Seagate

presents

TRIVIA THAT GIVES YOU THE EDGE

Seagate
presents

TRIVIA THAT GIVES YOU THE EDGE

The f o l l o w i n g w r i t e r s at Digit
compiled t h e 1001 t e c h facts:
Aparna K r i s h n a k u m a r
Garfield D'Souza
Meera V a n k i p u r a m
Ram Mohan Rao
Robert S o v e r e i g n - S m i t h
Srinivasan R a m a k r i s h n a n
Suprotip Ghosh
Upendra Singhai
Copy Editors
Ram Mohan Rao
Syed Nadim Siraj
Design and Layout
Ashwin Boricha
Shivshankar Pillai
Sivalal S
Photographs
Mexy Xavier

2 0 0 4 Jasubhai Digital Media, Mumbai

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

CONTENTS
Topic

The History of Computing

The Internet
Networking
Various Timelines
Processors and Components
Storage
Operating Systems
Companies and Personalities
Supercomputer
Displays
Imaging
Telephony
Cellphones
Entertainment
Games
Human Interface Devices
Miscellaneous Tech Facts

mwmtm

Page No.

9
19
32
35
42
52
55
60
66
70
72
77
82
85
91
95
98

INTRODUCTION
In 1981, in an apparent m o m e n t of epiphany, William Henry
Gates III told a gathering that in t h e future 6 4 0 KB of RAM
ought to be e n o u g h for anybody.
Today, Gates, o n e of t h e richest m e n in t h e universe, makes
most of his m o n e y selling software so heavy even a Sumo
wrestler would blush. Ergo, even t h e m o s t successful, or
foresighted, people in t h e world are n o t infallible.
Twenty-three years later, we don't really k n o w whether
Gates is still h a u n t e d by that statement. W h a t we know for
sure is that statements like these b e c o m e more t h a n just that,
and people e x c h a n g e notes with malicious glee: "Did you
know that Bill Gates was stupid enough to say this. I mean,
how did he b e c o m e t h e richest m a n on earth?"
This special compilation of 1 0 0 1 amazing t e c h n o l o g y facts
is n o t filled with malice, but with stuff that would make you
smile, raise your eyebrows, or, god forbid, make y o u 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 t e c h n o l o g i c a l progress
has b e e n fast e n o u g h to send every o n e of us into a tizzy, we
tend to lose sight of t h e pioneers, of t h e technologies that
changed our lives. This b o o k is m e a n t to bring us closer to
reality, closer to our t e c h n o l o g y history, closer to t h e people
w h o made it happen.
We learn from history, and from those lessons alone alone
can we shape our future. So sit back, put your feet o n t h e table,
let your hair down, and let time pass you by. And yes, tell us if
you didn't get t h a t smile o n your face.

H H B

70

Seagate

1 0 0 1 . Alan T u r i n g is considered the f a t h e r of C o m p u t e r Science, in 1937,

he published t h e paper "On C o m p u t a b l e Numbers, w i t h an Appli
cation t o t h e E n t s h e i d u n g s p r o b l e m " .
9 9 9 .

Beginning in 1934, Konrad Zuse, a G e r m a n engineer, built a series

of c o m p u t e r s , t h e Z1 t h r o u g h Z4, utilising binary a r i t h m e t i c .

9987

Claude Shannon is usually called the f a t h e r of I n f o r m a t i o n Tech

nology. In 1948, he published "A M a t h e m a t i c a l T h e o r y of C o m m u
n i c a t i o n " in t h e Bell System Technical J o u r n a l .
The f i r s t high-level p r o g r a m m i n g language was Fortran. It was
developed in 1956 by an IBM t e a m headed by J o h n Backus. Fortran
became c o m m e r c i a l l y available in 1957.
The first o b j e c t - o r i e n t e d language was Simula. It was developed by
Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl in t h e mid 1960s.

3 9 5 .

1981 was t h e year t h a t PCs began, when IBM d e b u t e d the IBM PC.
Microsoft shipped it w i t h BASIC. The o p e r a t i n g system, too, was
developed by M i c r o s o f t .

aauiMny

90

9 9 4 .

The f i r s t ' c o m p u t e r ' , t h e s t e a m - d r i v e n calculating machine, was

built in 1823 by Charles Babbage.

9 9 3 .

C h r i s t o p h e r Pile was sentenced t o 18 m o n t h s f o r releasing a

t o o l k i t t h a t w o u l d boost t h e impact of existing viruses by r a n d o m i sing t h e i r codes.

992.

990.

In 1951, J a y F o r r e s t e r and
Robert Everett, g r a d u a t e
s t u d e n t s at MIT, c o n s t r u c t e d
t h e ' Whirlwind,' a 'real-time
c o m p u t e r , ' w o r k i n g at twice t h e
speed of t h e ENIAC.
In 1969, c o m p u t e r f i r m Honey
well released t h e H316 " K i t c h e n
C o m p u t e r " , t h e f i r s t home
c o m p u t e r , priced at

991.
It is much debated
whether any single person
can be said to have
invented the first
computer. Examples of
candidates are Charles
Babbage and Konrad Zuse.

$10,600.

9 8 9 .

In 1976, the t e r m "personal c o m p u t e r " first appeared in print, in t h e

May issue of Byte Magazine.

9 8 8 .

In 1981, while w o r k i n g
on t h e original version
of M i c r o s o f t ' s Disk
O p e r a t i n g System
(DOS), Bill Gates made
a r e m a r k a b l e prediction: " 6 4 0 K (of RAM)
should be e n o u g h f o r
anyone."

9 8 7 .

The t e r m 'bug' was

p r o b a b l y coined a f t e r
A d m i r a l Grace Hopper

The Incredible Feat of a Seagate Read/Write Head it's

like a 7 4 7 going 6 0 0 Mph 3 Feet off the ground count
ing blades of grass as it flies by

Seagate
o
o

f o u n d a m o t h in t h e Mark II c o m p u t e r at t h e US Naval Surface

W a r f a r e Center, causing t h e machine t o m a l f u n c t i o n .

9 8 5 .

In 1970, Steve Wozniak played a

huge prank by d i s t r i b u t i n g
2 5 , 0 0 0 leaflets for a non-exis
t e n t c o m p u t e r , w h i c h was later
r e f e r r e d t o as t h e Zaltair
Hoax.

o
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5'

986.

>o

J i m Knopf is known as t h e
' f a t h e r of shareware'. His
f i r s t shareware p r o g r a m
was PC-Fiie, in 1 9 8 2 , which
Knopf published under t h e

9 8 4 .

pseudonym J i m Button.
The ENIAC had 2 0 , 0 0 0 v a c u u m
tubes and 4 0 racks of equipment, and ran up a daily electric bill of $ 6 0 , a large a m o u n t at
the time, t h e mid 1940s.

9 8 3 .

The first c o m p u t e r t o
p e r f o r m a t r i l l i o n opera
tions per second
was called t h e G r a v i t y
Pipeline.

9 8 2 .

Les Solomon, publisher of

t h e magazine Popular
The first silicon
Electronics, and Ed Roberts

transistor

were looking for a name t o release their new c o m p u t e r under. They

finally called it t h e Altair.

981.

Mitch Kapor f o u n d e d Lotus Development Corp. in 1982 with

J o n a t h a n Sachs, w h o was i n s t r u m e n t a l in launching
Lotus 1-2-3.

980.

Founder Paul Gavin came up w i t h t h e n a m e M o t o r o l a

when his c o m p a n y s t a r t e d m a n u f a c t u r i n g radios for m o t o r c a r s .

9797 In 1989, Steve Chase, Founder of t h e I n t e r n e t

Bulletin-Board
System Q u a n t u m C o m p u t e r Services, r e n a m e d it
A m e r i c a Online.

1
a

V i n t o n C e r f Is h a i l e d as t h e F a t h e r of t h e I n t e r n e t , a n d
e a r n e d his n i c k n a m e w h e n he c o - a u t h o r e d , w i t h Dr R o b e r t
K a h n i n 1 9 7 3 , a p a p e r t h a t g a v e t h e w o r l d T C P a n d IP.
w

I d

(D
3
(D
1
0)

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9 7 7 .

On 4 t h J u l y , 1996, Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched Hotmail.

In 1997, t h e y sold it t o Microsoft f o r an e s t i m a t e d price of $ 3 8 5
million.

9 7 6 .

AT&T Bell Labs was the first

company to transmit human voice
across the Atlantic, on January 25,
1915. The exercise was
conducted to celebrate the open
ing of the Panama Canal to Alexander Graham Bell.

9 7 4 .

9 7 3 .

975.
In 1991, 4 5 0 complete
works of literature were
published on one CD-ROM.

Paul Allen, w h o c o - f o u n d e d M i c r o s o f t w i t h Bill Gates, is now t h e

c h a i r m a n of Vulcan N o r t h w e s t , an i n v e s t m e n t f i r m .
M a t h e m a t i c i a n Blaise Pascal a t t e m p t e d a u t o m a t e d c o m p u t i n g as
early as 1642.

9 7 2 .

In 1993, t h e US D e p a r t m e n t of C o m m e r c e c r e a t e d InterNIC t o
m a i n t a i n a c e n t r a l database t o c o n t a i n all registered d o m a i n
names and IP addresses.

971.

In 1998, online p o r n o g r a p h y
a c c o u n t e d f o r 8 0 percent of all ec o m m e r c e . However, the f i g u r e has
t o d a y fallen t o 2 0 per cent.

9 7 0 .

Online p o r n o g r a p h y was a $1 billion

i n d u s t r y in 1998.

969.
o
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968.

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12

In 1949, J Woodland and B Silver

i n v e n t e d t h e bar code. It was
p a t e n t e d in 1952 and was used c o m m e r
d a i l y f o r t h e first t i m e in 1974.

Vinton Cerf,
co-creator
of TCP/IP and the
Internet

In 1971, Intel launched the w o r l d ' s f i r s t

single-chip m i c r o p r o c e s s o r , t h e Intel
4 0 0 4 . The Pioneer 10 spacecraft used t h e 4 0 0 4 m i c r o p r o c e s s o r .

Seagate
9 6 6 .

965.

o
o

On 9 t h March, 2 0 0 4 , t h e US g o v e r n m e n t b o u g h t t h e world's
biggest ever solid state disk (SSD) f r o m Texas M e m o r y
Systems.

In A u g u s t 1944, J o h n Mauchly and Presper Eckert proposed t h e

building of a new machine called t h e e l e c t r o n i c discrete variable
a u t o m a t i c c o m p u t e r (the
EDVAC). It was t o b e c o m e the
first s t o r e d - p r o g r a m c o m p u t e r .

9 6 4 .

Niklaus W i r t h developed t h e
Pascal p r o g r a m m i n g language in
1971.

9 6 3 .

1975 saw t h e e m e r g e n c e of t h e
first w o r d processing s o f t w a r e ,
t h e Electric Pencil.

m
!

' ~ m

9 6 2 .

WordStar, a n o t h e r w o r d
processing s o f t w a r e , was
released in 1975.

9 6 1 .

In 1975, M i c r o s o f t , t h e unofficial
partnership of Bill Gates and Paul
Allen, a t t a i n e d sales of $16,000.

9 6 0 .

In 1958, Chester Carlson invented t h e Xerox machine. The

i n t e g r a t e d circuit was invented
at the same t i m e , enabling t h e
959.
m i n i a t u r i s a t i o n of electronic
devices.
V i s i C a l c w a s d e v e l o p e d by

9 5 8 .

Edmund Gunter of England

invented t h e slide rule as
early as 1692.

9 5 7 .

Chester Carlson invented

the
photocopier
machine at Xerox

Dan B r i c k l i n and Bob

F r a n k s t o n in 1 9 7 9 .
R e t a i l i n g f o r $ 9 9 apiece,
V i s i C a l c sold o v e r

7 0 0 , 0 0 0 copies.
The EDSAC ran its first p r o g r a m
on May 6 , 1 9 4 9 . It wasn't t h e
first s t o r e d - p r o g r a m c o m p u t e r , but r a t h e r , t h e f i r s t practical one.

In December 1 9 7 0 , Gilbert H y a t t filed a p a t e n t a p p l i c a t i o n

e n t i t l e d " S i n g l e Chip I n t e g r a t e d C i r c u i t C o m p u t e r A r c h i t e c t u r e " , t h e f i r s t basic p a t e n t on t h e m i c r o p r o c e s s o r .
13Q

"S
3

9 5 5 .

In t h e 1940s, H u n g a r i a n - A m e r i c a n J o h n v o n Neumann devised t h e

von N e u m a n n a r c h i t e c t u r e for c o m p u t e r s , w h i c h is the basic archi t e c t u r e t h a t y o u see t o d a y in v i r t u a l l y e v e r y non-parallel-processing c o m p u t e r around, and ever t o have been built.

9 5 4 .

The f i r s t v o n N e u m a n n - a r c h i t e c t u r e
c o m p u t e r t o be actually c o n s t r u c t e d
and o p e r a t e d was the Manchester
Markl,designed and built at
Manches-ter University in England.

9 5 3 .

In t h e s u m m e r of 1969, UNIX
was developed. Linus Torvalds, t h e
c r e a t o r of Linux, was born t h e same
year.

9 5 2 .

The first edition of the Unix

Programmer's
Manual, by K Thompson and D Ritchie, was released in
1971.

9 5 1 .

950.

o
(O

The Intel

Pentium

was relased

processor

in 1993

In 1993, Intel released t h e P e n t i u m processor. It was a 6 0 MHz

processor, i n c o r p o r a t i n g 3.2 million t r a n s i s t o r s . It sold for $ 8 7 8
apiece.

949.

In 1991, Linus Torvalds, t h e n a

s t u d e n t in Finland, i n t r o d u c e d
In 1991, Sun unveiled the
Linux. He posted the f o l l o w i n g
Solaris 2 operating
w o r d s t o t h e comp.os.minix
environment, fined-tuned
n e w s g r o u p : "Hello e v e r y b o d y
for symmetric
out t h e r e using minix - I'm
multiprocessing.
doing a (free) o p e r a t i n g
s y s t e m (just a hobby, w o n ' t be
big and professional like gnu) f o r 3 8 6 ( 4 8 6 ) AT clones.
In 1995, SCO acquired the UNIX Systems source t e c h n o l o g y business f r o m Novell Corporation.

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946.

14

In August, 1995, Microsoft Windows 9 5 was released. It sold m o r e

t h a n a million copies w i t h i n t h e f i r s t f o u r days of its launch.

2 0 0 4 saw Lindows changing its name to Linspire on

April 14, after it lost a legal battle against Microsoft.
1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate
9 4 5 .

In 2001, M i c r o s o f t filed a t r a d e m a r k suit against Lindows.com

in December. It w o n t h e case in
early 2 0 0 4 .

944.

THE HISTORY OF COMPUTERS AND

COMMUNICATION

ARPANET, the first

'Internet', was launched in

iO

3
fl>

1969.

9 4 4 .

C o m p u t e r s w e r e sold c o m m e r cially f o r t h e f i r s t t i m e in 1951.

9 4 3 .

AT&T m a n u f a c t u r e d t h e first c o m m e r c i a l m o d e m , t h e Bell

103, in 1962.

9 4 2 .

The w o r l d ' s first m i n i c o m p u t e r , Digital E q u i p m e n t ' s PDP-8, was

i n t r o d u c e d in 1965, and cost a p h e n o m e n a l $18,000.

9 4 1 .

In 1966, Xerox i n v e n t e d t h e T e l e c o p i e r - t h e first successful fax

machine.

9 4 0 .

The floppy disk was

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01

invented in 1971.
9 3 9 .

The m i c r o p r o c e s s o r was
invented in 1971. The
c r e a t i o n was considered a
c o m p u t e r on a chip.

9 3 8 .

937.
935.

Cray Research Incorporated i n t r o d u c e d t h e first

s u p e r c o m p u t e r in 1 9 7 6 - t h e
Cray 1. It could p e r f o r m 2 4 0
million calculations per
second.
The Apple I h o m e c o m p u t e r
was released in 1976.

The world

wasn't

always

a wired

place

During t h e same year, Ted T u r n e r launched and i m p l e m e n t e d t h e

first n a t i o n w i d e p r o g r a m m i n g - v i a satellite.

1981: The f i r s t IBM PC is sold. Laptop computers sold

t o public for the first time.

15D

9 3 4 .

The first cellular phone c o m m u n i c a t i o n n e t w o r k was launched in

J a p a n , in 1979.

9 3 3 .

Pacman, one of t h e most popular arcade games of all times, was

released in 1980.

931.

9 3 0 .

9 2 9 .

Time magazine named t h e

c o m p u t e r t h e Man of t h e Year
in 1983. The f i r s t cellular
phone n e t w o r k was launched
t h e same year in the US.

932.
BASIC was written in
1964 by Tom Kurtz and
John Kemeny of
Dartmouth.

The Apple Macintosh was

released in 1984, along w i t h IBM PC AT.
The US g o v e r n m e n t released c o n t r o l of t h e Internet in 1994, and
t h e WWW was born.

928.
9 2 7 .

