Interesting facts about old computers. Interesting on the net

06.05.2019 Programs

Computers are widely used both in industry and in everyday life. Here are some interesting facts about computers:

1. At the initiative of Ted Kekatos, a system administrator, a new professional holiday began to be celebrated in the United States - the Day of Thanks to the System Administrator. As conceived by the author of the idea, at least once a year system administrators should feel appreciation from users.

2. Few know that there are local area networks consisting of a large number interconnected computers. An example of such a system is the network of 6,000 PCs serving the hadron collider.

3. Mentioning interesting facts about computers, it should be recalled that the first program written by Bill Gates turned out to be too large for memory personal computer that time. The PC was only 16 KB random access memory, the Gates program required 34 KB.

4. Among the most powerful computers World leader IBV Roadrunner. This "superbrain" works in the US Department of Energy. According to official data, it is used in various scientific and physical research.

5. It is interesting to note that standard computer rarely loaded on full power... More than half the time he works at half of his capacity.

6. Scott Folman is considered the father of the smiley - a funny icon, who used such symbols on September 19, 1982 when communicating on the computer network of Carnegie Mellon University.

7. It is important for computer users to use a password to protect computers and files. According to surveys, most users use the simplest combinations of numbers as a password - 12345, 77777, 11111 or 55555. Slightly more than 4% use the login itself as a password.

8. The most common causes of computer breakdowns are: liquid spills on the keyboard, and unstable voltage in the mains.

9. After the invention of the CD storage device, the developers were faced with the question of its volume. It was decided that the volume of the CD should contain Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the sound of which is equal to 72 minutes.

10. According to statistics, daily at the standard computer network there are more than 20 virus attacks.

11. Nowadays e-mail is used by many, and often it is necessary to delete spam. Over the past year, more than 22 billion emails with a total volume of 86.7 terabytes containing spam were detected. This represents 94% of the total number of emails.

12. Calculated - if Bill Gates pays $ 1 for each "freeze" of "Windows", then Microsoft will go bankrupt in 3 years.

13. Surveys show that employees spend more than half a billion hours playing computer games during the working day, causing $ 10 billion in productivity losses. And this is without taking into account the time spent on the Internet for personal purposes!

14. Among the exploits in the computer field include the work of Michel Santelia, who blindly reprinted on a PC more than 64 books containing 3 million words. Note that the texts of these books were written in different languages.

15. It is symbolic for our time that in 1982 the “Computer” was recognized as the Person of the Year according to the magazine “Time”.

An interesting video on how to assemble a computer yourself:

Recently, the computer has become an integral part of the life of most people. Everyone uses them, but few know the most. interesting facts about computers: curious events from the history of their creation and statistics of modern realities.

