I can confirm the part of the story where Grace Hopper found herself left without a ride back to her hotel in Osaka.
In the late 1970s, I had the pleasure of meeting Grace Hopper when she came to visit the facility where I was working at that time. When she stopped by our department, she was chatting with a number of us, and told that story of how she discovered that she needed a ride, and she realized that no one left in the room spoke any English. But, she also realized they were COBOL programmers. So, as I recall, she told the story like this -- She announced loudly to the group of programmers, "MOVE!" while pointing to herself. Then, she pointed away and stated, "GOTO OSAKA HOTEL!" -- and they understood, and someone took her there. And, of course, she handed out "nano-seconds" (an ~12" length of bell wire) to anyone in the room who would accept one. :-) She would say, "Here's a nanosecond" as she handed you a length of wire. She was great. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