926.

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16

Dr Brent T o w n s h e n d invented t h e 5 6 K m o d e m in 1996.

The first business application t o go live on a s t o r e d - p r o g r a m
c o m p u t e r was in N o v e m b e r 1951
w h e n t h e J Lyons c o m p a n y
began weekly o p e r a t i o n of a
bakery valuations job.
The Z1, a pre-war electro
mechanical binary c o m p u t e r
designed by German i n v e n t o r
K o n r a d Zuse, and its blue
prints, w e r e d e s t r o y e d w i t h o u t
t r a c e by w a r t i m e b o m b i n g
d u r i n g WW II.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee,

the

K o n r a d Zuse, a c o n s t r u c t i o n
of the World Wide Web
engineer at t h e Henschel
A i r c r a f t C o m p a n y in Berlin, developed t h e world's first
p r o g r a m m a b l e c o m p u t e r in 1941.

father

Seagate
9 2 3 .

921.
920.

919.

' 18.

917.

916.
(

15.

In 1843, m a t h e m a t i c i a n Ada Lovelace, d a u g h t e r of t h e poet L o r d

Byron, published t h e first
computer programs.

922.

In 1972, Bob M e t c a l f e c r e a t e d
Ethernet, a t r a d e m a r k of t h e
Xerox C o m p a n y .

In 1 9 6 4 , t h e A m e r i c a n

n>
3

Standards Association
adopted ASCII (American

S t a n d a r d Code f o r
In December, 1968, Douglas C.
Information Interchange)
Engelbart, of t h e S t a n f o r d
as a s t a n d a r d code f o r
Research Institute,
d e m o n s t r a t e d his s y s t e m of
data transfer.
keyboard, mouse and w i n d o w s
at t h e Fall J o i n t C o m p u t e r Conference in San Francisco's
Civic Center.

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O

The f i r s t t r a n s i s t o r i s e d c o m p u t e r
was c o m p l e t e d , t h e TX-O, at MIT in
early 1956.
The f i r s t mechanical calculator capa
ble of m u l t i p l i c a t i o n was invented by
G o t t f r i e d Wilhelm Leibniz, w h o also
c o - i n v e n t e d t h e calculus, in 1673.
In 1801, J o s e p h - M a r i e J a c q u a r d
invents a machine to a u t o m a t i cally c o n t r o l t h e p a t t e r n s in
fabrics using punch cards. They were
called J a c q u a r d Looms.

The QWERTY keyboard

was
actually designed with the
intention
of slowing
down
typists

Gay Lussac and T h e n a r d e x t r a c t e d i m p u r e a m o r p h o u s silicon in

1811.
George Boole published his M a t h e m a t i c a l Analysis of Logic, invent
ing Boolean algebra in 1854. This became t h e basis f o r
c o m p u t e r design.
In 1890, H e r m a n Hollerith c o n s t r u c t s a p u n c h - c a r d t a b u l a t i n g
machine f o r use in t h e US Census.
Radio Shack i n t r o d u c e d , in 1971, t h e f i r s t c o m p u t e r
w i t h a k e y b o a r d and CRT display.

17D

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912.

J o h n Backus of IBM created FORTRAN in 1954.

911.

Digital Equipment C o r p o r a t i o n was f o u n d e d by Ken Olsen in 1957.

9 1 0 .

In 1973, PROLOG was developed

9 0 8 .

by Alain Comerauer.

The C o m p u S e r v e online service

was launched in 1979.

909.
In 1989, Microsoft's sales
reached $1 billion, the first
year to do so.

9 0 7 .

S o f t w a r e A p p l i c a t i o n giants,
Aldus and Adobe, m e r g e d in
1994F.

9 0 6 .

Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments

p a t e n t e d t h e first i n t e g r a t e d circuit in 1959.

9 0 5 .

1951 saw t h e first c o m m e r c i a l use of t h e t r a n s i s t o r , invented by

William Shockley, J o h n Bardeen, and Walter Brattain.

9 0 4 .

In 1903, Nikola Tesla, an A m e r i c a n engineer, p a t e n t e d an electrical

logic circuit called a gate or switch.

9 0 3 .

Charles Babbage invented his Analytical Engine in 1833, t h e f i r s t

punch-card programmable general-purpose computer.

9 0 2 .

The first known English-language use of t h e w o r d ' c o m p u t e r ' , was

f o u n d in t h e w r i t i n g s of Sir T h o m a s Browne, in 1846.

9 0 1 .

The o p t i c a l laserdisc was d e v e l o p e d by b o t h Philips and MCA

in 1972.

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T E C H F A C T S

900.

899.

898.

897.

896.

895.

8 9 4 .

Yahoo! derived its name f r o m t h e w o r d Yahoo coined by J o n a t h a n

Swift in Gulliver's Travels. A Yahoo is a person w h o is repulsive in
appearance and action and is barely h u m a n !
In t h e Deep Web, t h e part of t h e Web not c u r r e n t l y catalogued by
search engines, public i n f o r m a t i o n said t o be 5 0 0 times larger
t h a n on t h e WWW.
Researchers consider t h a t t h e f i r s t search engine was Archie,
c r e a t e d in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a s t u d e n t at McGill University in
Montreal, Canada.
The f i r s t search engine for Gopher files was called Veronica,
c r e a t e d by t h e University of Nevada System C o m p u t i n g Services
group.
J i m Berners-Lee predicted in 2 0 0 2 t h a t t h e Semantic Web w o u l d
" f o s t e r global c o l l a b o r a t i o n s a m o n g people w i t h diverse c u l t u r a l
perspectives", but the project never seems t o have really taken off.
The t o p visited websites in February 2 0 0 4 , including a f f i l i a t e d
sites, were Yahoo!, MSN, t h e Time Warner N e t w o r k , EBay, Google,
Lycos, and A b o u t . c o m .
In February 2 0 0 4 , Sweden led t h e w o r l d in I n t e r n e t p e n e t r a t i o n ,
w i t h 7 6 . 9 percent of people c o n n e c t e d t o t h e Internet. The w o r l d
average is 11.1 per cent.

19

8 9 3 .

Marc A n d r e e s s e n f o u n d e d Netscape. In 1993, he had already devel

o p e d Mosaic, t h e first Web b r o w s e r w i t h a GUI.

8 9 2 .

The search engine " L y c o s " is n a m e d f o r Lycosidae, the Latin name

f o r t h e wolf spider family.

8 9 1 .

The US I n t e r n a t i o n a l Broadcasting Bureau (Voice of America, basi

cally), c r e a t e d a p r o x y service t o allow Chinese, Iranians and o t h e r
'oppressed' people t o circumv e n t t h e i r national firewalls,
890.
relaying f o r b i d d e n pages behind
silicon c u r t a i n s .
Developed at the

889.

8 8 8 .

8 8 7 .

U n i v e r s i t y of N e v a d a ,
It was once considered a letter
V e r o n i c a is a c o n s t a n t l y in t h e English language. The
u p d a t e d d a t a b a s e of t h e
Chinese call it a little mouse,
n a m e s of a l m o s t e v e r y
Danes and Swedes call it
m e n u i t e m on t h o u s a n d s
' e l e p h a n t ' s t r u n k ' , Germans a
of g o p h e r s e r v e r s .
spider m o n k e y , and Italians a
snail. Israelis p r o n o u n c e it
' s t r u d e l s ' and t h e Czechs say 'rollmops'... What is it? The 1 sign.
Lurking is t o read
t h r o u g h mailing lists or news
g r o u p s and get a feel of t h e
t o p i c b e f o r e posting one's
o w n messages.
SRS stands f o r Shared
Registry Server. The c e n t r a l
s y s t e m f o r all a c c r e d i t e d
r e g i s t r a r s t o access, register
and c o n t r o l d o m a i n names.
The world

8 8 6 .

WAIS stands f o r 'Wide Area

penetration

average

for

internet

is 11.1 percent.

I n f o r m a t i o n S e r v e r s ' - a c o m m e r c i a l s o f t w a r e package t h a t allows

t h e indexing of huge quantities of i n f o r m a t i o n , t h e n makes those
indices searchable across t h e I n t e r n e t .

885.
20

A n a n o n y m i s e r is a p r i v a c y s e r v i c e t h a t a l l o w s a u s e r
t o v i s i t Web sites w i t h o u t allowing anyone t o gather
information about which sites they visit.

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate

884.
883.

Archie is an i n f o r m a t i o n system o f f e r i n g an electronic d i r e c t o r y

8
service for locating information residing on anonymous FTP sites. |
On the Internet, a 'bastion host' is the only host computer t h a t
a company allows to be
addressed directly f r o m the
public network.

882.

8 8 1 .

o
3

The Electrohippies Collective is an international group of 'hack

tivists' based in Oxfordshire, England.

8 7 9 .

UIML (User Interface Markup Language) is a descriptive language

that lets you create a Web page that can be sent to any kind of
interface device.

8 7 8 .

In Internet t e r m i n o l o g y , a demo is a non-interactive multimedia

presentation,the computer
world's equivalent of a music
video.

876.

2.
2

Did you know that the

'Carnivore' is the Internet

original URL of Yahoo!
surveillance system developed
was
http://akebono.
by the US Federal Bureau of
stanford.edu/
?
Investigation (FBI), who devel
oped it to monitor the electronic
transmissions of criminal suspects.

8 8 0 .

877.

Did you know that the name of the

famous search engine AltaVista
came into existence when some
one accidentally read and
suggested the w o r d 'Alto' w r i t t e n
near the w o r d 'Vista' on an
unclean whiteboard as 'AltaVista'?

n
T^

'Jbi'ST*

Boeing was the first arliner to

discover the Y2K
problem.

Cyber Patrol, Surf Watch, Net Nanny and Big Brother are all
access filters used to block access to objectionable Web sites.

8757 Boeing was the first airline to discover the Y2K problem, way
back in 1993.

Did you know t h a t Domain Registration was free until an

announcement by the National Science Foundation on
14 t h September, 1995, changed i t ?

21

8 7 3 .

The I n t e r n e t was initially called t h e 'Galactic n e t w o r k ' in m e m o s

w r i t t e n by MIT's J C R Licklider in 1962.

8 7 2 .

Shokyu Ishiko, a d o c t o r a t e in a g r i c u l t u r e and chief priest of Daioh

T e m p l e in K y o t o has created an online v i r t u a l t e m p l e which will
p e r f o r m m e m o r i a l services f o r lost i n f o r m a t i o n .

871.

A 5 5 kg laddu was made f o r

L o r d V e n k a t e s w a r a at Tirumala
as a Y2K p r a y e r o f f e r i n g .

870.

8 6 9 7The

m o r n i n g a f t e r Internet
Explorer 4 was released, certain

On an average, each
person receives 2 6 . 4 emails a day.

mischievous Microsoft w o r k e r s
left a 10-by-12-foot letter 'e' and a balloon w i t h the message, "We
love y o u " , on Netscape's f r o n t lawn.
8 6 8 .

If y o u were a resident of Tonga, a m o n a r c h y in the s o u t h w e s t

Pacific, y o u could o w n d o m a i n s as cool as 'mail.to' and 'head.to'.

8 6 7 .

The A m e r i c a n Registry f o r I n t e r n e t N u m b e r s (ARIN) began t h e

a d m i n i s t r a t i o n and r e g i s t r a t i o n of I n t e r n e t IP addresses in N o r t h
and South A m e r i c a in March 1998.

8 6 6 .

The t e s t b e d for t h e Internet's new addressing system, IPv6, is

called t h e 6bone.

8 6 5 .

The f i r s t Internet w o r m was created

by Robert T. Morris, J r , and
attacked more than 6 , 0 0 0 Internet
hosts.

8 6 4 .

A c c o r d i n g t o The Economist
magazine, t h e f i r s t t r u l y e l e c t r o n i c
bank on t h e Internet, called First
V i r t u a l Holdings, was opened by Lee
Stein in 1994.

8 6 3 .

22

The Internet
was
initially
called Galactic
Network.

The French Culture Ministry has banned t h e w o r d 'e-mail' in all

g o v e r n m e n t ministries, d o c u m e n t s , publications and Web sites,

Seagate
because 'e-mail' is an English w o r d . They p r e f e r t o use the t e r m
'courriel'.

8 6 1 .

The German police sell used p a t r o l cars o v e r the Internet,

2.
because earlier auctions f e t c h e d low prices and only a few people tu
ever s h o w e d up.
o"
3

8 6 0 .

Rob Glaser's c o m p a n y , P r o g r e s s i v e
RealAudio s y s t e m on April 10,1995.

859.

' B r o w s e r safe colours' refer t o

t h e 216 colours t h a t are
r e n d e r e d t h e same way in b o t h
t h e PC and Mac o p e r a t i n g
systems.

Networks,

launched the

ID

858.
T h o u g h t h e W o r l d Wide
Web w a s b o r n in 1 9 8 9 a t
C E R N in S w i t z e r l a n d ,

8 5 7 .

QP/"
O J D .

The 'Dilbert Z o n e ' Web site was

t h e f i r s t s y n d i c a t e d comic strip
site available on t h e Internet.

C E R N is m a i n l y i n v o l v e d
in research for particle
physics.

Butler J e e v e s of the Internet

site AskJeeves.com
made its d e b u t as a large helium balloon in
t h e Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in 2 0 0 0 .

8 5 5 .

Sun M i c r o s y s t e m s sponsors NetDay, an e f f o r t t o wire A m e r i c a n

public schools t o t h e Internet, w i t h help f r o m the US g o v e r n m e n t .

8 5 4 .

In Beijing, the Internet c o m m u n i t y has

coined t h e w o r d 'Chortal' as a s h o r t
ened v e r s i o n of 'Chinese portal'.

853.

852.

Google got its name f r o m t h e m a t h e

matical f i g u r e googol, which d e n o t e s
t h e n u m b e r 'one f o l l o w e d by a
h u n d r e d zeroes.'
Dilbert

Zone

comic strip
Telnet is one of t h e oldest f o r m s of
I n t e r n e t connections. Today, it
is used p r i m a r i l y t o access online databases.

was the
to go

first

online.

D o m a i n n a m e s c a n r e a l l y sell a t h i g h p r i c e s ! T h e m o s t
expensive domain name was 'business.com', which was
bought by eCompanies for $ 7 . 5 million in 1 9 9 9 .
d i g i t

a
2>

23D

8 5 0 .

The f i r s t ever ISP was CompuServe. It still exists, under AOL T i m e

Warner.

8 4 9 .

In 1969, ARPA (Advanced Research Projects A g e n c y ) w e n t online,

c o n n e c t i n g f o u r major US universities. The idea was t o have a back
up in case a m i l i t a r y attack d e s t r o y e d c o n v e n t i o n a l c o m m u n i c a
t i o n s systems.

8 4 7 .

Ray T o m l i n s o n , a scientist f r o m
Cambridge, i n t r o d u c e d electronic
mail in 1972. He used
t h e @ t o distinguish between
t h e sender's name and n e t w o r k
name in t h e e-mail address.

848.
' C o n t e n t , c o m m e r c e and
c o m m u n i t y " are referred
t o as ' t h e t h r e e big Cs',
the most important
a s p e c t s of t h e I n t e r n e t .

8 4 6 .

T r a n s m i s s i o n C o n t r o l Proto
c o l / I n t e r n e t Protocol (TCP/IP) was designed in 1973.

8 4 5 .

The Apple iTunes music store was i n t r o d u c e d in the spring of 2 0 0 3 .

It allows people t o d o w n l o a d songs f o r an a f f o r d a b l e 9 9 cents
each.

8 4 4 .

S a t y a m Online became the f i r s t p r i v a t e ISP in December 1998

to offer Internet
c o n n e c t i o n s in India.

8 4 3 .

5 6 p e r c e n t of US
companies sold t h e i r
p r o d u c t s online by
2 0 0 0 , as c o m p a r e d t o
2 4 percent in 1998.

8 4 2 .

E 841.

c 8 4 0 .
5:

839.

24

Satyam Online

Satyam
offer

Online

Internet

was the first private

connections

ISP to

in India

More t h a n a million new jobs were c r e a t e d by t h e US high-tech

i n d u s t r y since 1993.

The n u m b e r of UK Internet users increases by an e s t i m a t e d

7 5 percent each year.
The I n t e r n e t is t h e t h i r d - m o s t used a d v e r t i s i n g m e d i u m in
t h e w o r l d , closely catching up w i t h t r a d i t i o n a l local
Ian Cobain, a j o u r n a l i s t f r o m t h e T i m e s , London, used
I n t e r n e t search engines t o t r a c k down f o u r people on
Interpol's 'most wanted' l i s t - i n just 8 2 minutes!
1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate
o
o

newspapers and Yellow Pages.

8 3 8 .

3
3

It t o o k 13 years for television t o r e a c h 5 0 million u s e r s - i t t o o k t h e c

3
I n t e r n e t less t h a n 4 years.

o"
0)

8 3 7 .

If

As of now, t h e r e are over 2 6 0 million people w i t h Internet access o"

3
worldwide.

8 3 6 .