Before the invention of the first PC, employees were called computers. held complex calculations on adding machines. Most of them were women. During the war years, there were no male computers left at all. First electronic computer created by six leading programmers, among whom were exclusively women.
The Windows creators have included the popular entertainment applications"Minesweeper" and "Klondike" in operating system not to brighten up the user's leisure time. Similar games designed to teach a beginner to use the mouse and adapt to the graphical interface.
In 1982, the first virus in history produced by Skrent to damage Apple networks ... On the this moment 70% of all viruses are created by order of organized crime syndicates.
It has recently been confirmed in practice that a fairly low percentage of users actually reread Terms of use before ticking the box "I agree." For the purpose of experiment, the developers of GameStation have made one very unusual sub-paragraph, where the user promises to give his soul to the store. Unfortunately, only a few people paid attention to this incident.
The YouTube domain was registered on Valentine's Day... At the moment, half of its users are under 20 years old, and more than 70% live in the US and UK. Japan ranks second in terms of the number of views.
The number one cause of computer breakdowns all over the world is spilled liquid on the keyboard.... In second place are power outages.
Only in Russia and the CIS, the @ sign is called a dog... In other countries, this symbol is known as a snail or a monkey. It was first used in 1972 by the creator of the world's first email Ray Tomlinson.
Three out of six richest people of the world have earned their fortune in the field of IT-technologies.
According to statistics, every eighth married couple met their half through social networks or dating sites.
It has been proven that at least 70% of the messages that are sent by email every day are nothing more than regular spam and advertising. This year the figure has grown to 94%. People rarely write letters, not only on paper, but also on the Internet.
The first PC mouse was wooden... It was created by a certain Douglas Egnelbart from wood. He also invented modern image arrow cursor pointing up vertically.
Error 404 Not found means that the server could not find information on the request entered by the client... Any user has come across it at least once. When displaying a 403 Forbidden status, be sure you stumbled upon something important and secret. This error code means access denied due to limited rights... Number 451 says that access is closed at the request of copyright holders or even government agencies... The number is not chosen by chance and is a reference to the book by Ray Bradbury called "Fahrenheit 451".
Entering "captcha" is used not only to confirm that the user is a real person but also for the digitization of old literature. The system often requires you to enter two words, the first of which is much simpler. The secret is that the second she cannot independently recognize and accepts any entered word. Then the system analyzes the answers, and saves the most popular version in memory.
In order to determine the usefulness of the site and decide whether to stay on it, the average user needs only one-twentieth of a second. So modern designers and it takes a lot of effort for programmers to win the user's liking in such a short time.
The number of videos on YouTube is getting 35 hours more every minute... Thus, it will take at least a thousand years to review all uploaded videos, during which another billion videos will be added.

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Once I was sitting at a computer, working calmly for myself, and then, suddenly, a thought came to me, how did it all start and what was the very first computer in the world? Of course, I decided to find the answer to this question, it really hooked me. And the answer was found! Naturally, he became the topic of the next blog post about all the most interesting in the world, which does not leave anyone indifferent. As always, the definition of the championship turned out to be not easy, but you can get used to it ...

The very first computer in the world was created and built in the United States by a mathematician from Harvard University, Howard Eicks, back in 1941. Together with four specialists from the company IBM, which ordered it to him, they created a computer based on the ideas of Charles Babbage. After all the tests, its launch took place on August 7, 1944. It received its name from its creators "Mark 1", and put it to work at Harvard.

Then this computer cost five hundred thousand dollars, a fabulous sum for those times. It was assembled in a special case, which was made of glass and steel that does not lend itself to corrosion. The body itself was at least seventeen meters long, its height was more than 2.5 meters. Its mass was about 5 tons and it occupied a space of several tens of cubic meters.
Mark 1 consisted of many switches and other mechanisms, the total number of which was 765 thousand.
Its wires were about eight hundred kilometers long!

The capabilities of the very first computer in the world now seem ridiculous to us, but at that time there was no more powerful computing device on the planet.

The machine could:

operate with seventy-two numbers, which in turn consisted of twenty-three decimal places
the computer could subtract, add, and each operation took three seconds.
in addition, he also multiplied and divided, spending six and fifteen seconds on these operations.

To enter information into this apparatus, which in fact was just a faster adding machine, a special perforated paper tape was used. It was the first computer that did not need human intervention for its computing processes.

Back in 1942, the development of John Mauchly served as the impetus for the creation of the first computer, but at that moment very few people paid attention to it. After the military engineers of the American army took a closer look at it in 1943, attempts were made to create an apparatus, which was then named "ENIAC". The military was in charge of finances and she allocated about five hundred thousand dollars for this project, since they wanted to design new types of weapons.
"ENIAC" consumed so much energy that during its operation, the nearby town was constantly experiencing a lack of electricity and people sometimes sat without electricity for several hours.

Eniac Specifications

Look at some very interesting characteristics the very first computer in the world, according to the second version. Impressive isn't it?

His weight was 27 tons.
It contained 18,000 lamps and other parts.
The memory was 4KB.
Occupied an area of 135 sq. m. and the whole was entangled with many wires.

