Seagate presents TRIVIA THAT GIVES YOU THE EDGE Seagate presents TRIVIA THAT GIVES YOU THE EDGE 3 • The following writers at Digit compiled the 1001 tech facts: Aparna Krishnakumar Garfield D'Souza Meera Vankipuram Ram Mohan Rao Robert Sovereign-Smith Srinivasan Ramakrishnan Suprotip Ghosh Upendra Singhai Copy Editors Ram Mohan Rao Syed Nadim Siraj Design and Layout Ashwin Boricha Shivshankar Pillai Sivalal S Photographs Mexy Xavier © 2004 Jasubhai Digital Media, Mumbai 1 0 01 T E C H F A C TS • 4 CONTENTS Topic Page No. The History of Computing 9 The Internet 19 Networking 32 Various Timelines 35 Processors and Components 42 Storage 52 Operating Systems 55 Companies and Personalities 60 Supercomputer 66 Displays 70 Imaging 72 Telephony 77 Cellphones 82 Entertainment 85 Games 91 Human Interface Devices 95 Miscellaneous Tech Facts 98 mwmtm ^ INTRODUCTION In 1981, in an apparent moment of epiphany, William Henry Gates III told a gathering that in the future 640 KB of RAM ought to be enough for anybody. Today, Gates, one of the richest men in the universe, makes most of his money selling software so heavy even a Sumo wrestler would blush. Ergo, even the most successful, or foresighted, people in the world are not infallible. Twenty-three years later, we don't really know whether Gates is still haunted by that statement. What we know for sure is that statements like these become more than just that, and people exchange notes with malicious glee: "Did you know that Bill Gates was stupid enough to say this. I mean, how did he become the richest man on earth?" This special compilation of 1001 amazing technology facts is not filled with malice, but with stuff that would make you smile, raise your eyebrows, or, god forbid, make you exchange notes with malicious glee at that next Saturday night party. Technology, like most aspects of our life that pass us by and we take for granted, has history. Since technological progress has been fast enough to send every one of us into a tizzy, we tend to lose sight of the pioneers, of the technologies that changed our lives. This book is meant to bring us closer to reality, closer to our technology history, closer to the people who made it happen. We learn from history, and from those lessons alone alone can we shape our future. So sit back, put your feet on the table, let your hair down, and let time pass you by. And yes, tell us if you didn't get that smile on your face. H HB 70 Seagate 1 0 01 . Alan Turing is considered the father of Computer Science, in 1937, he published the paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Appli cation to the Entsheidungsproblem". 9 9 9. Beginning in 1934, Konrad Zuse, a German engineer, built a series of computers, the Z1 through Z4, utilising binary arithmetic. 9987 Claude Shannon is usually called the father of Information Tech nology. In 1948, he published "A Mathematical Theory of Commu nication" in the Bell System Technical Journal. . The first high-level programming language was Fortran. It was developed in 1956 by an IBM team headed by John Backus. Fortran became commercially available in 1957. The first object-oriented language was Simula. It was developed by Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl in the mid 1960s. 3 9 5. 1981 was the year that PCs began, when IBM debuted the IBM PC. Microsoft shipped it with BASIC. The operating system, too, was developed by Microsoft. aauiMny 90 9 9 4. The first 'computer', the steam-driven calculating machine, was built in 1823 by Charles Babbage. 9 9 3. Christopher Pile was sentenced to 18 months for releasing a toolkit that would boost the impact of existing viruses by randomi- sing their codes. 992. In 1951, Jay Forrester and 991. Robert Everett, graduate students at MIT, constructed It is much debated the ' Whirlwind,' a 'real-time whether any single person computer,' working at twice the speed of the ENIAC. can be said to have invented the first 990. In 1969, computer firm Honey computer. Examples of well released the H316 "Kitchen candidates are Charles Computer", the first home Babbage and Konrad Zuse. computer, priced at $10,600. 9 8 9. In 1976, the term "personal computer" first appeared in print, in the May issue of Byte Magazine. 9 8 8. In 1981, while working on the original version of Microsoft's Disk Operating System (DOS), Bill Gates made a remarkable predic- tion: "640 K (of RAM) should be enough for anyone." 9 8 7. The term 'bug' was probably coined after Admiral Grace Hopper The Incredible Feat of a Seagate Read/Write Head it's like a 747 going 600 Mph 3 Feet off the ground count ing blades of grass as it flies by