Grace Hopper Is The Computer Queen ｜ Letterman

Our first guest tonight has credits that are far too impressive for any guest on this program. 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. Grace, nice to meet you. It's a little messy, I'm sorry. Thank you very much for being here. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you. Have you ever seen this program? I'm afraid it's too late for me. I have to get up at 5 to be at the office at 7. You get up at 5 to go to work at 7? 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 down to the Navy Yard. Mr. Carter took it away. Oh, President Carter took it away. Very sad. Did he commandeer it for private parties? No, he decided that it was using too much energy. Oh, I see. It was a conservation measure. So then you're working a full day now for a private firm, right? Yes. Digital Equipment Corporation. Digital Equipment? You've got to get that in there and get out there. Okay. And how long ago did you leave active service? 31 August, 2400. Now see, that's... It says the 2400 in the orders, too. 2400 is... Midnight. Oh, midnight. Yeah. Was there a wild celebration at midnight when this took place? I was asleep. You were asleep. So you went to bed in the service and you woke up out of the service. Well, there's something you learn in your first boot camp or training camp. If they put you down somewhere with nothing to do, go to sleep. You don't want to do that anymore. I think that may be office policy for us upstairs, too. That's possible. Now, Grace, you mentioned boot camp. Now, when did you go through Navy boot camp? 1944. 1944. And what kind of... 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. You can't derive the organization of the Navy. You have to memorize it. So you were older than most of the other enlistees and recruits. Yes, I 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. That's going to be one of the hardest things to tell the people in this country. There was a time when everybody in this country all did one thing together. 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 rear admiral. And if I hadn't gone in the Navy, he probably would have risen from his grave and haunted me. So it's a tradition in your family. But before that, you also... I was a college professor. And you worked on the original computer in this country, right? I was very fortunate. The Navy owed me the first big computer in the United States, Mark I at Harvard. It was called Mark I at Harvard? In those days, the thing was... 51 feet long, 8 feet high, and 8 feet deep. And that was the pocket model. That's right. You could put it on a little tiny corner of a chip now. Now how did you know so much about computers then? I didn't. I was the first one. In fact, I had to learn a lot of things. One day, Commander Aiken came around to my desk and said, 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. What a process. Now, I know nothing about computers, and you know everything about computers. You're... Not everything. All I can. But is there anybody who would know more? Well, I expect some of these good youngsters coming along to know more. But you're known as the queen of software. Is that right? More or less. I know quite a bit about that. That conjures an image of somebody who has a lot of Tupperware parties somehow. I could give you a nanosecond. I don't even know what that is, Grace. Well, you see, we started with milliseconds. Thousands of a second. And then we went to microseconds. Millions of a second. And now we talk about nanoseconds. That's a billionth of a second. Well, he 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 over to engineering and said, Cut off a nanosecond 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 colors. See, I didn't realize that nanoseconds... In the old days, you only had your choice of white or gray, I think. Now, Gracie, I understand that this is a visual... That is the maximum distance that light or electricity can travel in a billionth of a second. No faster? No farther? When an admiral asks you why it takes a 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. All right, I tell you what, we have to pause here, Gracie. We'll be right back. We'll continue talking about... Welcome back to the show. This is Admiral Grace Hopper. Is it Rear Admiral or just Admiral? Rear Admiral, lower half. One star. Now, what does that term denote? Rear Admiral, lower half? Same as a brigadier general. But does the rear apply to a... Is it a nautical term? Well, it's Rear Admiral, Vice Admiral, and finally Admiral. So it's just where he is positioned, he or she is positioned on the chart. Have there been any other female Rear Admirals? There are two more. One's the head of Great Lakes Training, and the other's the head of the nurse corps. But you were the first? No, no. No, no, no, no. There were four, five, or six ahead of me. How many years did you have in the Navy? Forty-three and a half. And can I ask you how old you are now? I'll be 80 in December. 80 in December. I think that's something to brag about. Now, let's take a look at this photograph. Tell me what this occasion was. This was when I was promoted to Commodore, which later was renamed Rear Admiral. I see. And President Reagan did it all by himself. When I met him, I have to explain, when I met him, I tiptoed up to him and got up on my toes and said, I said, sir, may I tell you something? And he looked at me, funny as all, and get out as if I was going to threaten something. I said, I'm older than you are. He got out a laugh you could have heard all the way across the country. Yeah. He didn't mind at all. He probably has not heard that much, has he? Now, take another second here and try to explain to me why a nanosecond means anything in computers. The main reason it means something is because everybody wants answers, better answers, faster. Uh-huh. And you get them out of the computer, so you've got to make the computers faster. But this is as fast as they'll go. And this is in fact as 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 picosecond is a thousandth of a nanosecond. Can you imagine cutting that into a thousand pieces? So it's a thousandth of a billionth of a second. Yes. It's a quadrillionth of a second. Yeah. The best way to get them is 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 picoseconds. Picoseconds. I see. That's a good illustration. Have you had any difficulties making the transition from all those years as a military person to civilian life? They should have a course in civilian dressing. Here I've been wearing nice, round-toed, flat-heeled shoes, and all of a sudden they want to put me on spike heels, and I fall off. And I'm used to round toes, and it's nothing but moccasins. And then I tried to get some pantyhose, and the first pair 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? I can tell you a little later how you do that. You've got to work your way up to it. So Navy-issue pantyhose were better than civilian pantyhose? No, we're pantyhose. I've got socks on. Okay, so do I. Grace, I'm glad that you had some time to come up here from Washington and visit with us. It was a pleasure to see you. Congratulations on everything. Can I ask you one 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... With your hair and eyes, I'd guess Welsh. All right, I'm not going to argue with you. I'm not going to make a joke out of that either. Well, I don't know. That's dead serious. Is it a serious question? Oh, 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 been lousy here lately. I think it's going very well. Oh, well, good. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is that it?