They programmed it manually, and the operators just changed hundreds of switches, and they had to turn it off and on every time due to the fact that it did not have hard disk... There was no keyboard and no monitor. There was a row of dozens of cabinets with lamps; the car often broke down, as it often overheated. Then it was also used to design hydrogen atomic weapons. This machine worked for more than ten years, and in 1950, when the transistor was created, computers became smaller in size.

Where and when was the very first PC sold?

In two decades, little has changed in the concept of computers. Thanks to the introduction of the microprocessor, the very creation of the computer proceeded at a faster pace. Back in 1974, IBM wanted to bring the first computer to market, but there were almost no sales. The IBM5100 used cassettes where information was stored, and at that time it was very expensive - ten thousand dollars. Therefore, few people could afford to buy such a device then.
He could himself execute programs that were written in languages BASIC and APL, created in the bowels of IBM. The monitor could display sixteen lines of sixty-four characters, its memory was sixty-four KB. The cassettes themselves were very much like regular audio cassettes. There were almost no sales due to high price and because of the ill-conceived interface. But all the same, there were people who acquired it and who started new era in the history of world markets - computer trade

Did you think what they will be like in ten years?

Not so long ago, IBM showed the press the Roadrunner supercomputer with 1 quadrillion operations. It was collected for the US Department of Energy. It includes 6480 dual core processors, and 12,960 Cell 8i processors. It consists of 278 cabinets, 88 kilometers of cable. Weighs 226 tons. Located on an area of 1100 m², it costs 133 million dollars.

As you can see, cabinets for supercomputers are still in vogue, it's all about design ...

Watch about the very first computer in the world in video format:

This is how it turned out computer history... Was it interesting or not - write in the comments!

Let's consider some interesting facts from the history of computer science. What do we know about this science? Just that modern society just can't do without it? The fact that the existence of computer games, the Internet, online communication, calls to the other end of the hemisphere would have been impossible without the advent of computer science.

For the first time, computer science in 1957 was called a technical area that carried out automated processing information using a computer.
It was on December 4, 1948 (the day of informatics) that the "electronic Calculating machine", Created by Rameev.
September 13 (programmer's day) is the 256th day of the calendar. This number is the maximum power of two and can be expressed in terms of an eight-bit byte. But in a leap year, the celebration falls on September 12th.
The M-1 computer was created in 6 months, and became the first machine in which all logic were created on semiconductors. 256 words was the amount of memory she had. 15-20 operations with 23-bit numbers per second.
M-1 is not the first computer, before it was created a small electronic calculating machine by the team of Sergey Lebedev... It occupied several tens of square meters and was able to carry out about three thousand operations per second. There were huge queues for this computer, because everyone wanted to make their calculations easier.
The microprocessor weighs only 2 grams, but 1.6 kg of fossil fuels, 72 grams are spent on its manufacture. chemicals, 32 liters of water.
In the 70s, physicist James Russell invented the CD only because he didn't like the sound of Mozart when the needle scratched the record. Subsequently, his invention was patented by Philips, assigning the rights to itself.
From English "bug" - a bug, computer error, but it got its name thanks to the team of employees of the research institute. The situation is ordinary: the computer broke down, for several weeks they were looking for the cause. In the end, it turned out that the moth closed the contacts with its wings, since then the "bug" has had this name.
36 thousand operations - that's how calculated specialized base computer of the New York Bank, which carries out transactions with securities. 1985, the height of trading, and then the memory of the program ended. Due to the failure in the system, the bank found itself in huge debt, about $ 32 billion in debt. To eliminate the mistake, the bank had to borrow $ 24 billion, while leaving all available assets as collateral.
The winner of the great grandmaster Garry Kasparov is the computer... In 1994 it was computer game was able to beat the great chess player.
The World Wide Web was created in the 60s of the last century by the developers of America, for the defense forces of the state.
Facebook is the most popular social network worldwide, monthly turnover of photos - 3 billion... If FB was a country, it would be at the bottom of the top three in the population list.
The word "spam", where it came from? Back in 1936, an American organization released a new canned food called SPiced hAM. In connection with the Second World War, sales were stopped, but after it it was required to sell the expired goods. A large-scale advertising campaign, which became the standard of importunity. And 50 years later, a certain Dave Rhodes sent a bunch of identical SMS, advertising a new financial pyramid... Since then, "spam" has been an annoying mailing list.
The most destructive virus in the history of computer science - "I Love You" or LoveLetter... The letter was sent to unsuspecting people, opening it, he infected all computer data, creating his own copy to be sent to all contacts. It caused $ 15 billion in damage, affecting over 3 million computers.
The very first and largest attack of the virus was named "Morris worm"... Not only were about 6 thousand infected computer systems, but also the NASA research center itself, causing damage of $ 96 million.