P r e l i m i n a r y e m p l o y m e n t data
show t h a t t h e US high-tech
i n d u s t r y e m p l o y e d 4 . 8 million
w o r k e r s in 1998, making it t h e
n a t i o n ' s largest i n d u s t r y .

ft)

835.
Did you know that Digital
Equipment Corporation
was the first computer
company to register a
domain name?

8 3 4 .

1 o u t of 6 people used t h e Internet in N o r t h A m e r i c a and

Europe, as per a 1999 survey.

8 3 3 .

I n t e r n e t A d v e r t i s i n g in t h e US
g e n e r a t e d $1.92 billion in 1998, d o u b l e t h e 1997 figure.

832.
831.

830.

8 2 9 .

8 2 8 .

The a v e r a g e c o m p u t e r user blinks 7 t i m e s a m i n u t e .

In 1946, t h e M e r r i a m Webster D i c t i o n a r y defined c o m p u t e r as 'a
person w h o tabulates numbers; accountant; a c t u a r y ; bookkeeper.'
An e s t i m a t e d 2.5 billion h o u r s w e r e
w a s t e d online last year as people
w a i t e d f o r pages t o download, according t o a s t u d y sponsored by N o r t e l
Networks.
AOL says spam is t h e n u m b e r one
c o m p l a i n t of its c u s t o m e r s , and
t h a t it has t o block over one billion unso
licited e-mails e v e r y day.

"A computer
is a...
ary ...
bookkeeper"

actu-

In 2 0 0 2 , t h e a v e r a g e Internet user received 3.7 spam messages

per day. The t o t a l rose t o 6.2 spam messages per day in 2 0 0 2 . By

25D

2 0 0 7 , it is e x p e c t e d to reach 8 3 0 messages per day.

I
%

8 2 6 .

A t e c h n o l o g y i n d u s t r y research f i r m called Basex says t h a t

unsolicited e-mail cost nearly $ 2 0 billion in lost t i m e and expenses
w o r l d w i d e in 2 0 0 0 .

8 2 5 .

In 2 0 0 3 , an A t l a n t a - b a s e d ISP called Earthlink w o n a lawsuit w o r t h

$16.4 million (US) against a s p a m m e r in Buffalo NY, and a $ 2 5
million (US) lawsuit against a s p a m m e r in Tennessee.

8 2 4 .

In Canada, five billion junk e-mails were sent last year. The cost t o
t h e e c o n o m y reaches $1 billion annually.

8 2 3 .

B r i g h t m a i l , t h e leading supplier
of anti-spam s o f t w a r e , r e p o r t e d
t h a t in 2 0 0 3 , spam actually
exceeded l e g i t i m a t e e-mail,
g r o w i n g f r o m 4 0 per cent to
m o r e t h a n 5 6 percent of all internet e - m a i L . i n just one year!

822.
In 1993, there were
2 6 , 0 0 0 domain names in
use. In 1999, there were 5
million web sites.

821.

A f t e r English, Japanese and

t h e n German are t h e most used languages on t h e Net.

8 2 0 .

It is e s t i m a t e d t h a t by 2 0 0 5 , 6 0 per cent of all Internet users will

speak a language o t h e r t h a n English.

8 1 9 .

An e s t i m a t e d 2.2 percent of t h e w o r l d ' s p o p u l a t i o n is c u r r e n t l y

online.

8 1 8 .

The latest s t a t s i n d i c a t e t h a t China a p p e a r s t o be t h e f a s t e s t

g r o w i n g I n t e r n e t m a r k e t in t h e w o r l d .

8 1 7 .

Recent studies indicate t h a t m o r e t h a n t w o o u t of every five

people in N o r t h America are now I n t e r n e t users.

816.

A b o u t 6 0 percent of N o r t h A m e r i c a n I n t e r n e t users have used t h e

Web t o shop.

Seagate
8 1 4 .

Use of h o m e PCs t o surf t h e Net has d r o p p e d by a l m o s t 4 0

percent in t h e last f o u r years as I n t e r n e t use has p e n e t r a t e d t h e
workplace.

o
3
|

13.

On a per capita basis, the US only ranks 5 t h in t e r m s of I n t e r n e t

users. Iceland, N o r w a y , Sweden & Finland have a higher percapita use.

5-

(1.

Where do most news addicts go

t o on t h e Web? The t o p t h r e e e
destinations are msnbc.com,
w e a t h e r . c o m and cnn.com.

to
.

3
IV

Which companies spend

t h e m o s t on Web a d v e r t i sing? Microsoft tops the
list, w i t h Amazon.com
t a k i n g second spot and

8 1 0 .

A f t e r t h e April 2 0 0 1 collision of
TRUSTe the third.
a US navy spy plane and a
Chinese f i g h t e r jet, Chinese
hackers launched Denial of Service (DoS) attacks against American
web sites.

8 0 9 .

Subhash Ghai's film Taal was t h e

first Bollywood m o v i e t o be
widely p r o m o t e d on the Net.

8087 Ziggy, a cat, has

become t h e first
animal in t h e w o r l d t o o w n shares
of a d o t c o m , called
intersaver.co.uk.

8 0 7 .

8 0 6 .

J e f f Bezos, w h e n s t a r t i n g his
business c o u l d not name his
Web site Cadabra (as in 'abra
cadabra') due to c o p y r i g h t
issues. He later named it
amazon.com.

s SUBHASH CHAI sum

El
i 4

J
r

jgdSBUa

'

M4AM
snwasi:

iw

if

O'S

Taal was the first

Bollywood
flick to be promoted
online.

China had 150 billion junk e-mails last year, m a k i n g it the

second-biggest t a r g e t of spam.

The t o p e - t a i l sites on t h e Web are A m a z o n . c o m , T i c k e t m a s t e r . c o m , and B u y . c o m .

27

8 0 4 .

There are between 1.5 million t o 2 million closed circuit

t e l e v i s i o n cameras in Britain, making Britons t h e most w a t c h e d
people on earth.

8 0 3 .

The M i c r o s o f t T e r r a s e r v e r is a f r e e Web site t h a t has m o r e t h a n

9 9 9 gigabytes of black-and-white photos f e a t u r i n g specific
parts of t h e Earth's surface t a k e n by Russian and A m e r i c a n
airplanes and satellites d u r i n g t h e Cold War.

802. In t h e 1 9 8 0 s - w e l l before t h e

I n t e r n e t became s o m e t h i n g
t h e general public w a n t e d t o
u s e - s c o r e s of free 'bulletin
b o a r d services' (BBSs)
s p r a n g up a r o u n d the United
States. The first free
public BBS was 'Cleveland
Free-Net', and t h e y shut d o w n
On 1 st O c t o b e r 1999, because
t h e s o f t w a r e t h a t ran t h e
service c o u l d n ' t recognise t h e
year 2 0 0 0 .

8 0 0 .

799.

798.

a>
c
t_
a>
c
c
o
a
o
E
3
E
E
o
u

28

801.
According to a study by
Nielsen Media Research,
households with Internet
access watch 13 percent
less TV than households
that are not online.

The t h r e e legitimate names f o r c o p y c a t viruses inspired by t h e

i n f a m o u s Melissa virus w e r e Ping, Madcow and Syndicate.
Viral m a r k e t i n g is when y o u r app 'infects' o t h e r users via usage.
The recipient finds out a b o u t t h e service by receiving a card
f r o m his or her friend.
J u s t like a s t r o n o m e r s w o u l d love t o
f i n d t h e elusive 'Dark M a t t e r ' ,
Yahoo! is now w o r k i n g on its
C o n t e n t Acguisition P r o g r a m t o
map and explore the 'Deep Web',
t h e p a r t of t h e Web t h a t
search engines typically do not
crawl. As a result of this, much,
m u c h m o r e of t h e Web will be
accessible via Yahool's search engines.

Saddam:

Most

searched.

Seagate
9 6 .

7 9 5 .

9 3 .

7 9 2 .

Y o u get spam because y o u r e-mail address makes its way t o

s p a m m e r s t h r o u g h various channels. For example, if you sign up
f o r a n e w s l e t t e r , t h e site may
sell y o u r e-mail t o a s p a m m e r .
794.
Sites m a i n t a i n e-mail lists t h a t
t h e y send spam to. Prices can
In 2 0 0 3 , t h e t o p 10
be as low as Rs 2 , 5 0 0 for one
s e a r c h e d - f o r t e r m s on
lakh e-mails.
Y a h o o ! w e r e Kazaa, H a r r y
Many researchers and surfers
consider t h a t t h e first search
engine was Archie, created in
1990 by Alan Emtage, a s t u d e n t
at McGill University in Montreal.

P o t t e r , A m e r i c a n Idol,
B r i t n e y Spears, 5 0 Cent,
E m i n e m , WWE, P a r i s
H i s t o n , N a s c a r and
Christina Aguilera.

Niue is a small island in t h e Pacific t h a t makes m u c h of its

r e v e n u e selling d o m a i n names. The c o u n t r y code is .nu, and
t h e r e was a t i m e in t h e recent past w h e n one could easily get
d o m a i n names like rajesh.nu.

In 1999, PhotoHighway.com
introduced the first Internet
P h o t o g raphy site to o f f e r
s o f t w a r e t h a t allows people
t o load photos directly f r o m
a digital c a m e r a t o a website.

Yahoo!

is now

^pping

the Deep Web'.

On 5 t h J u n e 2 0 0 1 , N e v a d a b e c a m e t h e f i r s t U S s t a t e t o
v o t e t o l e g a l i s e o n l i n e g a m b l i n g - w h i c h is n o t s u r p r i s i n g ,
s i n c e Las V e g a s is i n N e v a d a .

29D

o
o

3
c
3_
0
01

z
o

3
r+
n
3
A

timeline
790.
789.
788.

xc

US Presidential c a n d i d a t e J i m m y Carter uses e-mail t o

plan campaign events. Queen Elizabeth sends her first e-mai
She's t h e first state leader t o use this service.
(VI
CO
0\

The w o r d " l n t e r n e t " i s used for t h e f i r s t time, s h o r t f o r

"internetwork".
Domain Name System (DNS) is established, w i t h
network addresses identified by extensions such as .com, .org
and .edu. Novelist William Gibson coins t h e
tern
"cyberspace".

784

01

>

c
?o
ID
O
C

783.

The White House launches its website, w w w . w h i t e

house.gov.
Initial
commerce
sites
are
established
and
mas
m a r k e t i n g campaigns are launched via e-mail, i n t r o d u c i n g the
term 'spamming'.

E
E
o
u

30

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate
h-r

Marc Andreessen and J i m Clark i n t r o d u c e the

Navigator browser.

780.

79.

CompuServe, A m e r i c a Online, and Prodigy start

p r o v i d i n g dial-up Internet access. Sun Microsys terns
launches Java.
s

778.

A r o u n d 4 5 million people are using t h e Internet, w i t h

r o u g h l y 3 0 million of those in t h e US and Canada, 9 million
in Europe, and 6 million in Asia Pacific.
On J u l y 8, I n t e r n e t t r a f f i c records are b r o k e n as t h e
NASA website broadcasts images t a k e n by Pathfinder on
Mars.

7 7 . OJ*

776.

" e - c o m m e r c e " becomes t h e new b u z z w o r d as Internet

shopping rapidly spreads.
College s t u d e n t Shawn Fanning invents Napster, a
c o m p u t e r application t h a t allows users t o swap music o v e r
the Internet.
Deviant c o m p u t e r p r o g r a m m e r s begin spreading viruses w i t h
i n c r e a s e d f r e q u e n c y . The I n t e r n e t b u b b l e bursts, as t h e
f o u n t a i n of i n v e s t m e n t capital dries up and t h e Nasdaq
plummets.

774.

Napster is dealt a fatal blow w h e n t h e 9 t h US Circuit

C o u r t of Appeals in San Francisco rules t h a t t h e c o m p a n y is
v i o l a t i n g c o p y r i g h t laws."
A s t a g g e r i n g 5 8 . 5 percent of t h e US p o p u l a t i o n uses
the Internet.

7 7 2 .

|5]

It's e s t i m a t e d t h a t I n t e r n e t users illegally d o w n l o a d

a b o u t 2.6 billion music files each m o n t h .

maa

o
o

3
3
c
3

0
01
f
o"
3

5"
m
3

' i ' l w J M
771.
770.

'Finger' is an Internet t o o l f o r locating people on o t h e r sites. It

gives access t o non-personal i n f o r m a t i o n .
The t e r m ' p e t a b i t ' is used in discussing possible v o l u m e s of data
t r a f f i c per second in a large n e t w o r k .

7697 RDF (Resource Definition F r a m e w o r k ) is a set of rules f o r c r e a t i n g

d e s c r i p t i o n s of i n f o r m a t i o n available on t h e World Wide Web.

768.

SOAP (Simple Object Access P r o t o c o l ) is a p r o t o c o l for clientserver c o m m u n i c a t i o n t h a t sends and receives i n f o r m a t i o n 'on t o p
o f HTTP.

7677 Wake-on-LAN (WOL) is a t e c h n o l o g y t h a t enables a c o m p u t e r

moth e r b o a r d t o s w i t c h itself on (and o f f ) based on signals a r r i v i n g at

t h e c o m p u t e r ' s n e t w o r k card.

D>
C

I
c
o

766.
765.
764.
7 6 3 .

32

A hacker w i t h benign i n t e n t i o n s is called a ' w h i t e hat'.

A 'blue b o m b ' is a t e c h n i q u e f o r causing t h e Windows o p e r a t i n g
s y s t e m of s o m e o n e you are c o m m u n i c a t i n g w i t h t o crash.
OCSP (Online Certificate Status P r o t o c o l ) is one of t w o c o m m o n
schemes f o r m a i n t a i n i n g t h e s e c u r i t y of a server.
C e r t i f i c a t e Revocation List (CRL) is a m e t h o d of using a public key
i n f r a s t r u c t u r e for m a i n t a i n i n g access t o servers.
1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate
7 6 2 .

South Pacific Railroad laid d o w n t e l e g r a p h wires across t r a c k s t o

help railway s t a t i o n s keep in t o u c h .

761.

The high-speed data highways of t h e Internet are called backbones.

Sprint and AT&T o w n t h e major backbones in t h e US.

7 6 0 .

Silver is t h e most c o n d u c t i v e material, but copper is widely

used in c o m m u n i c a t i o n s
because it costs m u c h less
754.
and is b e t t e r in t e r m s of
s t r e n g t h and flexibility.

59.

58.

A t y p i c a l f i b r e - o p t i c cable fivet h o u s a n d t h s of an inch thick can

c a r r y up t o 2.5 billion bits of
data per second, or 3 2 , 0 0 0
s i m u l t a n e o u s t e l e p h o n e calls.

Most intercontinental
Internet traffic passes
through underwater fibreoptic cables. The first
such layout was across
the Atlantic, in 1988.

The idea of B l u e t o o t h t e c h n o l
ogy was b o r n in 1994. The name B l u e t o o t h is derived f r o m a Danish
Viking King, Harald B l a t a n d - t r a n s l a t e d as B l u e t o o t h in E n g l i s h w h o lived in t h e l a t t e r part of t h e 10th c e n t u r y . Blatand united and
c o n t r o l l e d D e n m a r k and Norway, hence t h e inspiration f o r t h e
name, as in ' u n i t i n g devices t h r o u g h B l u e t o o t h ' .

57.

Long b e f o r e t h e expression 'local area n e t w o r k ' (LAN) became

part of t h e w o r l d ' s technical v o c a b u l a r y , IBM researchers were
w o r k i n g on this t y p e of t e c h n o l o g y t h a t connects printers,
w o r k s t a t i o n s and various servers in o f f i c e buildings,
f a c t o r i e s and college campuses.
IBM devised t o k e n - r i n g technology t o c o n t r o l LAN t r a f f i c m o r e
e f f i c i e n t l y and reliably. A t o k e n
ring
controls
access
of
individual c o m p u t e r s to the
n e t w o r k , or ring. Since its i n t r o
d u c t i o n in 1985, IBM's tokenring a r c h i t e c t u r e has become
The construction
an i n d u s t r y s t a n d a r d f o r LANs.
of a fibre-optic
cable

33

755.

754.
753.

752.

751.

750.
7 4 9 .

