Interesting Tidbits

[Dillinger]

This is the TIDBIT thread - all sorts of interesting tidbits will be posted here - not just computer and "get to know the universe" stuff. Feel free to add your own.

Interesting tidbits:

• If, over the past 30 years, the automotive and aircraft industries developed at the same rate as have chips that power PCs, a Rolls-Royce would cost $2.75 and a Boeing 767 would cost $500 and could circle the globe in 20 minutes on 5 gallons of gas.
• The first computer was built in the 1940s and was a room-sized machine dubbed ENIAC - the 1981 IBM PC was many times more powerful and today's PCs are 358 times faster than IBM's first one.
• PC's are in 63% of U.S households
• More than 18 million households have more than one PC
• There will be more than 87.7 million PC's in US homes in 2002
• 57 million in Europe
• 29.3 million in Japan
• 57.8 million in the rest of the world combined.

(That's a potential audience of 231.8 million people who could read anything you post here - and that doesn't include people logging in from libraries, colleges and internet cafes.)

 

[sexy-girl]

nice info but i think this bit was wrong

[*]The first computer was built in the 1940s and was a room-sized machine dubbed ENIAC

Colossus was the first computer built by us brits

 

[Never]

Did the Brits build the first computer?

 

[Starfish]

What is more wrong is why my computer cost 2k. eh?

 

[scylis]

ENIAC and COLOSSUS were built at virtually the same time. ENIAC was used by the US to calculate artiliary trajectories among other things. COLOSSUS was used by the good crew at Blenchly Park (forgive me if i spelled it wrong, my Brit friends) to help tackle the Jerry's ENIGMA.

i love the History Channel

 

[Dillinger]

What is more wrong is why my computer cost 2k. eh?

Your computer costs a lot less then ENIAC and is a lot more powerful.

In fact... the first IBM PC in 1981 cost about $3,000... or $5,700 in today's dollar and it was a toy compared to your $2,000 computer.

The comparison was meant to show how fast and how far the computer has developed AND dropped in cost compared to other industries.

 

[lavender]

 

[Dillinger]

ENIAC vs COLOSSUS

In fact - neither the ENIAC or the COLOSSUS was the first computer - those are only the milestones that we trace the modern development of the computer back to.

In 1839, Charles Babbage (an Englishman) designed and developed the first true mechanical digital computer, which he described as a "difference engine," for solving mathematical problems including simple differential equations. He was assisted in his work by a woman mathematician, Ada Countess Lovelace, a member of the aristocracy and the daughter of Lord Byron. They worked out the mathematics of mechanical computation, which, in turn, led Babbage to design the more ambitious analytical engine. This machine, which was never built, encompassed many principles of computer operation that have been rediscovered with newer machines a full century later.

That covers MECHANICAL devices - sort of. In truth the ancient Abacus is a computing device - one that is manually manipulated, of course.

Electronically the ENIAC and Colossus are predated by radiation counters using vacuum tubes in the 1930's.

In the later 1930s and early '40s, at least three separate efforts to use electronic circuitry to address the problem of computation were made by John Atanasoff, British Intelligence, and IBM.

The reason that most say that Eniac was the first computer is that the Colossus was kept secret by the British government. Exact dates are hard to determine.

As a side note of interest... The Colossus was made largely out of standard Post Office parts, and when it was stripped down, the parts went back into the spares bin at the Post Office laboratories. Its entirely possible that some telephone exchanges in England may still be using some of these parts, salvaged from one of the world's first computers.

 

[Dillinger]

Dillinger-

Will you and your useless trivia be my phone a friend for Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?

*lol* Now why do you call it "useless" when, among other things, it could help you win a million dollars?

 

[LadyDarkFire]

What is interesting is that a Palm Pilot or other palmtop computer nowadays is more advanced than one of the room sized computers of yesteryear. And as for the prices, hey, they do not relfect the advances in technology, they reflect the advances in greed.

