Note
"Now what I wanted when I asked for a nanosecond was, I wanted a piece of wire which would represent the maximum distance that electricity could travel in a billionth of a second.
Of course, it wouldn’t really be through wire. It’d be out in space, velocity of light, so if you start with the velocity of light and use your friendly computer, you’ll discover that a nanosecond is 11.8 inches long. The maximum limiting distance that electricity can travel in a billionth of a second.
Finally, again in about a week I called back and said “I need something to compare this to. Could I please have a microsecond?”
I’ve only got one microsecond, so I can’t give you each one. Here’s a microsecond. Nine hundred and eighty-four feet. I sometimes think we ought to hang one over every programmer’s desk, or around their neck, so they know what they’re throwing away when they throw away microseconds." - Grace Hopper