Computers have revolutionized modern world... People no longer open their morning papers, they just open a news web page. Almost no one else checks their mailbox at the door while looking at "unread letters" on e-mail. Today it will be about little-known, but no less curious facts that are associated with computers.

1.c0mrade

A fifteen-year-old teenager (who was known on the Web under the nickname c0mrade, but his real identity was not revealed due to his minority) hacked into the sites of NASA, the Pentagon and the manufacturer of the network Cisco equipment Systems. A teenager from Sweden was sentenced to 6 months in prison.

2. How Apple Corps and Apple Computer were suing for a trademark

In 1978 Apple Corps, which was owned by the Beatles, sued Apple Computer (official Apple name before 2007) for violation trademark... As a result, the companies agreed that Apple Computer promised never to do the music business, and Apple Corps promised to never do the computer business.

3. The computer ate a mole

The first ever computer bug was found 69 years ago. It was ... a common mole that flew into the Mark II computer at Harvard in 1945 and got stuck between the contacts of an electromechanical relay.

4. One ton screw

In 1956, IBM released the first "super" computer, which was equipped with hard disk 305 Ramac. At that time, the technology seemed revolutionary, but now it looks at least funny: the hard drive weighed over a ton and could hold a "colossal" 5 megabytes of data.

5. Dummies Investigators

Casey Anthony investigators (investigating the mother's murder of her daughter) missed incriminating inquiries in google search engine on her computer: Casey searched the web for how to strangle someone. This happened due to the fact that the history was only checked Internet Explorer, but about Firefox browser forgot.

6. Talking dog

Within the framework of project No. More Woof, which is being developed by the Scandinavian team of the Nordic Society for Invention and Discovery No More Woof, has developed a way to translate the thoughts of a dog into human speech using EEG sensors and microcomputers. To do this, the dog needs to put a special device on its head that reads its emotional state.

7.95% of emails are sorted

Although 95% of mail is sorted into in electronic format via computer programs around the world in post offices there are still people working whose duties include reading the addresses on envelopes. It is also funny that more than 80% Email sent every day is classified as spam.

8. US Cyber Command

The largest military intelligence breach in US history occurred when a government official plugged a memory stick he found in a parking lot to his computer. As it turned out later, foreign intelligence specially infected this memory card with viruses. This incident in 2008 resulted in the creation of the US Cyber Command.

9. The human brain - 4 thousand terabytes of memory.

If we could make a computer equal in power human brain, then it would have to do 38 thousand trillion operations per second and have almost 4 thousand terabytes of memory. In fact, the brain of any person is many times more powerful than even the most modern supercomputers in the world.

10.8% of the world's money is cash

And finally, an interesting fact: only 8% of all money in the world is cash. All other money exists only in digital form... However, at the same time, in the largest Western countries, from 45 to 80% of all payments were made with the help of cash.

The computer was invented by men, but women also "noted" a number of ideas. Many of them are very popular today.