V a n n e v a r Bush, later t h e vice-president and dean of t h e Electri

cal Engineering d e p a r t m e n t , MIT, f i r s t proposed t h e basics of
h y p e r t e x t in 1945. Tim Berners-Lee set d o w n t h e basics of t h e
World Wide Web, HTML ( h y p e r t e x t m a r k u p language),
HTTP(HyperText T r a n s f e r P r o t o c o l ) and URLs (Universal
Resource L o c a t o r s ) in 1990.
Chuq v o n Rospach of Apple C o m p u t e r , circa 1983, coined t h e wor
'netiquette'.
NANA is t h e newsgroups news.admin.net-abuse.*, d e v o t e d to
f i g h t i n g n e t w o r k abuse and spam. Each individual n e w s g r o u p is
o f t e n r e f e r r e d to by adding a l e t t e r to NANA. For example,
NANAU w o u l d refer t o news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.
P r o g r a m s t h a t are small and un-useful, but d e m o n s t r a t e a point,
are called 'Noddy' p r o g r a m s . Noddy p r o g r a m s are o f t e n w r i t t e n
by people learning a new language or system. The a r c h e t y p a l
noddy p r o g r a m is t h e " h e l l o w o r l d " p r o g r a m . In N o r t h A m e r i c a
this m i g h t be called a 'Mickey Mouse' p r o g r a m .
In the mid-1980s, engineers at Apple C o m p u t e r d e v e l o p e d a
high-speed m e t h o d of t r a n s f e r r i n g data to and f r o m t h e h a r d
drives in Macintosh desktops while s i m p l i f y i n g the i n t e r n a l
cabling. They called it FireWire.
A b o u t 6 0 million devices shipped w i t h FireWire ports in 2 0 0 2 ,
a c c o r d i n g t o research f i r m In-Stat/MDR.
In 1994, Ericsson Mobile C o m m u n i c a t i o n s initiated a s t u d y t o
i n v e s t i g a t e the feasibility of a low-power low-cost radio interface
b e t w e e n mobile phones and t h e i r accessories. In 1998, a speciali n t e r e s t g r o u p was f o r m e d , c o d e n a m e d " B l u e t o o t h " by five
companies: Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia, and Toshiba.

0
01

(0
o
'E
3
E
E
o
o

748.

3 4

'Toothing' is random sending of sexually charged, flirtatious

messages that users of Bluetooth enabled mobile devices
broadcast to other Bluetooth enabled devices in the area.
1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate

7 4 7 .

1949

COMPUTER VIRUS TIMELINE

7 4 6 .

Apple Viruses 1, 2, and 3 are s o m e of t h e f i r s t viruses " i n

t h e wild," or in t h e public d o m a i n . Found o n t h e Apple II oper
a t i n g system, the viruses spread across Texas t h r o u g h p i r a t e d
games.

n Fred Cohen defines a c o m p u t e r virus as "a p r o g r a m t h a t

00
o> can affect other c o m p u t e r p r o g r a m s by modifying t h e m in such
a way as t o include a (possibly e v o l v e d ) copy of itself."

1986

745.

developed.

T w o daredevil Pakistani p r o g r a m m e r s , Basit and Amjad,

replace the executable code in t h e boot sector of a f l o p p y disk
w i t h t h e i r o w n code designed t o infect each 3 6 0 K B floppy
accessed on any drive.

1987

00

Theories f o r self-replicating p r o g r a m s are first

The Lehigh virus, one of t h e f i r s t file viruses, infects

743.

c o m m a n d . c o m files.
One of t h e most c o m m o n viruses, J e r u s a l e m , is
unleashed. The virus a f f e c t s b o t h .exe and .com files. MacMag
and t h e Scores virus cause t h e first major Macintosh
outbreaks.

I B B

35Q

741.

735.
734.

1992
1990

736.

The Dark Avenger Mutation Engine (DAME) is created. It's

a toolkit that turns ordinary viruses into polymorphic viruses. The
Virus Creation Laboratory (VCL) is also made available.

1994

737.

As m a n y as 1,300 viruses
are in existence.

The Good Times e - m a i l hoax t e a r s t h r o u g h t h e I n t e r n e t

c o m m u n i t y . The hoax w a r n s of a malicious virus t h a t will erase
an e n t i r e hard drive.

1995

738.

o> Tequila is t h e first widespread p o l y m o r p h i c virus f o u n d

in t h e wild. P o l y m o r p h i c viruses were specially designed to
make d e t e c t i o n d i f f i c u l t for virus scanners.

Word Concept becomes one of t h e most prevalent

viruses in t h e mid-1990s. It is spread t h r o u g h M i c r o s o f t Word
documents.

>o
o* The Baza, Laroux and Staog viruses are the first to infect
0*
W i n d o w s 9 5 files, Excel, and Linux respectively.
1998

739.

S t r a n g e B r e w was t h e f i r s t v i r u s t o i n f e c t J a v a files. The

C h e r n o b y l virus spreads quickly via .exe files.
The Melissa virus executes a m a c r o in a d o c u m e n t
a t t a c h e d to an e-mail, which , in t u r n , f o r w a r d s t h e d o c u m e n t
to 5 0 people in the user's Outlook address book. Bubble Boy is
t h e f i r s t w o r m t h a t does not depend on t h e recipient o p e n i n g
an a t t a c h m e n t for infection to set in. As soon as t h e user opens
t h e e-mail, Bubble Boy strikes.

2000

733.

732.

2000

731.

36

S y m a n t e c launches N o r t o n A n t i v i r u s , one of t h e first

a n t i - v i r u s p r o g r a m s d e v e l o p e d by a major c o m p a n y .

1999

740.

a>

The Love Bug, also k n o w n as t h e ILOVEYOU virus, sends

itself o u t via Outlook. It also sends usernames and pass
w o r d s t o t h e virus' a u t h o r .
W97M.Resume.A, a new v a r i a t i o n of t h e Melissa virus,
is d e t e r m i n e d to be in t h e wild. The ' r e s u m e ' v i r u s uses a
Word m a c r o t o infect Outlook and spread itself.

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate

729.

China t i g h t e n s regulations against viruses, m a n d a t i n g

a fine and i m p r i s o n m e n t for people w h o spread t h e m .

o
o
3
o
c

The 'Stages' virus, disguised as a joke e-mail about the

stages of life, spreads across t h e Internet.

3'
3
m
5"

'Stages' is hidden in an a t t a c h m e n t w i t h a false " . t x t "

extension, luring recipients i n t o opening it.

n>
</)

11th

Shortly a f t e r the S e p t e m b e r
attacks, the Nimda virus
infects c o m p u t e r s all over t h e w o r l d . The virus is one of t h e
most sophisticated t o date.
The 'Anna K o u r n i k o v a ' virus w o r r i e s analysts who
believed it was w r i t t e n with a 'tool kit' t h a t would allow p r o g r a m
mers to c r e a t e viruses.

725.

A u t h o r of t h e Melissa virus, David L. Smith, is

sentenced t o 2 0 m o n t h s in f e d e r a l prison in New Jersey.
In J a n u a r y , t h e relatively benign ' S l a m m e r ' w o r m , also
known as Sapphire, becomes t h e fastest spreading w o r m till
date, i n f e c t i n g 7 5 , 0 0 0 c o m p u t e r s in j u s t 10 minutes.

723.

The Sobig w o r m becomes t h e one of t h e first to join the

spam c o m m u n i t y .
The M y D o o m or Novarg w o r m spreads t h r o u g h e-mails
faster t h a n any previous virus or w o r m . The t a r g e t is 'denial
of service a t t a c k ' on t h e SCO Group.

COMMUNICATIONS TIMELINE

37D

721.

o 3 5 0 0 BC t o 2 9 0 0 BC: The Phoenicians develop an alphabet.

m
o The Sumerians develop c u n e i f o r m w r i t i n g - p i c t o g r a p h s of
o
in accounts w r i t t e n on clay tablets. The Egyptians develop
n
hieroglyphic w r i t i n g .

720.

o
m
in The Greeks use a phonetic alphabet w r i t t e n f r o m left
F-

719.

O
m
o Oldest r e c o r d of w r i t i n g in China,
o

718.
717.
716.
715.
714.
713.

t o right.

o
m
o
r^
w
(J
CO
o
o
0*
o
m
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N
1o
m
o
n
in
o
CD
o
o
in

on bones.

The first encyclopedia is w r i t t e n in

Syria.
The very first postal service, f o r g o v e r n m e n t use, in
China.
First r e c o r d e d use of h o m i n g pigeons used to send a
message t h e winners of t h e Olympic Games t o Athenians.
The Greeks start
t h e very first library.
to 170 BC: Papyrus rolls and early p a r c h m e n t s made of
dried r e e d s - f i r s t p o r t a b l e and light w r i t i n g surfaces.

U
m t o 100 BC: Human messengers on f o o t or horseback
o
o c o m m o n in Egypt and China w i t h messenger relay stations built.
(\l
S o m e t i m e s fire messages used instead of humans.

712.
711.
710.

Q
<

The Romans establish

postal services.

H e l i o g r a p h s - R o m a n E m p e r o r Tiberius uses m i r r o r s t o
send messages.

in Tsai Lun of China invents paper as we know it. Many say t h a t

o this, along w i t h the i n v e n t i o n of t h e wheel, w h e r e w h a t
c h a n g e d t h e w o r l d most.

709.
708.

in

II

First w o o d e n p r i n t i n g press invented in China, which

used symbols carved on a w o o d e n block.

0*
o First m o v a b l e type, clay, i n v e n t e d in China by
Pi Sheng.

Seagate
707.

The first newspapers appear

in Europe.

r>
o
-

"o
cr+

J o h a n n e s Gutenberg invents a p r i n t i n g press with metal

m o v a b l e t y p e . His first p r i n t e d book? The Holy Bible.

705.

5'
"SU

Camera Obscura i n v e n t e d - p r i m i t i v e
image making makes its e n t r y .

5'

First daily newspaper is published in Leipzig, Germany.

It was called t h e Einkommende
Zeitung.
Englishman Henry Mill receives t h e f i r s t patent for
a type-writer.
Claude Chappe invents t h e f i r s t long-distance
t e l e g r a p h line.
J o s e p h Nicephore Ni6pce achieves t h e first
p h o t o g r a p h i c image.
Charles W h e a t s t o n e r e p r o d u c e s sound in a p r i m i t i v e
sound box t h e first m i c r o p h o n e .
J o s e p h Henry invents t h e
first electric t e l e g r a p h .
Samuel Morse invents
t h e Morse code.
Samuel Morse invents t h e f i r s t long distance electric t e l e g r a p h
line. Alexander Bain p a t e n t s t h e f i r s t fax machine.
The US s t a r t s t h e Pony Express f o r mail delivery.
Coleman Sellers invents t h e K i n e m a t o s c o p e - a machine
t h a t flashed a series of still p h o t o g r a p h s o n t o a
screen.
T h o m a s Edison patents t h e m i m e o g r a p h , an office
c o p y i n g machine. Alexander Graham Bell patents t h e electric
telephone.
Melvyl Dewey invents t h e Dewey Decimal System f o r
o r d e r i n g library books.

39D

1877

691.

1879

692.

Thomas Edison patents t h e p h o n o g r a p h i t h a wax

cylinder as recording m e d i u m .
Eadweard Muybridge invents high-speed p h o t o g r a p h y
c r e a t i n g t h e first pictures t h a t c a p t u r e d m o t i o n .

1887

693.

Emile Berliner invents t h e g r a m o p h o n e . This is debatable,

t h o u g h - s o m e say it was Edison, some say it was Charles
Cros.

00
00 George Eastman patents t h e
00
Kodak roll f i l m camera.

1894

685.

1898

686.

Guglielmo Marconi
i m p r o v e s wireless t e l e g r a p h y .
First t e l e p h o n e a n s w e r i n g machines
c o m e up.

1904

687.

A l m o n S t r o w g e r p a t e n t s t h e direct dial telephone or a u t o

matic t e l e p h o n e exchange.

First regular comic

books.

1906

688.

6881

689.

Lee DeForest invents t h e e l e c t r o n i c a m p l i f y i n g t u b e or

t r i o d e . It allowed e l e c t r o n i c signals to be amplified, i m p r o v i n g
t e l e p h o n e s and radios.

684.

683.

J First c r o s s - c o n t i n e n t a l t e l e p h o n e
5j

682.

vO
Ov First radios w i t h t u n e r s giving access t o d i f f e r e n t

T h o m a s Edison d e m o n s t r a t e s t h e first talking m o t i o n

picture.

call made.

680.

40

1923

681.

Iconoscope, the firstTV camera, is invented by Vladimir

Kosma Z w o r y k i n .

1925

stations.

J o h n Logie Baird t r a n s m i t s t h e first

e x p e r i m e n t a l television signal.

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate

679.

Warner Brothers Studios i n v e n t s a way to r e c o r d sound

separately f r o m t h e film on large disks, and s y n c h r o n i s e d
sound and m o t i o n p i c t u r e t r a c k s upon playback.
NBC s t a r t s t w o radio n e t w o r k s . CBS is founded. First
television broadcasts in England. Warner Brothers releases
The Jazz Singer, the first successful talking m o t i o n picture.

677.
76. a

675.

D I G I T

TJ
C

i+
5"
>2

2L

5"
(D

m
Radio p o p u l a r i t y spreads w i t h t h e Golden Age of radio.
First TV broadcasts in t h e US. M o v i e t o n e s y s t e m of r e c o r d i n g
f i l m sound on an audio t r a c k r i g h t on t h e f i l m invented.
Scheduled TV broadcasts
begin.
C o m p u t e r s such as H a r v a r d ' s Mark I put into
public service.
The Long Playing r e c o r d is invented, playing
at 33 rpm. The t r a n s i s t o r is invented.

673.

<>

N e t w o r k TV starts in t h e US. The 4 5 - r p m - r e c o r d is

invented.

6 7 2 .

Intel is s h o r t for I n t e g r a t e d Electronics.

671.

ULSI stands for Ultra Large Scale Integration, used in m i c r o c h i p s

w i t h over one million t r a n s i s t o r s .

6 7 0 .

A fat Mac application is an application p r o g r a m for the Macintosh

c o m p u t e r that works on a Mac running on a Motorola 6 8 0 0 0 series
chip.

6 6 9 .

FC-PGA (Flip Chip-Pin Grid A r r a y ) is a m i c r o c h i p design developed

by Intel f o r its faster m i c r o p r o c e s s o r s .

6 6 8 .

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore said in 1965, "The a m o u n t of i n f o r

m a t i o n storable in one square inch of silicon will double e v e r y 18
m o n t h s . " This came t o be k n o w n as Moore's Law.

^u
w

1 6 6 7
o.

In 1963, Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse as a pointing device

for c o m p u t e r s . It was p a t e n t e d as t h e X-Y indicator in 1968.

! 6 6 6 .
UJ

VisiCalc, invented in 1979, was t h e first spreadsheet p r o g r a m

available for o m p u t e r s .

a.

42

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate
6 6 5 .

6 6 3 .

IBM was i n c o r p o r a t e d in 1911

under the name ComputingTabulating-Recording
Company.

664.

Intel's Flying Pentium Ads

and t h e 'Intel Inside' logo w e r e
made on an Apple Macintosh.

1984 was the year of the

GUI. Apple introduced the
Macintosh, the first PC
with a graphical user
interface.

6 6 2 .

In 1938, Claude Shannon f i r s t

s h o w e d t h a t e l e c t r o n i c s w i t c h i n g c i r c u i t s could p e r f o r m logical
operations.

661.

The c o m p u t i n g for t h e Pioneer 10 s p a c e c r a f t was done by t h e Intel

4 0 0 4 microprocessor.

b 6 0 .

The CVAX chip used a DEC Micro VAX I microprocessor. A message

was
inscribed on t h e chip, in
Russian, which said, "VAX, w h e n y o u
care e n o u g h to steal the v e r y b e s t " !

6 5 9 .

A m o d e r n g u a r t e r - i n c h square sili
con chip has t h e p o w e r of t h e
1949 ENIAC c o m p u t e r , which occupied a full city block.

658.

This chip is more powerful

a room-sized

'40s

than

computer

A n d r e w Grove, f o r m e r Chairman,
Intel Corporation, was flooded w i t h over 120 names to choose f r o m
f o r its latest p r o c e s s o r . He f i n a l l y s e t t l e d on ' P e n t i u m ' a f t e r
spending $ 4 0 , 0 0 0 .

6 5 7 .

Ted Hoff, Stan Mazor and Federico Faggin designed t h e P e n t i u m

Chip t h a t was launched on March 2 2 , 1 9 9 3 .

6 5 6 .

In J u l y 1968, Robert Noyce and G o r d o n Moore, s t a r t e d N M

Electronics. Soon a f t e r , t h e y s t a r t e d calling it Intel.

6 5 5 .

Intel's code name for its e f f o r t t o make t h e one GHz micro

processor was Project Foster.

If you happened to open up the case of the original Macintosh, you would find 4 7 signatures, one for each member
of Apple's Macintosh division as of 1982.

43

o
<>

o
3
o

w
o
a
c

6 5 4 .

Intel's project on the first

processor to use the new 6 4 - b i t
a r c h i t e c t u r e was under t h e
code name Merced.

6 5 2 .

651.

Intel c r e a t e d t h e Timna processor in 2001, a low-end p r o d u c t ,

but it was given a hasty burial
a f t e r problems c r o p p e d up w i t h
t h e m e m o r y t r a n s l a t o r hub
(MTH).

The C o m p t o m e t e r was
i n v e n t e d by Dorr Felt. It was
t h e f i r s t e n t i r e l y keyo p e r a t e d calculating
m a c h i n e - a practical adding
and listing machine.

6 5 0 .

The f i r s t microprocessor to make it into a home c o m p u t e r

was the Intel 8 0 8 0 , a c o m p l e t e 8 - b i t c o m p u t e r on one
chip, i n t r o d u c e d in 1974.

