Remembering the Grace Hopper speaking tours

Reading about Sun presenting at the Grace Hopper conference reminded me of when she was a regular visitor on my college campus, during her peak speaking tour years. Admiral Hopper would always be in her Navy uniform and would pass around a piece of wire, showing what a nanosecond looked like, in terms of the speed of light propagation. She'd also mention the team that found the moth that flew into the room-size computer and caused it to shut down. To fix the computer, they "debugged" it. I remember she was careful about not claiming to invent the term "bug", since it was already in use in the electronics industry.

A visiting female computer science speaker was a rarity back then, and you wonder how many women she inspired to enter or continue in the field, after hearing her talk? Also, in today's world where female enrollment in computer science is declining rapidly, who will be the next Grace Hopper?

Posted at 12:05PM Oct 04, 2006 by Peter Schow in Sun  |