Day 60 - Real fast time

Ever wonder about a nanosecond? It is the time it takes for an electrical signal to travel through about 1 foot of wire - the length of the wires in front of my keyboard. Back in the 60's (last century) this was becoming a BIG problem. I heard Grace Hopper (a mathematician, computer scientist and Navy admiral) speak about nanoseconds sometime in the 70's. She carried a piece of wire with her to illustrate the point that the old designs for computers were being restricted by the time it took signals to travel through the wires. Thanks to miniaturization, that PC or laptop you are using to see this is not the size of several file cabinets and can do the billions of calculations required to display this blog in a few seconds.