649.

The f i r s t m i c r o p r o c e s s o r to make a real splash in t h e

m a r k e t was t h e Intel 8 0 8 8 , i n t r o d u c e d in 1979 and
i n c o r p o r a t e d into t h e IBM PC.

6 4 8 .

The P e n t i u m 4 runs code about 5 , 0 0 0

t i m e s faster t h a n the 8 0 8 8 .

6 4 7 .

Wintel c o m p u t e r s , PCs w i t h an Intel

processor and running a Windows
o p e r a t i n g system, account for 8 0
percent of PCs in use t o d a y .

6 4 6 .

Windows Me s t a r t e d a new t e c h n o l ogy called System File P r o t e c t i o n t h a t

p r e v e n t e d applications f r o m o v e r
w r i t i n g key system files.

The comptometer,
calculating

an

early

machine

6 4 5 .

Hewlett Packard's first o r d e r , for eight oscillators, came f r o m

Walt Disney, while he was making t h e film Fantasia in 1940.

6 4 4 .

Hewlett Packard i n t r o d u c e d t h e mopier in 1996, a p r i n t e r t h a t

o f f e r s a low-cost, high-quality a l t e r n a t i v e to p h o t o c o p y i n g .

642.

44

In 1 9 8 4 , Apple C o m p u t e r i n t r o d u c e d t h e Apple lie model

l a p t o p , w h i c h had an i n t e r n a l 5 . 2 5 - i n c h f l o p p y d r i v e .

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate
6 4 3 .

The Biztalk Server is a M i c r o s o f t p r o d u c t . It unites e n t e r p r i s e n

application i n t e g r a t i o n (EAI) and business-to-business (B2B) inte- &
o
g r a t i o n in a single p r o d u c t .
o

641.

' S t i n g e r ' was t h e c o d e n a m e M i c r o s o f t used for its s m a r t

phone p l a t f o r m t h a t was unveiled in 2001.

6 4 0 .

A peer-to-peer N e t w o r k is a t y p e of n e t w o r k in which each

w o r k s t a t i o n has equivalent
capabilities and responsibilities,
637.
without
there
being,
for
example, a central server.
J a m e s Gosling c r e a t e d

639.

o
o
3
n>

J a v a at Sun

PROM ( P r o g r a m m a b l e Reado n l y M e m o r y ) is m e m o r y
p r o g r a m m e d at t h e t i m e of
manufacturing.

M i c r o s y s t e m s . He c a m e
up w i t h t h e n a m e ' J a v a '
while debating over it at a
c o f f e e shop.

638.

The first ever ISP was

CompuServe, established in 1969. It still exists, under AOL
Time Warner.

6 3 6 .

The TWAIN Working Group is a n o t - f o r - p r o f i t organisation. It

r e p r e s e n t s t h e imaging i n d u s t r y . TWAIN is short for ' t e c h n o l o g y
w i t h o u t an i n t e r e s t i n g name', and you'll most f e q u e n t l y see TWAIN
d r i v e r s w i t h scanners.

6 3 5 .

In a c o m p u t e r m o n i t o r , the
v o l t a g e gets boosted to
3 0 , 0 0 0 volts in parts of t h e
circuitry.

6 3 4 .

When it opened way back in

1993, The Trojan Room
became t h e world's first
I n t e r n e t site t o use a
webcam. It took little time for
It t o develop a cult following.

/ n a monitor,
ed

the voltage gets boostto 30 KVolts in some parts

Did y o u know t h a t t h e f i r s t c o m p u t e r t o p e r f o r m a t r i l l i o n o p e r a t i o n s per s e c o n d w a s c a l l e d G r a v i t y P i p e l i n e ?

d i g i t

45

6 3 3 .

' B i o m e t r i c s ' is the t e r m for

the technology that performs
i d e n t i f i c a t i o n by f i n g e r p r i n t ,
retinal, and voice scans.

6 5 1 .

The CD-ROM made its

debut in 1984 through the
combined efforts of
Phillips and Sony.

6 3 2 .

The high-speed data high

ways of the Internet are called
backbones.

6 3 0 .

The C o m m o d o r e 6 4 was t h e best-selling PC of its time. It had

a large m e m o r y capacity for t h e t i m e - 6 4 KB; low-cost f l o p p y
disks; and colour graphics.

6 2 9 .

The ENIAC was developed way back in 1946 at the University of

Penn sylvania. It calculated at t h e t h e n - p h e n o m e n a l r a t e of
5 , 0 0 0 additions per second.

6 2 7 .

In 1982, A n d r e w Fluegelman c r e a t e d t h e first ever s h a r e w a r e ,

k n o w n as PC-Talk. It was a c o m m u n i c a t i o n s s o f t w a r e .

6 2 6 .

The popular CD recording s o f t w a r e Nero Burning ROM is n a m e d

a f t e r t h e Roman Emperor
Nero Claudius Caesar
A u g u s t u s Germanicus, w h o
is said to have ben playing
music while Rome was
burning.

6 2 5 .

Did y o u know t h a t t h e
University of Waterloo
'stole' Version 7 of Unix
b e f o r e it was released?

624.
3
CL
O

<D
C

o
Q.
E
o
u

Uf

Q.

Alan Kay of the Xerox Palo A l t o Research Center envisioned t h e

f i r s t notebook-sized, p o r t a b l e c o m p u t e r called t h e Dyna book in
t h e 1970s. The first laptop c o m p u t e r was designed in 1979 by
William Moggridge of Grid Systems Corp. It had 3 4 0 kilobytes of
bubble m e m o r y .

Seagate Isrf

623.

o
In early 2 0 0 2 , Microsoft a n n o u n c e d t h a t t h e BMW 7- series luxury o
sedans were now running t h e Windows CE embedded o p e r a t i n g
f>
s y s t e m . Passengers could
o
access
and
control
in-car
3
a
navigation,telephone
and
o
3
e n t e r t a i n m e n t systems.
<D
3
W i t h i n j u s t s i x y e a r s of

618.

622.
620.

In CD-ROM drives, 1X is equal t o

150 KBps. In DVDs, 1X equals
1.38 M B p s - a little over nine
t i m e s faster t h a n CDs.

t h e r e l e a s e of t h e 8 0 2 8 6
p r o c e s s o r , a w h o p p i n g 15
million 286-based
personal c o m p u t e r s were
installed globally.

In old F o r t r a n compilers, if y o u
said a=2, and t h e n said 3=a,
t h e n 3 would 'become' 2, and 3+3 w o u l d add up t o 4!

619.

Did you know t h a t Windows XP was code-named Whistler?

617.

The first digital c o m p u t e r w e i g h e d 3 0 tons.

616.

615.

614.

613.

A 'dongle' is a security or copy p r o t e c t i o n device consisting of

h a r d w a r e , s o f t w a r e or b o t h w o r k i n g in c o m b i n a t i o n , a n d / o r any
h a r d w a r e device t h a t attaches t o a PC's I/O port to add h a r d w a r e
capabilities.
In 1980, Microsoft i n t r o d u c e d t h e Z8 0 SoftCard, a circuit
board,
m a r k i n g Microsoft's first f o r a y into
t h e h a r d w a r e world. The card
was designed f o r t h e Apple II
computer.
Handheld Device Markup Language
(HDML) is a simple language used t o
define hyper text-like c o n t e n t and
applica tions for hand held devices.
Many medical schools in t h e US
provide financial aid t o s t u d e n t s t o
purchase handhelds as they o f f e r

PDAs have come a long way

since devices like the
Newton

The C e l e r o n p r o c e s s o r w a s l a u n c h e d in 1 9 9 9 , as p a r t of
Intel's s t r a t e g y to develop processors for specific
market segments.

47

TJ
C

services like patient trackers,

d r u g databases, etc.
612.

6 1 0 .

6 0 8 .

651.

The P e n t i u m III p r o c e s s o r
One of the first PDAs to be
w a s l a u n c h e d in 1 9 9 9 . I t
c o m m e c i a l l y available was
e
n h a n c e d p e r f o r m a n c e of
Apple's N e w t o n Message Pad.
a
dvanced applications.
But t h e N e w t o n was t o o big,
expensive and complicated,
and its h a n d w r i t i n g
r e c o g n i t i o n p r o g r a m was poor. It flopped, even t h o u g h it was
ahead of its t i m e .
The Palm OS f i t s in less t h a n 100K, w h i c h is less t h a n one
percent the size of Windows 9 8 or t h e Mac OS.
A PDA doesn't have a hard drive. It
stores basic programs on a ROM c h i p - t h e y
r e m a i n intact even w h e n t h e m a c h i n e
shuts down. Data and p r o g r a m s added
later are s t o r e d in RAM.

O U f .

Two popular h a n d w r i t i n g r e c o g n i t i o n
s o f t w a r e for PDAs are G r a f f i t i and J o t .
G r a f f i t i requires t h a t each l e t t e r be
r e c o r d e d in one u n i n t e r r u p t e d m o t i o n ,
and has a specialised alphabet.

6 0 6 .

A cabinet
should
'MIDI' stands for Musical I n s t r u m e n t
always be
properly
Digital Interface. It's a s t a n d a r d for
ventilated
sending digitally encoded music
i n f o r m a t i o n between e l e c t r o n i c devices, such as b e t w e e n s y n t h e
sizers and c o m p u t e r s .

6 0 5 .

CPUs typically o p e r a t e at 4 0 t o 5 0 degrees Celsius. The 'danger

zone' is typically when t h e t e m p e r a t u r e goes above 6 0 degrees.

Seagate Tech Factoid:

W h a t does 5 0 GB of s t o r a g e r e a l l y m e a n ? Y o u c a n s t a c k
3 piles of s i n g l e s p a c e d t y p e w r i t t e n pages t a l l e r t h a n t h e
E i f f e l t o w e r a n d t h e d a t a t o s u p p o r t t h i s i n f o r m a t i o n is
about 5 0 gigabytes.

Seagate
6 0 4 .

o
r>

The d i f f e r e n c e between CDRs and music CDs (or o t h e r

er>

c o m m e r c i a l l y p r o d u c e d CDs) are t h a t t h e f o r m e r are b u r n t ,

while t h e latter are pressed. 'Pressing' is a m a n u f a c t u r i n g
t e c h n i q u e very d i f f e r e n t f r o m burning.
6 0 3 .

In 1953, Remington-Rand
developed the first high-speed
p r i n t e r for use on the Univac
computer.

602. The nVidia GeForce 6 8 0 0

Ultra
has 222 million t r a n s i s t o r s ,
which
is the r e c o r d for t h e
m a x i m u m number of transistors
o n a chip.

601.

599.

o
o

o
o
I 3
<D
3

600.
'Colossus' was the first
totally electronic
computing device. It used
only vacuum tubes, and
had no relays.

The original laser printer called EARS was developed at the Xerox
Palo Alto Research Center beginning in 1969 and completed in
November 1971. According to Xerox, "The Xerox 9 7 0 0 Electronic
Printing System, the first xerographic laser printer product, was
released in 1977."
A c c o r d i n g t o IBM, " t h e
v e r y f i r s t IBM 3 8 0 0 was
installed in the c e n t r a l
a c c o u n t i n g o f f i c e at F.
W. W o o l w o r t h ' s N o r t h
A m e r i c a n data center in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin in
French keyboards
are 'AZERTY'
instead
1976." The IBM 3 8 0 0
of
'QWERTY'
Printing System was the
i n d u s t r y ' s first high-speed, laser p r i n t e r t h a t o p e r a t e d at speeds
of m o r e t h a n 100 impressions per m i n u t e .

5 9 8 The inkjet p r i n t e r was i n v e n t e d in 1976 but it took t w o decades

f o r it t o become a c o m m o n h o u s e h o l d item. The first H e w l e t t Packard DeskJet printer for household use cost $1000.

597.

Did you know t h a t t h e IBM PC once sold as 'Model 5150'?

In France, most Keyboards are 'AZERTY' instead of the

regular QWERTY.

d i g i t

49

a
c

timeline
INTEL PROCESSOR TIMELINE

5 9 5 . 0I
B

The 4 0 0 4 micro processor. This was Intel's first ever

microprocessor.

The 8 0 0 8 m i c r o p r o c e s s o r . In 1974, Radio Electronics

r e f e r r e d to a device called the Mark-8 t h a t used this
processor. Interestingly, t h e Mark-8 was hailed as one of t h e
f i r s t c o m p u t e r s for t h e home.
The 8 0 8 0 m i c r o p r o c e s s o r became the brains of t h e
first P C - t h e Altair, named a f t e r a d e s t i n a t i o n of t h e Starship
Enterprise f r o m t h e popular Star Trek series. Users could
a f f o r d a kit for the Altair f o r just $ 3 9 5 .

592.

591.

590.

589.
a
u 588.
c
a>
c
o
a.
E
o
u

c3
u

a.

587.

The 8 0 8 6 and 8 0 8 8 m i c r o p r o c e s s o r s became t h e

brains of IBM's new superhit p r o d u c t the IBM PC. Its success
s k y r o c k e t e d Intel i n t o F o r t u n e 5 0 0 .
C\l
00

The 8 0 2 8 6 m i c r o p r o c e s s o r . Within just six years of

its release, a w h o p p i n g 15 million 2 8 6 - b a s e d personal
c o m p u t e r s were installed globally.

in
CO The 8 0 3 8 6 m i c r o p r o c e s s o r . This processor f e a t u r e d a
stagering 2 7 5 , 0 0 0 transistors.
o>
CO
The 4 8 6 DX m i c r o p r o c e s s o r . With this, the user
0>
g r a d u a t e d f r o m c o m m a n d - l i n e t o point-and-click c o m p u t i n g .
m
0*
o*

The Pentium processor. This processor allowed

c o m p u t e r s t o process real-world data, such as sound,
h a n d - w r i t t e n and p h o t o images.
The Pentium Pro processor. It was designed
specifically to fuel 32-bit server and w o r k s t a t i o n
applications. The processor e v e n t u a l l y propelled speedy
c o m p u t e r - a i d e d design.
1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate

ii

6 i
U

I (J\-

585.

The P e n t i u m II Xeon Processor. This processor

f e a t u r e s innovations specially designed f o r w o r k s t a t i o n s
t h r i v i n g on business applications.

4 . o>
1

0*

583.

IBBwy'

The P e n t i u m II Processor. This chip enabled PC users

t o capture, edit and share digital photos via t h e I n t e r n e t .

The P e n t i u m III Xeon processor. The processor

enabled t h e speeding up of e - c o m m e r c e applications.
The P e n t i u m 4 processor. While t h e 4 0 0 4 chipran at
108 kilohertz, this processor clocked a phenomenal 1.5 giga
hertz. Users could now c r e a t e professional-quality movies
and render 3D graphics in r e a l t i m e .

581.

The Xeon processor. This processor o f f e r s users a

choice of o p e r a t i n g systems, along w i t h high p e r f o r m a n c e ,
all at a f f o r d a b l e prices.
The Itanium processor. It delivered world-class
p e r f o r m a n c e , apart f r o m enabling e - c o m m e r c e s e c u r i t y
transactions.

80. S The Itanium 2 processor. It p r o m i s e d

outstanding
p e r f o r m a n c e , s u p p o r t i n g business applications.

579.
i

.;

s
H I

The Intel Centrino Mobile t e c h n o l o g y launched. The

t e c h n o l o g y o f f e r s new capabilities specifically f o r t h e
mobile world, such as increased b a t t e r y life.

577.

aann

Intel releases t h e P e n t i u m 4 Processor Extreme Edition t h a t

s u p p o r t s H y p e r T h r e a d i n g t e c h n o l o g y . The processor has 2
MB of L3 cache, and is designed for gamers and t h e like.
The Centrino M (Mobile) Processor debuts. It is built on
Intel's 9 0 nm f a b r i c a t i o n t e c h n o l o g y . It f e a t u r e s a 2MB
L2 cache, and a 4 0 0 MHz p o w e r - o p t i m i z e d s y s t e m bus.

a
n

o
o

TJ

O
3
fl>

TJ
C

5 7 6 .

Prior t o newer f o r m s of DRAM, FPM DRAM (Fast Page Mode DRAM)

was t h e most c o m m o n kind of d y n a m i c RAM in p e r s o n a l
computers.

575.

The p r o d u c t i o n of a 32 MB DRAM chip t h a t weighs t w o g r a m s

requires 32 Kg of w a t e r , 1.6 Kg of fossil fuel, 7 0 0 g m of e l e m e n t a l
gases and 72 gm of hazardous chemicals.

574.

Robert Heath Dennard, of t h e IBM T J Watson Research Center,

was t h e i n v e n t o r of RAM.

573.

In 1970, t h e newly f o r m e d Intel publicly released t h e 1103, t h e first

DRAM chip. By 1972 it was t h e best selling s e m i c o n d u c t o r m e m o r y
chip in t h e world.

5 7 2 .
c

In 1970, Fairchild C o r p o r a t i o n invented t h e first 2 5 6 - K Static

Random Access M e m o r y (SRAM) chip.

