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