The first motivational speaker I ever heard was the inimitable Admiral Grace Hopper, sometime in the 80s at the University of Virginia. Hopper left her position as a mathematics professor at Vassar during WWII to join the Navy. She was instrumental in developing COBOL and takes credit for inventing the word “debug” as applied to computers – she says because a moth disabled a computer she was working on during WWII, and she remarked that the computer needed “debugging.”
Grace carried on her speaking career until her death in 1992 at 85. When I saw her in the 80s, she had her message down. She began with some self-deprecating humor about being a woman in the Navy, and in the computer world. The truth was she was so smart she broke through the gender barriers of the day with her brains and character.
That alone was inspiring. But the core of her message was about waste. A nanosecond doesn’t sound like a long time, but if you measure it in terms of how far an electric impulse travels in that time, it’s something over 11 inches.
Grace would hand out ‘nanoseconds’ to everyone in her audience – eleven inches of green and white phone wire – and urge everyone to think clearly and precisely, avoid waste, and reach their potential.
I still have the nanosecond today. I’m looking at it now. Grace Hopper was named the first “computer sciences man of the year” in 1969, but it’s not her courage and trailblazing that has made me keep this prop – this piece of wire – for nearly 30 years. It’s Grace Hopper’s character. That, and the prop, made her and her speech unforgettable.
Here’s a brief clip from an old “60 Minutes” program on Hopper. It captures a little of her wit and wisdom. Enjoy!