1 5 7 1 .
E

Static Random Access M e m o r y (SRAM) is faster and b e t t e r t h a n

Dynamic Random Access M e m o r y (DRAM).

Ul

5 7 0 .

In t h e 1950s, J a c o b Rabinow invented the first magnetic c o m p u t e r

m e m o r y t o use a disk instead of a tape f o r data s t o r a g e .

569.

Reynold J o h n s o n , w h o headed t h e IBM t e a m t h a t was t o develop

t h e first RAM, was a B.S. in Education A d m i n i s t r a t i o n .

0)
o

52

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate
5 6 8 .

5 6 7 .

564.

Super A u d i o CD players, c r e a t e d by Sony and Philips Electronics, 3

a
can a c c o m m o d a t e m o r e t h a n f o u r t i m e s t h e i n f o r m a t i o n of t h e
o
c u r r e n t CD f o r m a t .
o

C>
o
o

Magnetic Storage
566.

o
o

In late 1955, Reynold J o h n s o n p r e s e n t e d t h e first-ever w o r k i n g

h a r d drive t o IBM m a n a g e m e n t , t e r m e d t h e RAMAC.

On April 2 2 n d 2 0 0 4 , scientists
at S t a n f o r d announced t h e
d i s c o v e r y of t h e upper speed
limit at which data can be
w r i t t e n to a hard drive. This
limit is m u c h higher t h a n w h a t
is achieved by c u r r e n t drives.
The first hard drives
c o m m e r c i a l l y available w e r e
a b o u t 5 t o 10 MB, and sold f o r

565.

a
o
I 3
a>

Contrary to what most

people believe, a hard disk
head does not touch the
platter surface. It floats a
few micrometres above
the platter.

$100 per m e g a b y t e . At t h o s e prices, a 4 0 GB hard disk w o u l d

cost $ 4 , 0 0 0 , 0 0 0 , or Rs 18 c r o r e , in t o d a y ' s prices.

563.

562.

561.

M a g n e t o r e s i s t i v e (MR) head
t e c h n o l o g y is used in disk drives
t o allow higher storage densities
t h a n t h e older inductive-head
technology.
Just a Bunch Of Disks (JBOD) is a
t e r m for one or more disk drives
t h a t f o r m a single volume.
However, the information on
these disks is not striped in any
way or protected.

Sony introduced
the 3-1/2
floppy disk in 1981.

inch

The f i r s t hard drive available

f o r t h e Apple II had a capacity of 5 B.

Seagate introduced the first hard disk for PCs in 1979.

It held 5 MB of data.

53D

5 5 9 .

558.

557.

5 5 5 .

Sony i n t r o d u c e d t h e 3 1/2-inch floppy in 1981.

CD-ROM XA was developed j o i n t l y by Sony, Philips, and

M i c r o s o f t , and its specifications were published in an e x t e n s i o n
t o t h e Yellow Book.
A hard disk is v e r y v u l n e r a b l e
t o vibrations: a minor b u m p
can make t h e head crash into
t h e disk's surface. The d a m a g e
usually cannot be repaired,
causing data loss and h a r d disk
damage.
NRAM is a new kind of RAM

556.
GDDR3 is a new standard
for RAM in graphics,
aimed at increasing speed
and reducing power
consumption.

being developed by N a n t e r o
Corp. in Massachusetts. It will use nanotubes t o s t o r e 1s and Os. II
will be faster and denser t h a n DRAM, and will be non-volatile.
5 5 4 .

M R A M - m a g n e t i c R A M - w i l l p r o b a b l y be out this decade, and will

replace DDR and flash. It promises faster data access, lower
power c o n s u m p t i o n , and g r e a t e r data storage density.

5 5 3 .

Regular RAM is electricity-based, and t h a t ' s w h y it's volatile. In

c o n t r a s t , m e m o r y like flash is magenetism-based, w h i c h is w h y
no power supply is r e q u i r e d t o keep data intact.

5 5 2 .

The d i f f e r e n c e in CD and DVD t e c h n o l o g y lies m o s t l y in t h e laser

DVDs pack the data elements closer t o g e t h e r on the disk, so a much
m o r e precise laser is r e q u i r e d t o read and w r i t e data o f f DVDs.

5 5 1 .

It is possible t o run a P-lll processor w i t h o u t a heatsink, because

Intel bundles along p r o t e c t i o n devices t h a t clocks d o w n t h e CPU tc
get it back t o a stable t e m p e r a t u r e .

Seagate

Systems
5 4 9 .

When Windows 3.1 was launched, 3 million copies were sold in t h e

first t w o months.

) 4 8 .

Windows 9 5 can officially r u n on a 3 8 6 D X at 2 0 Megahertz, w i t h

just 4 MB of RAM.

. 4 7 .

The W i n 9 5 / 9 8 logos were c r e a t e d w i t h Freehand on a Macintosh.

>46.

At t h e t u r n of the millennium, Bill Gates went head t o head w i t h t h e

United States D e p a r t m e n t of J u s t i c e over the c o m p a n y ' s bundling
of s o f t w a r e . At the trial, Gates claimed t h a t Internet Explorer could
not be unbundled f r o m t h e rest of Windows. But an e x p e r t witness
f o r t h e prosecution w e n t t o w o r k in t h e c o u r t r o o m and u n b u n d l e d
Explorer in just 10 minutes!

.>45.

Did y o u know t h a t t h e 'Save' i c o n - t h e f l o p p y - i n M i c r o s o f t Office

applications is w r o n g l y d e p i c t e d ? The small rectangle is on t h e
right instead of on t h e left.

j 4 4 .

T h o u g h t h e highest possible e n c r y p t i o n in Windows 2 0 0 0 was 128bit, Microsoft only sent t h e 4 0 - b i t version t o India, because India
was under US sanctions a f t e r Pokhran.

5 4 3 .

At Microsoft, 'Gone Gold' is w h e n a gold c o m p u t e r disk is created,

I.IHI1

55D

indicating t h a t a p a r t i c u l a r s o f t w a r e product coding is f r o z e n and

p r o d u c t i o n would now begin.

542.
541.
540.
539.

5 3 8 .

A t one time, MS-DOS was r e f e r r e d t o as 'Domestos', a f t e r a brand

of local toilet cleaner, by people against this o p e r a t i n g s y s t e m .
David Bradley w r o t e t h e code for t h e [Ctrl] + [ A l t ] + [Delete] key
sequence.
In 1994, Microsoft said t h a t A d a m B a r a t z - a 9 year o l d - w a s t h e
y o u n g e s t beta t e s t e r f o r Windows 9 5 .
In t h e movie True Lies, t h e
businessman who finances
t h e t e r r o r i s t s runs t h e Arabic
edition of Windows 3.1.
The book The Rules of the
Net calls UNIX 'the Swiss
a r m y knife of the Net'.

537.

In 1964, OS/2 was developed

j o i n t l y by Microsoft and IBM.
It is considered by many to be
superior t o Windows, and it
runs on PC-compatible
machines.

5 3 6 .

IBM Research labs is w o r k i n g

This logo was created
on a
on building a h i g h - p e r f o r m Macintosh!
V!
ance
operating
system
E
a> t a r g e t e d at t h e next g e n e r a t i o n of servers under the code name K42.
in

>

V) 5 3 5 .
CP
c

5 3 4 .

Gene A m d a h l p r o g r a m m e d t h e f i r s t o p e r a t i n g s y s t e m , f o r t h e
IBM 7 0 4 .
The Japanese version of MS Office has a character y o u can't f i n d
in any o t h e r version. The 'Office Lady' is a virtual assistant t h a t
bows, serves tea.

Alan Kay, Adele Goldberg, and David Robson, all of

PARC, developed SmallTalk-72, the first truly objectoriented language and OS.

56

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate (C
32.

" W y v e r n " was t h e code name f o r t h e version of Windows CE t h a t

3
s u p p o r t s colour screens f o r t h e Palm-sized PC f o r m a t . A w y v e r n is g
n
a t w o - l e g g e d f l y i n g d r a g o n w i t h a poisonous spiked tail.
w
3

531.

'WinPad' was M i c r o s o f t ' s failed handheld PC o p e r a t i n g system,

g
w h i c h it developed and killed b e f o r e c o m i n g up w i t h Windows CE.
M i c r o s o f t scrapped t h e WinPad p r o j e c t r e p o r t e d l y because t h e y

c o u l d n ' t f i g u r e out how t o squeeze a v a r i a n t of Windows i n t o an

a f f o r d a b l e handheld size.
tu

530.

MS-DOS was a r o u g h i m i t a t i o n of CP/M, one of the first p o r t a b l e

o p e r a t i n g systems. ' P o r t a b l e ' means t h a t t h e OS could r u n on

3
,0

V)

<

d i f f e r e n t hardware.

10

[ D I G I T

57D

timeline
Bell Labs f o u n d t h e y needed an o p e r a t i n g s y s t e m f o r
t h e i r c o m p u t e r c e n t r e which at t h e t i m e was r u n n i n g various
batch jobs. The BESYS o p e r a t i n g s y s t e m was c r e a t e d t o deal
with these needs.
Bell Labs was a d o p t i n g t h i r d g e n e r a t i o n c o m p u t e r equip
ment, and decided t o join forces with General Electric and MIT
t o c r e a t e Multics (Multiplexed I n f o r m a t i o n and C o m p u t i n g
Service).
AT&T made a decision t o w i t h d r a w Multics and go w i t h
GECOS. When Multics was w i t h d r a w n , Ken T h o m p s o n and
Dennis Ritchie needed t o r e w r i t e an o p e r a t i n g s y s t e m in o r d e
t o play space t r a v e l on a n o t h e r , smaller machine. The result
was a s y s t e m w h i c h a punning colleague called UNICS
(UNiplexed I n f o r m a t i o n and C o m p u t i n g S e r v i c e ) - a n 'emascu
lated Multics'.

525

o>

1BSD was released; 2BSD was released mid 1978. 3BSD

was released late 1979.

01

Q.
o

a>
c

UNIX had been installed on 16 sites, all w i t h i n A T & T / W e s t e r n

Electric. It was publicly unveiled at a c o n f e r e n c e in October. The
third, f o u r t h and f i f t h editions followed.

523.

SCO was f o u n d e d by Doug and L a r r y Michels as a UNIX

p o r t i n g and c o n s u l t i n g c o m p a n y .

JH

"5

SCO delivers its f i r s t packaged UNIX system, called SCO XENIX

System V for Intel 8 0 8 6 and 8 0 8 8 processor-based PCs.

o
i/)

58

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

517.

1984

1987: Sun and AT&T laid t h e g r o u n d w o r k f o r business c o m p u t

ing in the next decade w i t h an alliance t o develop UNIX System
V Release 4.

2.

5"
tO
<1/1
V)
r-f
a>

O
0\ AIX, short for A d v a n c e d I n t e r a c t i v e e x e c u t i v e , was f i r s t
ON
e n t e r e d into t h e m a r k e t by IBM in February.
FreeBSD 1.0 was released in December.

514.

Red Hat Linux is i n t r o d u c e d .

Oi Caldera Inc. was f o u n d e d by Ransom Love and Bryan Sparks.

SCO acquired UNIX Systems source t e c h n o l o g y business
f r o m Novell C o r p o r a t i o n , w h i c h had acquired it f r o m AT&T's
UNIX System L a b o r a t o r i e s . SCO also acquired t h e UnixWare 2
OS f r o m Novell.
Caldera shipped OpenLinux S t a n d a r d 1.1 on May 5, t h e
second o f f e r i n g in Caldera's OpenLinux p r o d u c t line.
IRIX 6.5, the f i f t h g e n e r a t i o n of SGI UNIX, was released o n t h e
6 t h of J u l y .
SCO delivered t h e UnixWare 7 o p e r a t i n g system.
The Sun Solaris 7 o p e r a t i n g s y s t e m was released.
FreeBSD 3.0 was released
on t h e 16th of October.
u

r+

QJ

i/)
SCO ships SCO UNIX S y s t e m V / 3 8 6 , t h e f i r s t v o l u m e
c o m m e r c i a l p r o d u c t licensed by AT&T t o use t h e UNIX System
trademark.

515.

513.

.
o
a
(D
-t

HP-UX 2.0 was released.

Version 3.0 f o l l o w e d .

1994

516.

1985

519.

aT
The GNU m a n i f e s t o is published in the March 1985 issue
3
of Dr. Dobb's J o u r n a l . The GNU project s t a r t e d a year and a half ID
O
c
later.
</>

ui
o

1988

520.

Ultrix
1.0 was released.

1989

521.

1987

Seagate

59D

5 0 6 .

Bill Gates' home was designed using a Mac!

5 0 5 .

The most f r e q u e n t l y o c c u r r i n g c o m p a n y name or t r a d e m a r k o n

t h e World Wide Web is IBM.

5 0 4 .

Apple p r o g r a m m e r s n a m e d a beta version of a novel s o f t w a r e

application 'Sagan', in h o n o u r of t h e r e n o w n e d a s t r o n o m e r
Carl Sagan. Sagan sued Apple, and w o n t h e case.

503.

ID
l/l

0)
'E
>0 5 0 2 .
Q.

E
o
u

0
01
JE 5 0 1 .
g
.12

60

On Bill Clinton's last day in t h e White House, his d e p a r t i n g aides

played a curious practical joke on the incumbent president, George
W Bush. When his s t a f f e r s a r r i v e d , t h e y were a s t o n i s h e d t o f i n d
t h a t none of t h e building's c o m p u t e r keyboards had Ws!
Bill Gates' c o m p u t e r - g e e k image was established well b e f o r e his
days at M i c r o s o f t . Steve Ballmer, a college buddy w h o later
became t h e c o m p a n y ' s president, recalled t h a t Gates never put
sheets on his bed, and once left f o r vacation in t h e middle of a
t h u n d e r s t o r m - w i t h t h e w i n d o w s and door wide open.
Bill Gates once said, " T h e r e are people w h o d o n ' t like capitalism,
and people w h o d o n ' t like PCs. But t h e r e ' s no-one w h o likes t h e
PC, w h o doesn't like M i c r o s o f t . "
1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate

500.
499.

498.

496.

495.

494.

Before joining Apple, J o h n Sculley was CEO of Pepsi.

w
o
Bill Gates visited Belgium in February 1998, and was hit in t h e face <D
5T
w i t h a cream pie. Y o u ' d expect him to have pressed charges, or
3
m
t o have left t h e venue i m m e d i a t e l y . But Gates just r e m a r k e d
o
c
t h a t t h e pie wasn't v e r y t a s t y .

n
o
A s t r o n a u t David Wolf was t h e
4
9
7
.
first A m e r i c a n t o exercise his
0)
r i g h t t o vote f r o m space. He
S
t
e
v
e
J
o
b
s
a
n
n
o
u
n
c
e
d
to
e-mailed his v o t e f o r t h e Housin
Apple's partnership w i t h
t o n Mayoral elections in N o v e m
Q>
Microsoft during the
ber 1997, while a b o a r d t h e
Russian space s t a t i o n Mir.
August 1997 MacWorld
I "g
trade show. The audience
Fifth grade student Laney Rupp
booed f o r 4 2 s e c o n d s !
drew his vision of Bill Gate's $ 4 2
million mansion, which was
published in Harper's Magazine in February 1999. The only t h i n g he
missed out on was t h e e l e c t r o n i c doggy door.
M i c r o s o f t asked Rolling Stones f r o n t - m a n , Mick J a g g e r , if t h e y
could use t h e Stones' hit ' S t a r t me
up' in p r o m o t i o n s f o r W i n d o w s 9 5 .
A l m o s t jokingly, he asked f o r a
ridiculous $12 million, t h i n k i n g
t h e y ' d t u r n him down. He was
shocked when t h e y agreed a l m o s t
immediately!
Mashayoshi Son f o u n d e d Softbank at age 23. The c o m p a n y h o l d s
large stakes in Yahoo!, Comdex
and Kingston Technologies.

Stones

Seagate Tech Factoid

Disk d r i v e r e c o r d i n g head f l y h e i g h t (gap b e t w e e n t h e
head and t h e disc w h e n t h e d r i v e is s p i n n i n g ) is less t h a n
1 microinch, while:
A red blood cell is 3 0 0 m i c r o i n c h e s in d i a m e t e r .
A p a r t i c l e of t o b a c c o s m o k e is 2 5 0 m i c r o i n c h e s .
A p a r t i c l e of s m o g is 1 0 0 m i c r o i n c h e s .
A h u m a n h a i r is 4 , 0 0 0 m i c r o i n c h e s .

fmasM

to

4 9 3 .

The original retail price of t h e Apple I c o m p u t e r was $ 6 6 6 . 6 6 ,

because Steve Wozniak liked n u m b e r s w i t h r e p e a t i n g digits!

4 9 2 .

The legendary m a g a z i n e ' B y t e ' ,

w h i c h ceased publication w i t h
its J u l y 1998 issue, began in
S e p t e m b e r 1975.

4 9 0 .

Did y o u know t h a t c o m p o s e r ,
c o m p u t e r scientist and a u t h o r
J a r o n Lanier coined t h e t e r m
' v i r t u a l reality'?

