I like this video of Admiral Grace Hopper talking about processing speeds. She illustrates it with her famous "nanoseconds" - pieces of wire that a electricity would travel in a nanosecond.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8

What a great role model, for programmers, for women, but also for anyone working in a bureaucratic system.

One of her famous quotes is "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission". It became a classic. Python's programming paradigm, for example, which prefers exceptions instead of condition checks is named that.

"Computer bugs" phrase also seem to originate with her.

Also based on Wikipedia she also was the oldest serving officer in the United States Navy.