain't doing very well we're good thank you very much thank you is that it is