4 8 9 .

The t e r m 'cyberspace' was

491.
Of the many rumours
about Microsoft, one was
a spoof news release in
1994 that claimed
Microsoft was purchasing
the Catholic Church.

coined by sci-fi a u t h o r William Gibson, and appeared in his 1984

novel
4 8 8 .

The t e r m 'bit' was coined by J o h n

Tuckey. The w o r d f i r s t a p p e a r e d in
p r i n t in relation t o c o m p u t e r
science sense in 1949.

4 8 7 .

The code name for t h e 12 engineers

w h o designed t h e f i r s t IBM PC was
'The Dirty Dozen'.

a) 4 8 6 .

2
4 8 5 .
c

<o

Neuromancer.

4 8 4 .

J o h n Brunner is c r e d i t e d w i t h
w r i t i n g t h e first c y b e r p u n k novel,
called Shockwave
Rider.
Did y o u know t h a t t h e t h r e e
f o u n d e r s of Compaq all c a m e f r o m
Texas I n s t r u m e n t s ?

Ted Nelson coined t h e t e r m H y p e r t e x t in 1965, and was also t h e

a u t h o r of t h e book Literary

1483.

62

Byte Magazine ceased

publication with its July 1998 issue

Machines.

Sanai Mito, a f o r m e r Osaka Municipal University w o r k i n g for Sharp

in t h e early 1970s, i n v e n t e d t h e LCD.

Seagate (<L

481.
480.

Bill Gates' The Road Ahead

has been t r a n s l a t e d into 2 5 languages,

i.
t/i
o
Hotmail, f o u n d e d by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith, w e n t online on =
4 t h J u l y 1996. When M i c r o s o f t acquired H o t m a i l in J a n u a r y 1998, =j
H o t m a i l had over 9 million c u s t o m e r s .
o

4 7 9 . ' A d o b e ' came f r o m t h e n a m e of t h e river Adobe Creek t h a t ran

behind t h e house of f o u n d e r J o h n Warnock.

VI

o
0

TJ
01

4 7 8 . 'Apache' got its name because its f o u n d e r s got s t a r t e d by apply ng a

(Dpatches t o code w r i t t e n f o r
I/I
NCSA's h t t p d daemon. The
01
477.
result was 'A PAtCHy' server;
thus, t h e name Apache.
I-a
a>
Bill Hewlett and Dave
-i
in
Packard tossed a coin t o
o
4 7 6 . The name IBM was started by an
3
decide w h e t h e r t h e
CD
ex-employee of National Cash
Register. To one-up t h e m in all
respects he called his c o m p a n y
International Busines Machines.
4 7 5 .

L a r r y Ellison and Bob Oats were

company they founded

w o u l d be c a l l e d H e w l e t t P a c k a r d or P a c k a r d Hewlett.

w o r k i n g on a consulting p r o j e c t f o r t h e CIA. The code name f o r t h e

project was Oracle. Later t h e y kept t h e same name f o r t h e
company.
4 7 4 .

4 7 3 .

The t e r m 'Silicon Valley' was coined by

j o u r n a l i s t Don Hoefler.
Charles Wang, an i m m i g r a n t f r o m
Shanghai, f o u n d e d C o m p u t e r Associates
in 1976.

4 7 2 .

Sandra Kesinor and L e o n a r d Bosack

s t a r t e d Cisco in 1984. The name was
simply a s h o r t e n e d version of
'San Francisco'.

Adobe

Adobe is the second

largest software
company in the world

Scott McNealy f o u n d e d Sun M i c r o s y s t e m s in 1982.

In 2 0 0 1 , t h e G u i n n e s s B o o k of W o r l d R e c o r d s l i s t e d
M S N H o t m a i l as t h e w o r l d ' s l a r g e s t f r e e e - m a i l p r o v i d e r ,
w i t h more than a 100 million subscribers.

63

fl>
I/I

4 6 9 .

Adobe, or Adobe Systems Incorporated, the c o m p a n y behind

Photoshop, A c r o b a t , and so on, was f o u n d e d in 1982.

4 6 8 .

Steven Gray f o u n d e d t h e A m a t e u r C o m p u t e r Society in 1966 and

began publishing t h e ACS
Newsletter.

467.

4 6 6 .

In 1952, Heinz Nixdorf f o u n d e d

Nixdorf C o m p u t e r Corp. in
Germany. It remained an inde
pendent c o r p o r a t i o n until
m e r g i n g w i t h Siemens in 1990.

4 6 5 .

In 1969, Xerox Corp. b o u g h t Scientific Data Systems f o r nearly $1

Jeff Hawkins invented the

Palm Pilot.

billion90 times t h e latter's earnings.

464.

463.
462.
(/>
01
o
01

Q.

461.

Bill Gates' m a t h ' S A T score was a perfect 8 0 0 .

The earliest r e f e r e n c e by Bill Gates made to t h e c o m p a n y name
' M i c r o s o f t ' was in a l e t t e r sent by Gates to c o - f o u n d e r Paul Allen
on 2 9 t h November, 1975. In t h e
letter, t h e name was spelt 'MicroSoft', but the hyphen was e v e n t u a l l y
dropped.
3 C o m changed t h e name of t h e
PalmPilot to simply 'Palm' because
Pilot Pen Company t h r e a t e n e d a
t r a d e m a r k lawsuit, c i t i n g possible
brand confusion. So 3 C o m backed
d o w n and changed t h e name t o
'Palm'. The irony is t h a t t h e Palm

.
...
,,
Pen Company makes styli usable on

Ifl
0)
E
(D
Q.
E
o
o
3
o
fl>
c

Bill Gates' first c o m p a n y was called Traf-O-Data, w h i c h made

s o f t w a r e to analyse t r a f f i c , which enabled c o u n t y g o v e r n m e n t s
t o get federal m o n e y for road projects. The c o m p a n y was d r i v e n
o u t of business by a huge m o n o p o l y - t h e federal g o v e r n m e n t
t h a t gave away similar s o f t w a r e for free.

t h r o w n a t him a n d

remarked

it wasn t

he

{ust

tasty

Palm, Windows CE and o t h e r pen based devices.

4 6 0 .

64

Brad Chase, Senior Executive at Microsoft in charge of Windows

9 5 , left t h e c o m p a n y in 1999 and created a board g a m e called
Derivation, which is a b o u t English words and phrases and t h e i r
origins and meanings.

H'l'MIHiMim

Seagate ICQ
4 5 9 .

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak earned money in college by

selling "blue boxes" t o o t h e r students. A blue box a t t a c h e d t o a
pay t e l e p h o n e and c r e a t e d t h e
p r o p e r signals t o allow a user
t o make free phone calls.

4 5 8 .

Bill Gates launched his

business career in 1969 at age
14 by f o r m i n g a c o m p a n y
named Lakeside P r o g r a m m i n g
Group. Gates and his f r i e n d
Paul Allen signed an agreem e n t w i t h C o m p u t e r Center
C o r p o r a t i o n to r e p o r t bugs in
PDP-10 s o f t w a r e , in e x c h a n g e
f o r c o m p u t e r time.

o
QJ
3
5"
in

0)
3
a.
-a
to

forefront

of PC innovatin,

ing with it's trademark

in

keep-

"Think

Different"

. One of t h e largest c o m p a n i e s
in t h e world, AT&T is believed t o have e m p l o y e d o v e r a million
people at one point.

d i g i t

65D

in

upercomputing
4 5 6 .

S e y m o u r Cray, c r e a t o r of high-end c o m p u t e r s , whose vehicle

was t e s t e d against accidents by his o w n systems, could not save
h i m s e l f - h e died in a car crash.

4 5 5 .

12 4 5 4 .
s 453.
<u

Q.

3
V)
c
<u
c

452.

Q.

66

A s u p e r c o m p u t e r executes a single p r o g r a m m u c h f a s t e r t h a n a
m a i n f r a m e . But m a i n f r a m e s are considered m o r e p o w e r f u l
because t h e y s u p p o r t m o r e m u l t i t a s k i n g .
A m o n g s t o t h e r uses, s u p e r c o m p u t e r s are used f o r w e a t h e r f o r e
casting, a n i m a t e d graphics, nuclear energy research and petroleum exploration.
General Motors has purchased an IBM s u p e r c o m p u t e r t h e
companies say is t h e fastest in t h e a u t o m o t i v e i n d u s t r y . The new
s u p e r c o m p u t e r , based on IBM's Power 4 and Power 5
t e c h n o l o g y , m o r e t h a n doubles t h e c o m p u t i n g capacity of GM,
and is expected t o slash t h e a m o u n t of t i m e it takes t o get a
vehicle t o m a r k e t f r o m f o u r years t o 18 m o n t h s .
The f o u r most p o w e r f u l s u p e r c o m p u t e r s in t h e w o r l d are o w n e d
by g o v e r n m e n t agencies or universities. J a p a n ' s Earth S i m u l a t o r
Center is listed as t h e w o r l d - r e c o r d holder at 3 5 . 8 t e r a f l o p s .
1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate
4 5 1 .

o
A u t o m o t i v e companies including Ford, T o y o t a and Daimler
o
&
Chrysler own 12 of t h e 5 0 0 fastest s u p e r c o m p u t e r s in t h e world.

4 5 0 .

The p e r f o r m a n c e of s u p e r c o m p u t e r s is j u d g e d using t h e UNPACK 3

a
benchmark, i n t r o d u c e d by Jack Dongarra.
o

4 4 9 .

Blue Gene is t h e n i c k n a m e of t h e new s u p e r c o m p u t e r f r o m IBM

t h a t would be 1,000 times faster
t h a n Deep Blue.

448.

447.

446.

4 4 5 .

444.

The fastest s u p e r c o m p u t e r in
India is the 574-CPU cluster at
Intel, Bangalore.

3
to
3
<+
t/>
I
C

T3

ID

MIPS stands for 'millions

of instructions per
second'. This is a measure
of the speed at which a
computer can perform
programmed instructions.

'FLOPS' refers t o 'floating point

operations per second', and
represents the speed at which a
c o m p u t e r can p e r f o r m m a t h e
matical calculations (like multiplication and division). Researchers
making use of high-performance computing tend to be m o r e
interested in this number t h a n in MIPS or the m o r e familiar clock
speed MHz rating. The MHz rating is
not particularly useful here, as highperformance c o m p u t e r s can p e r f o r m
several million m a t h e m a t i c a l
operations per cycle.
Since it went operational in 2001,
t h e Japanese Earth Simulator
has consistently claimed t h e t o p spot
in the list of the worlds most
powerful supercomputers. It has
been benchmarked at a speed of
3 5 . 8 6 TeraFLOPs/sec.
Apple powers the world's t h i r d most
A view of the
Japanese
powerful s u p e r c o m p u t e r - V i r g i n i a
Earth
Simulator
Tech's X is a cluster s u p e r c o m p u t e r
t h a t contains 1100 Apple G5 systems each having t w o IBM
PowerPC 9 7 0 processors rated at 2 GHz. Each node has 4GB of

The first fully transistorised supercomputer was the

CDC 1604, designed by Seymour Cray in 1958.

67

f*
O

T3
C

main m e m o r y and 160 GB of Serial ATA storage and 176 TB total

secondary storage. The m a x i m u m computing speed benchmarked
is 10.28 TeraFLOPs/sec.
4 4 2 .

The nine other s u p e r c o m p u t e r s in the list of t o p 10 supercomputers

are located in the United States, apart f r o m Japan's Earth Simulator.

4 4 1 .

As of November 2 0 0 3 , t h e r e were seven 'cluster' s u p e r c o m p u t e r s

in the t o p 10 list, and just t h r e e traditional 'stratospheric' super
computers. Two hundred and eight systems on the t o p 5 0 0 super
computers list are classified as clusters, making t h e m t h e most
c o m m o n architecture in t h e t o p 5 0 0 supercomputers in the world.

440.

Cluster supercomputers are made up by

clustering a lot of
c o m p u t e r s and
connecting t h e m
t h r o u g h a high speed
network; traditional
supercomputers-the
'stratospheric' o n e s are monolithic and
have several CPUs
w o r k i n g in parallel,
using shared m e m o r y

t h r o u g h high speed

a supercomputer

looks

something

like

this

interconnects. Industry analysts o f t e n say that clusters cannot

provide very high p e r f o r m a n c e and this makes for interesting
news-since clusters are now predominant on the list.

H 439.
Q.

E
o

CDAC's ParamPadma cluster supercomputer was ranked in June

2 0 0 3 as the world's 171st fastest; by November 2 0 0 3 , it fell down to
2 5 8 with newer and more powerful supercomputers entering the list.

S. 4 3 8 .
w

"Central iron" is slang for a centrally funded c o m p u t i n g resource,

The CNS IBM R S / 6 0 0 0 Rack is an example of central iron.
The Berkeley Computer Corporation was f o r m e d in 1968 t o build a
supercomputer that could a c c o m m o d a t e up t o 5 0 0 users at a time.

India's fastest supercomputer is an Intel Xeon cluster

owned by Intel, ranked at 105 in the world, in November
2003.

68

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate (C
4 3 5 .

434.

433.

5 0 per cent of the t o p 5 0 0 fastest systems are installed in the United o

States. Also, 9 0 percent of all 5 0 0 systems are produced in the
United States.
2

The US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National L a b o r a t o r y

o
has commissioned Cray Inc. t o build the world's fastest supercom
5
puter. This 50-100 teraFLOPs machine should surpass NEC's 35
3teraFLOPs Earth Simulator and allow the US t o regain t h e t o p spot
^
in supercomputers. Cray's s u p e r c o m p u t e r will require 12
c
megawatts of dedicated power!
"S
o
When it was introduced, Fortune magazine called the IBM 3 6 0
mainframe " t h e most crucial and p o r t e n t o u s - a s well as perhaps
the most risky-business j u d g m e n t of recent times."

[ D I G I T

69D

J3"

4 3 2 .

A r e f r e s h rate of 8 5 Hz on y o u r m o n i t o r means t h a t e v e r y single

pixel is refreshed 8 5 t i m e s a second.
Moire is a graphic effect that puts an undesirable p a t t e r n composed
of small dots placed in a t i g h t p a t t e r n on a plain image.

430.

429.

428.

427.

70

A nematic liquid crystal is a t r a n s p a r e n t liquid t h a t is used in

t w i s t e d nematic displays, t h e most c o m m o n f o r m of liquid crystal
display.
Self-Scanned A m o r p h o u s Silicon Integrated Display (SASID) technology is used in flat-panel displays in notebook and p o r t a b l e
computers.
TOLED (transparent organic light-emitting device) is a display technology being developed by t h e Universal Display C o r p o r a t i o n
(UDC). It uses t r a n s p a r e n t electrodes and light e m i t t i n g m a t e r i a l s
in an organic l i g h t - e m i t t i n g device (OLED).
The stair-step e f f e c t t h a t can be seen in diagonal lines of some
c o m p u t e r graphics is called 'the jaggies'.

Seagate
4 2 5 .

The concept of plasma display panels was first c o n c e i v e d in J u l y

1964 at t h e University of Illinois.

4 2 4 .

Plasma m o n i t o r s do not c o m e w i t h in-built t u n e r . An NTSC/ATSC

television signal must be passed t h r o u g h a satellite box, cable box,
HDTV receiver, VCR/VHS device, or an o u t b o a r d t u n i n g device.

4 2 3 .

Unlike t r a d i t i o n a l displays,
where the image is scanned
across the screen, in
plasma displays, pixels are
'lit' all at once.

4 2 2 .

Plasma t e c h n o l o g y is
d i f f e r e n t f r o m t h a t used in
o t h e r display systems in
t h a t red, blue and g r e e n
light is created in e v e r y
A high-definition,
futuristic
plasma
pixel, reducing space.
screen looks something
like this
Charged electrodes
between glass panels cause t i n y pockets of inert gas t o change
the state of the plasma. This process causes u l t r a v i o l e t light to
be produced, which in t u r n reacts w i t h t h e phosphors in each
pixel t o produce visible light.

4 2 1 .

Plasma screens have no scan lines due t o t h e f a c t t h a t each and

every pixel has its o w n t r a n s i s t o r electrode. This creates a s m o o t h ,
evenly lit image across t h e e n t i r e surface of t h e display.

4 2 0 .

In 1968, a research g r o u p at RCA in the US, headed by George

Heilmeier, developed t h e first LCDs based on DSM, or dynamic scat
t e r i n g mode.

4 1 9 .

S Kobayashi of J a p a n p r o d u c e d first d e f e c t - f r e e LCD. This was in

1972.

4 1 8 .

NEC, in 1986, p r o d u c e d t h e f i r s t LCD laptop c o m p u t e r .

4 1 7 .

Sharp produced t h e 2 8 - i n c h TFT LCD in 1995.

4 1 6 .

LCDs were first put i n t o use as displays in electronic calculators.

D I G I T

PRINTERS AND SCANNERS

4 1 5 .

A Page Description Language (PDL) specifies t h e a r r a n g e m e n t of

a p r i n t e d page t h r o u g h c o m m a n d s f r o m a c o m p u t e r .

