The Nanosecond

Author © Scott D. Zachary

       “Room, ten-HUT!!”

       The Marine Commander of the Joint Services Computer Operations School stood at the front of the room studying our class, which consisted of about twenty-five Air Force, Navy, Army, and Marine enlisted personnel.

       “Take your seats, soldiers.”

       The Commander held up a length of insulated copper wire. “This, ladies and gentlemen, represents a nanosecond—one-billionth of one second. This wire, not quite twelve inches long, is the distance that an electromagnetic wave—electricity, that is—travels through copper wire during one-billionth of one second.” He glanced around the room.

       “Not impressed?” The Commander continued, “One thousand one. It took me about one second to say ‘one thousand one.’ Let’s take that second and divide it into one thousand equal blocks of time. These are called milliseconds.” Motioning with his hand in a chopping fashion, “Let’s further cut one of these milliseconds into one thousand segments. The result is one thousand microseconds, each spanning a millionth of a second. Now surgically cut one of these microseconds into one thousand identical parts—nanoseconds.” Pinching one of the nanoseconds from his palm with his forefinger and thumb, “Select one of these nanoseconds. That is one-thousandth of one-thousandth of one-thousandth of a second. This, ladies and gentlemen,” holding up the length of copper wire, “is the distance that electricity travels in one-billionth of a second—in a nanosecond.”

       The Commander handed the wire to the Navy Seaman sitting in the front row. He then reached into his pocket, pulled out a small black object, and held it up. “As electricity travels that distance for one nanosecond through one of today’s computer processing chips, it completes hundreds of logical tasks, such as adding two numbers or comparing two bytes of information. Simply put, you will be working with tools that are capable of performing billions of tasks per second. You will be surfing the leading edge of modern technology. I know you will enjoy it as much as I have. Welcome to the world of computers, and welcome to Quantico.”

       “Room, ten-HUT!!”

       That Marine Commander’s inspiring spiel sparked my passion for computer science indelibly. As a teenager, I loved the hard manual work that laced my job in the cemetery, but even then, I knew that extreme physical labor would not retain my interest. I began searching for a career that would stir and grasp my fascination. This—computer science—would!

       We trained on a top-dollar, state-of-the-art IBM 360 mainframe at Quantico. Our computer terminals consisted of a keyboard and a printer. That’s it. The operator typed commands on the terminal’s keyboard, which echoed on the printer in front of the operator. The million-dollar computer answered by printing its response on that same printer.

       Programmers created their programs by typing on a keypunch machine which produced punched cards. Each of these pieces of stiff paper contained the digital information specified by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions, one line of 80 characters or less per card. Programmers typically handed over their boxes of 7.37” x 3.25” punched cards to computer operators who fed them into the computer’s memory for processing via a card reader. This device sounded somewhat like the riffling of a deck of playing cards. Once the programmer debugged his program, he could store it on a magnetic tape similar to the old movie projector reels. We didn’t have hard drives in those days. I’ll introduce you to those when I get to my next assignment, the Pentagon. Yes, computer technology has progressed a very long way since those days in 1978.

       As the class progressed, I began to think in terms of ones and zeros, magnetized or not magnetized, on or off. We call that smallest piece of data storage a “bit,” which is the least unit of measure in computer data. Eight bits form a “byte” of information that generally represents a single character of text. From there, a thousand bytes is a kilobyte (KB), a million bytes is a megabyte (MB), and a billion bytes is a gigabyte (GB). When referring to computer logic, the electronic circuit’s gate is either closed or open, true or false, on or off. Everything in data processing builds on this simple concept of “on or off.”

       Incidentally, the term “bug” was coined when computer operator William “Bill” Burke discovered a moth trapped in an electrical on/off relay in the Harvard Mark II computer on September 9, 1947. The operators taped this bug to the computer log. That logbook with the attached moth is archived in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

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       This story wouldn’t be complete without recording a particularly death-defying incident from my drunk log. And what a doozy! A Marine PFC in my class, Alex, rode a Kawasaki 400 motorcycle. I asked him some questions about his bike because I needed a way to scout apartments in and around Washington, D.C. He took me to a Suzuki dealer near Quantico where they gave me twenty minutes of lessons on a Honda 90cc. I financed one of their Suzuki 400s, and away we went.

       Alex and I zipped all over D.C., as well as Alexandria, Fairfax, Falls Church, and Reston in Northern Virginia, checking out apartments. One thing became clear: I wasn’t going to be living anywhere near Washington on this Senior Airman’s salary. I settled on a townhouse in Woodbridge, Virginia, located about twenty miles southwest of the Pentagon.

       I think Alex and I hit every bar between D.C. and Quantico as we celebrated. We picked up a couple of gals somewhere in Northern Virginia. On our way to their place, it started raining. The gal on the back of my bike told me to turn left. I hadn’t completely mastered the art of stopping my brand-new motorcycle, and so I squeezed my front brake way too hard. At 60 mph, we performed a 540-degree circular spin, all the way around and halfway again. When I put my feet down, not only were we facing in the opposite direction from which we were going, we had somehow jumped up onto the one-foot-vertical concrete median. And we were still upright!

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       Forty years have passed, and that Marine Commander’s stirring words still whirl in my mind. I later learned that he derived his inspiration from Rear Admiral Grace M. Hopper, who pioneered computer programming. Her trail-blazing efforts led to the first high-level compiled programming languages, COBOL and FORTRAN, which enabled programming in English instead of in machine language’s cumbersome manipulation of ones and zeros. Grace Hopper’s inspirational talks about subjects such as “The Nanosecond” electrified the world of computer science. Due to her profound influence on the development of computers and computer programming, she was often referred to as “Amazing Grace.” Attesting to her significant contributions to the world of computer automation, Admiral Hopper received 40 honorary degrees from universities around the world. The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center named the Cray XE6 “Hopper” supercomputer after her. The U.S. Navy even named a guided missile destroyer, the USS Hopper, in her honor.

       Thus, a Marine Commander, inspired by a Navy Admiral, charged this Air Force Senior Airman’s sparkle for computer science for decades to come. And had it not been for a Divine Hand, this bumbling drunk would’ve ended it all in a matter of nanoseconds.