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Trivia ~ Man Made
~ Computers ~
MANIAC - an acronym for Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer.was the first computer used for weather resaerch
.A calculator on the ENIAC was equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed 30 tons, (In 1948 Popular Mechanics predicted ,computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh only 1-1/2 tons.)
On June 14, 1951 UNIVAC I was delivered to the U.S. Census Bureau. It weighed 16,000 pounds, used 5,000 vacuum tubes, and could perform about 1,000 calculations per second. Today's "1 GHz PC" (not the fastest, but faster than anything I have) can perform about 6,000,000 calculations per second.
Why aren't the keys on your computer's keyboard arranged in alphabetical order?
Are you like me? "QWERTY," the keyboard's first five letters, vividly describes my typing ability. My fingers function less than felicitously. I am a hunt-and-peck has-been, devoid of digital dexterity, clueless in coping with the keyboard's loopy logic. Actually I'm more of a religious typist; "Seek and you shall find"
Why do they make it hard on us? Why do keyboards ignore alphabetical order? Blame the typewriter. The first machines in the 19th century did go from A to Z. But this stymied good typists because the most frequently used keys were contiguous. When typists struck, say, the "a" and "b" keys in rapid succession, the spokes carrying those letters often jammed. The solution: separate these and other often-used keys.
Computers carried over the QWERTY keyboards that people were already used to. These machines never jam; they just crash, destroying our work and driving us to drink.
Even though the World Wide Web wasn't introduced to the public until 1989, as of 01/01/01, approximately 98% of the words in Webster's English Dictionary have been registered as Web site names.
A complete printout of Microsoft Windows 2000's 29 million lines of source code would form a stack of pages 193 feet high (59 meters), about as tall as a 19-story building.
Creating such a huge software product is no small challenge. More than 4,000 people worked together for several years, exchanging an average of 90,000 email messages every day. Writing the code itself was only a small part of the task; testing and debugging consumed more than 90% of the effort.
By the begining of the year 2001, 38 million workers in the U.S. have Internet access, and two- thirds of them go online at least once a day. When online, most of them are conducting job-related research or managing email. (So they claim)
The most "wired" nation in the world (on a per-capita basis) is Finland, with 244.5 Internet users per 1000 persons.
(Source: Guinness World Records 2000)
In the year 2000, an average of ten billion email messages were sent per day by internet users worldwide. ( that number is expected to increase threefold in five years.)
Side note:
Thanks in large part to electronic correspondence, the government expects the total first-class mail volume to decline at an average annual rate of 3.6 percent from 2004 to 2008. Email and the rise of electronic banking are believed to be key reasons the Postal Service keeps asking for rate increases.
94% of online American adults access their email at least once a month.
The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
What are Pixels?
Pixels should not be confused with the imaginary, elf- or fairy-like creature in children's stories, such as Peter Pan. Pixies can only get you into trouble.On the other hand, to paraphrase an old song, pixels can light up your life--and in fact they already do if you use a computer. The word is a combination of "picture" and "element." Pixels are the smallest picture elements on your computer screen. They are the thousands of dots that, combined, bring you the image of a spreadsheet, the text of your report, or the message that you have caused the machine to make a fatal error.
On laptop screens a defective pixel may cause a permanently off-color spot. If you experience this, either return the computer or make that misbehaving pixel stand in the corner.
And dot's all I have to say about dot.
One of the most common recent email hoaxes carried this message: “Bill Gates is sharing his fortune. When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it for a two week time period. For every person that you forward this email to, Microsoft will pay you $245.”
Some people think they see windows of opportunity everywhere.
I'm sure that at least once you've run across a news story about someone so angry at what they saw on TV that they kicked or shot their set. Given the widespread use of computers and the digitally challenged performance of software such as Windows, you should not be surprised that there have been similar assaults on computers.
A number of people have drawn guns on their machines. Computers have even been stabbed with screwdrivers. But my favorite is the person who used the heel of a woman's shoe rather than the "off" switch. Maybe she misunderstood when told she had to reboot.
The bar code, allowing for the electronic scanning of prices, was used for the first time on a pack of gum at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio in 1974
A 1999 survey of 25,500 standard English-language dictionary words found that 93 percent of them have been registered as dot-coms
The most "wired" nation in the world (on a per-capita basis) is Finland, with 244.5 Internet users per 1000 persons. or 24.45%
As bits of trivia are presented on my e-mail list I will add them here. See them first by sending an e-mail to twotreestrivia-subscribe@topica.com
If you have other good Trivia to add please E-mail me
