Time in your handSourced
She handed out wire to explain a nanosecond
Grace Hopper distributed pieces of wire about thirty centimetres long to represent how far light travels in a nanosecond in a vacuum. She explained that signals move more slowly inside actual wire. A tiny time interval became a teaching aid people could hold.
She made an interval visible as a length.
Summary / translation: Unbubly · CC BY-SA 4.0
Source and reuse details
Grace Hopper · Wikimedia contributors
Adapted, summarized and translated from the source. Adapted text is also available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Reviewed: 2026-10-05