 

[rambling man]

Israelis have invented a device that may someday eliminate colostopies....a small pill sized camera that you swallow...right now the battery will only last until it gets to your small intestines, but it will someday be able to work all the way through. Israel has some of the most advanced technological facilities in the world..didnt know that until yesterday


Of course Arafat wants to destroy Israel so everyone there can be a goatherder again

 

[Closet Desire]

The flip side...

...if we had cars today that worked like our computers it would go a bit like this (personally...I thank Bill Gates and the CEO of GM for this humorous aside).

For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.
Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.

Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.

Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought"Car95" or "CarNT." But then you would have to buy more seats.

Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five per cent of the roads.

The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light.

New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.

Occasionally, and for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grab hold of the radio antenna.

GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.

Everytime GM introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

You'd press the "start" button to shut off the engine.

 

[rambling man]

Driving a Ford or a Chrysler would be incomprehensible to those who learned to drive with a GM

 

[miles]

Hell, I'm still in awe of airplanes. Woh they ever get 10 zillion pounds of netal up in the air at 1000 mph is beyond me.

 

[Dillinger]

Closet Desire - that was HILARIOUS! And sadly - quite on the mark.

 

[Dillinger]

I might just try to keep general observations to this thread instead of starting a new one each time --- or maybe not... doesn't seem to get much attention either way...

Anyway I thought this was interesting. I got the idea from Discover magazine:

• If you had the eyesight of an eagle, you could read this post from a football field away. (Downside: Your eyes would be the size of tennis balls.)
• If you had the eyesight of a dragonfly, you could read this post if your computer was behind your head. (Downside: Your eyes would be the size of basketballs.)
• If you had the eyesight of a rhesus monkey, you could read this post if it was less than an inch in front of your eyes. (Downside: You'd be a rhesus monkey!)

In the context of all creatures, we have eyes that are, well, not bad. On a scale of one to 10 we rate about a 7.

There are different features to eyesight as well - different specialties:

• Distance - Hawks and eagles can spot a mouse in a field from hundreds of feet in the air.
• Color - Human beings see 3 colors - red, green and blue. Pigeons see violet, blue, blue-green, and yellow. Bees perceive ultraviolet light, enabling them to discern the UV color patterns flowrs make when producing nectar.

These evolutionary adaptations allow animals to excel at a particular task. Humans evolved with senses in balance, so we aren't reliant on any one in particular.

Of course Todd and other creationists would tell us we didn't evolve. I wonder what the explaination for these specialties would then be? I guess GOD just thought it would be cool. Maybe HE had a few drinks that day...

 

[Desert Amazon]

 

[Mustang Sally]

These evolutionary adaptations allow animals to excel at a particular task. Humans evolved with senses in balance, so we aren't reliant on any one in particular.

Interestingly enough, my Jehovah's Witness co-worker would tell you that the complexity of the eye and vision are proof we were created and not evolved. Surely something so complex did not happen by chance, was the argument. Hmm.

 

[Dillinger]

I guess anything can be turned to argue one's own point of view.

Here's another interesting tidbit:

THE UNIVERSE (Got this one from Stuff)

The inability to comprehend infinity and whatnot makes you feel funny. It's fifteen billion years old and still expanding. Driving at 75mph, you'd need more than 38 million years to reach Proxima Centauri, one of our nearest (and dearest!) stars. The farthest observable point is about 14 billion light-years distant. That's pretty far.

 

[Dillinger]

The Unbearably Unstoppable Neutrino

At this moment - let's say you're reading a post on a thread by Dillinger, sitting in your office or in your house - at this moment, every second, 40 billion neutrinos from the sun are rocketing up your left nostril and through your brain's frontal lobe, on their way through the roof and then clear out of the Milky Way galaxy, having already passed through China, Earth's rocky mantle, the seat of your chair, and your left thigh.

Even huger numbers of neutrinos pierce you from above; they come from stars in the night sky, from cosmic rays, and above all from the Big Bang - 15 billion years old, those neutrinos are, and still traveling. The nuclear reactor in the next state is sending fresher neutrinos your way. You are at this moment, at every moment, a busy crossroads of neutrinos. But you're not special. Neutrinos, unseen and beyond counting, fill the universe. People call them ghostly, but ghosts aren't real. Neutrinos are real.