4 1 4 .

Printer Control Language (PCL) is a language t h a t enables applications t o c o n t r o l HP DeskJets, LaserJets, and o t h e r HP printers.

4 1 3 .

The name Epson for the popular brand of printers was coined when
t h e subsequent models of t h e i r first printer 'Electronic P r i n t e r 101'
were called 'Sons of Electronic Printer'.

4 1 2 .

HP's f i r s t Inkjet p r i n t e r was launched in 1984.

411.

A Dichroic M i r r o r is an i n t e r f e r e n c e filter t h a t r e f l e c t s a specific

part of the s p e c t r u m , t r a n s m i t t i n g t h e rest. It is used in scanners.

4 1 0 .

A i r p o r t scanners in t h e UK will soon be able t o c a p t u r e naked

images of travellers, even u n d e r n e a t h several layers of clothing.

4 0 9 .
. 7 2

When desktop scanners w e r e first introduced, m a n y m a n u f a c t u r ers used f l u o r e s c e n t bulbs as light sources.
1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate (C

408.
407.

406.

404.

Before desktop scanners, c o l o u r pre-press companies used d r u m 3

tu
scanners, which were expensive and difficult t o o p e r a t e
a
5'
The i n v e n t o r of t h e scanner is Robert S. Ledley, w h o p a t e n t e d
t h e whole-body CT ( c o m p u t e r i s e d t o m o g r a p h i c ) diagnostic X-ray
scanner. He was a p r o f e s s o r of physiology and biophysics and of
radiology, and he was t h e f i r s t t o do medical imaging and t h r e e dimensional r e c o n s t r u c t i o n s .
TWAIN is an image c a p t u r e API
405.
( A p p l i c a t i o n - p r o g r a m Interface) for Microsoft Windows
A CD-RW disk can, in
and Apple Macintosh o p e r a t i n g
general, be re-written about
systems. The s t a n d a r d was
a thousand times. In
f i r s t released in 1992, and is
contrast, a hard disk can be
c u r r e n t l y r a t i f i e d at v e r s i o n 1.9
written over virtually an
as of J a n u a r y 2 0 0 0 . TWAIN is
unlimited number of times.
typically used as an i n t e r f a c e
between image processing
s o f t w a r e and a scanner or digital camera
A f l a t b e d scanner is designed f o r scanning prints and o t h e r flat
a r t w o r k . Most have a glass bed or 'platen', on which t h e original
is placed, on t h e t o p of a box c o n t a i n i n g a light source and p h o t o
sensitive receiver, usually a CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) a r r a y
or a CIS (Compact Image
Sensor), a single row of
photocells. Older scanners
were o f t e n m o n o c h r o m e
only, but now all are ' t h r e e
c o l o u r ' RGB devices using
separate photocells t o
measure red, g r e e n and
blue light.
__

403.

A flatbed
nents

G e o r g e J . L a u r e r is

considered t h e i n v e n t o r of

scanner's

are the light

tosensitive

device,

important

compo-

source

and the

usually

a CCD

phoarray

t h e UPC or U n i f o r m P r o d u c t Code, invented in 1973. The UPC

s y m b o l set for b a r c o d e r e c o g n i t i o n is still used in t h e USA.

Seagate Tech Factoid

A Seagate cleanroom is 100 times cleaner than a
typical hospital operating room
[ D I G I T

73D

4 0 2 .

The first UPC scanner was installed at a Marsh's S u p e r m a r k e t in

Troy, Ohio, in J u n e 1974.

4 0 1 .

The f i r s t p a t e n t f o r t h e bar
code - US Patent # 2 , 6 1 2 , 9 9 4 was issued t o i n v e n t o r s J o s e p h
Woodland and Bernard Silver on
October 7 , 1 9 5 2 .

399.

.4001
A CD-RW disk can, in
general, be r e - w r i t t e n about
a t h o u s a n d t i m e s . In
c o n t r a s t , a hard disk can be
w r i t t e n over v i r t u a l l y an

J a c o b Rabinow was t h e invenu n l i m i t e d n u m b e r of t i m e s .

t o r of t h e 'Reading Machine',
an a u t o m a t e d scanning and
s o r t i n g appliance w h i c h scanned printed material and c o m p a r e d
each c h a r a c t e r t o a set of standards in a matrix, using f o r t h e
f i r s t time, the 'Best Match Principle' t o d e t e r m i n e t h e original
message.

3 9 8 .

The simplest 3D scanners o f t e n use physical c o n t a c t using hinged

arms. The d e p t h is t h e n calculated by measuring t h e o r i e n t a t i o n of
t h e ranged object at t h e i n s t a n t of c o n t a c t .

3 9 7 .

Possibly the first k n o w n example of biometrics in practice was a

f o r m of finger p r i n t i n g
being used in China in t h e
14th c e n t u r y , as r e p o r t e d
by e x p l o r e r J o a o de Barros
of Portugal.

3 9 6 .

In t h e 1890s, an a n t h r o p o l ogist and police desk clerk

in Paris named Alphonse
Bertillon sought t o fix t h e
HDCD is a new digital
encoding/decodp r o b l e m of i d e n t i f y i n g
ing process for CD/DVD
recording
c o n v i c t e d criminals and
turned biometrics into a
distinct field of study. He developed a m e t h o d of m u l t i p l e body
m e a s u r e m e n t s , which got named a f t e r him-Bertillonage.
.

394.

The m o d e r n f i n g e r p r i n t i n g t e c h n i q u e , which was developed by

Richard Edward H e n r y of Scotland Yard, essentially r e v e r t s t o t h e
W h e n t h e CD w a s being i n v e n t e d , it was d e c i d e d t h a t a
CD s h o u l d be long e n o u g h t o hold B e e t h o v e n ' s N i n t h
S y m p h o n y at any t e m p o - p r e c i s e l y 7 2 minutes.

74

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate
same m e t h o d s used by t h e Chinese for centuries.

393.

0)

EyeDentify, a Belgian c o m p a n y f o u n d e d in 1976, developed The

Eyedentification 7.5 personal i d e n t i f i c a t i o n unit, t h e f i r s t r e t i n a
scan device made f o r c o m m e r c i a l use, in 1984.

OPTICAL STORAGE
3

) 2 .

391.

The t i t l e of 'world's largest h a r d disk' would go to t h e W a v e l e n g t h

Disk Drive Project by Canadian g r o u p CANARIE. The p r o j e c t aims
at using n e t w o r k b a n d w i d t h t o s t o r e data.
HDCD (High Definition C o m p a t i b l e Digital) is a digital e n c o d i n g
and decoding process f o r CD and DVD audio recording.

3907 The Content Scrambling S y s t e m (CSS) is a data e n c r y p t i o n

and
a u t h e n t i c a t i o n m e t h o d used t o p r o t e c t digital versatile disk movies
f r o m being illegally v i e w e d f r o m o t h e r devices.

3 8 9 .

Enhanced CD (E-CD) is a c o m p a c t disk f o r m a t t h a t enables disks t o

be played on either a CD player or a multimedia-capable device.

3 8 8 .

A CD-Bridge Disc is a CD f o r m a t t h a t includes extra i n f o r m a t i o n on

a CD-ROM XA track, so t h a t t h e disk can be played on e i t h e r a CDplayer a t t a c h e d t o a TV or a CD-ROM XA drive a t t a c h e d t o a PC. .

3 8 7 .

CD-ROM XA (Compact D i s k - r e a d - o n l y m e m o r y , e x t e n d e d
a r c h i t e c t u r e ) is a m o d i f i c a t i o n of CD-ROM t h a t defines t w o new
types of sectors t h a t enable it t o read and display data, graphics,
video, and audio at t h e same t i m e .

3 8 6 .

The Yellow Book is t h e i n f o r m a l name for Philips and Sony's ECMA130 s t a n d a r d specification f o r c o m p a c t disk, r e a d - o n l y - m e m o r y
(CD-ROM). It was published in 1988.

3 8 5 .

The Red Book is the 1980 d o c u m e n t that provides the specifications

for t h e standard c o m p a c t disk developed by Sony and Philips.

3 8 4 .

A f e m t o s e c o n d is one m i l l i o n t h of a nanosecond, or 10"15 of a

second. It is a m e a s u r e m e n t s o m e t i m e s used in laser
technology.

3 8 3 .

The f i r s t optical data s t o r a g e disk, developed by Philips, had 6 0

t i m e s the capacity of a 5 . 2 5 - i n c h floppy disk.

i i m i

750

2.
5'

3 8 2 .

CD-ROM XA was developed j o i n t l y by Sony, Philips, and Microsof

and its specifications were published in an extension t o t h e Yello
Book.

3 8 1 .

' O v e r b u r n i n g ' is t h e process of w r i t i n g beyond t h e official

capacity of a CD-R or CD-RW. This is possible by using t h e lead-oi
t o store d a t a - t h e lead-out is used to indicate t h e end of t h e disk
and contains n o t h i n g but zeroes.

o>
e
o
m
E

76

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

3 8 0 .

A soft m o d e m is s o f t w a r e t h a t p e r f o r m s m o d e m f u n c t i o n s using
t h e c o m p u t e r ' s CPU r a t h e r t h a n in m o d e m h a r d w a r e .

3 7 9 .

A Yagi antenna, also k n o w n as a Yagi-Uda a r r a y or simply a Yagi,

is a unidirectional a n t e n n a c o m m o n l y used in c o m m u n i c a t i o n s
w h e n a f r e q u e n c y is above 10 MHz.

3 7 8 .

Bluesnarfing is t h e t h e f t of i n f o r m a t i o n f r o m a wireless device

through a Bluetooth connection.

3 7 7 .

Bluejacking is the practice of sending messages b e t w e e n mobile

users using a B l u e t o o t h wireless c o n n e c t i o n .

3 7 6 .

In c o m p u t e r j a r g o n , ' c o c o o n i n g ' is t h e act of hiding oneself f r o m

t h e n o r m a l social e n v i r o n m e n t , w h i c h may be perceived as
u n f r i e n d l y or unwelcome.

3 7 5 .

Cloaking is the masking of t h e sender's name and address in an email note or d i s t r i b u t i o n .

3 7 4 .

Hacktivism is the act of hacking, or breaking i n t o a c o m p u t e r

system, f o r a politically or socially m o t i v a t e d purpose.
.

The popular phrase T h e quick b r o w n fox j u m p s over t h e lazy dog'

was t h e first message sent b e t w e e n the Kremlin and t h e White
house, when testing t h e h o t l i n e telex. That phrase c o n t a i n s each
of t h e letters of the alphabet at least once.

"

77

Hayes Corp. p r o d u c e d t h e first m o d e m t h a t used t h e c o m m o n A'

c o m m a n d set.

371.

Britain i m p l e m e n t e d its ' 9 9 9 ' emergency telephone system in 1937

The first 9 9 9 call r e p o r t e d a burglary; t h e b u r g l a r was appre
hended.

3 7 0 .

The '911' e m e r g e n c y t e l e p h o n e system was developed by AT&T ir

t h e US as a public service.

3 6 9 .

T o u c h - t o n e service was f i r s t i n t r o d u c e d c o m m e r c i a l l y in t h e US ir
1963, but t o o k almost 10 years t o gain w i d e s p r e a d use.

3 6 8 .

On J u n e 3 , 1 8 8 0 , Bell t r a n s m i t t e d the first wireless t e l e p h o n e

message on his n e w l y - i n v e n t e d ' p h o t o p h o n e ' . The device allowec
for the transmission of sound
on a beam of light.

3 6 7 .

Bell's p h o t o p h o n e is recognised as t h e p r e c u r s o r of
m o d e r n fibre optics, w h i c h
t o d a y t r a n s p o r t o v e r eight
percent of the w o r l d ' s
telecommunications.

366.

Modems
In 1 9 7 0 , a t e a m o f r e s e a r c h e r s

the

were developed

NAAD's

because <

data transmission

needs

at Corning Glass Works in New York made f i b r e optic c o m m u n i c a

tions a reality, using f i b r e - o p t i c wire which could c a r r y 6 5 , 0 0 0
times m o r e i n f o r m a t i o n t h a n copper wire.

365.
>
c
o

364.

|363.
(O
o

78

Nearly all of t h e m o r e t h a n 2 5 million kilometres of fibre-optic wir

installed in t h e US t o d a y is based on t h e f i r s t " O p t i c a l Waveguid
Fibers" designed by Corning Labs' Robert Maurer, Donald Keck,
and Peter Schultz.
Digital modems developed f r o m the need to t r a n s m i t data for Nort
American Air Defence d u r i n g t h e 1950s.
The first c o m m e r c i a l m o d e m was AT&T's Bell 103, m a n u f a c t u r e d i
1962. It had full-duplex transmission, frequency-shift keying or FSH

Seagate

and a speed of 3 0 0 bits per second or 3 0 0 bauds.

361.

The electric t e l e g r a p h was b o r n in 1830 when an A m e r i c a n named |

J o s e p h Henry sent an e l e c t r o n i c c u r r e n t over one mile of w i r e to 2 .
a c t i v a t e an e l e c t r o m a g n e t
which caused a bell to
strike.

3 6 0 .

T h o u g h Samuel Morse
gave a public d e m o n s t r a t i o n of t h e Morse Code in
1838, t h e Congress f u n d e d
$ 3 0 , 0 0 0 to c o n s t r u c t an
exper imental 4 0 - m i l e
t e l e g r a p h line f r o m Washi n g t o n to Baltimore, only
five years later.

3 5 9 .

The electric telegraph

was born
1930 in the United
States

in

The message " W h a t h a t h

God w r o u g h t ? " was t h e first official message sent in Morse Code
on May 2 4 , 1 8 4 4 , f r o m t h e old Supreme Court c h a m b e r in Washi n g t o n to Baltimore. The basic concept of cellular phones began
in 1947, when researchers looked at crude mobile car phones and

Seagate Tech Factoid

Seagate must keep the "wear r a t e " of its drives very low to guarantee
eliability. How low is very low?
Over the typical five-year service life of a Seagate 10,000 rpm disk drive
In a common server application, the sliding distance of the head over the
disk is more than two million miles - t h a t ' s longer than four round-trip
ourneys from the earth to the moon (each round trip is a mere 5 0 0 , 0 0 0
miles or so).
Mow compare these numbers to car tyres, the best of which are made of
material about 10 million times thicker than a disc's overcoat. Tyres are
made of essentially the same material as the overcoat (carbon) but most
mechanics would agree that tyres become not reliable after only about
100,000 miles.
What does all this mean? If the tyres on a car were as robust as the disk
overcoat on a Seagate drive, they should survive 1014 miles, t h a t ' s
1 0 0 , 0 0 0 , 0 0 0 , 0 0 0 , 0 0 0 , or 100 trillion miles. If you drove 10,000 miles a
/ear with these wonder wheels on your car, they should last one billion
/ears before having to be changed.

79d

realized t h a t by using small c e l l s - r a n g e of service a r e a - w i t h

f r e q u e n c y reuse t h e y could increase the t r a f f i c capacity of
mobile phones substantially. However at t h a t t i m e , t h e technology to do so was n o n e x i s t e n t .
3 5 8 .

357.
3 5 6 .

355.

Despite incredible d e m a n d , it took cellular phone service 37 years

to become c o m m e r c i a l l y available in the United States. Consumer
d e m a n d quickly o u t s t r i p p e d the 1982 s y s t e m standards. By 1987,
cellular t e l e p h o n e subscribers exceeded one million and t h e
airways w e r e c r o w d e d .
In t h e 1970s, t h e very first cordless phones w e r e i n t r o d u c e d .
In 1986, the Federal C o m m u n i c a t i o n s Commission or FCC granted
the frequency range of 4 7 - 4 9 MHz for cordless phones. In 1990, this
became 9 0 0 MHz. In 1994, digital cordless phones, and in 1995,
digital spread s p e c t r u m , were respectively i n t r o d u c e d .
In 1998, t h e FCC g r a n t e d the f r e q u e n c y range of 2.4 GHz f o r cordless phones. As of 2 0 0 3 , t h e u p w a r d range was 5 . 8 g i g a h e r t z .

354.

3 5 3 .

352.
>

A Regional I n t e r n e t Registry (RIR) for the Asia Pacific region was

originally p r o p o s e d at t h e APCCIRN (Asia-Pacific C o o r d i n a t i n g
C o m m i t t e e for I n t e r n a t i o n a l Research N e t w o r k i n g ) m e e t i n g on 13
J a n u a r y 1993. It was t h e p r e c u r s o r of APNIC (Asia-Pacific
N e t w o r k I n f o r m a t i o n Center). The 1st APNIC m e e t i n g was held at
C h e r a r o n k o n University, Bangkok, Thailand, on J a n u a r y 16 and
17,1995.
On April 3 0 , 1 9 9 6 , APNIC was registered in Seychelles as non-profit
international organisation.
The A m e r i c a n Registry for Internet N u m b e r s (ARIN), whose
a u t h o r i t y it is t o m a n a g e t h e IP address space in use in N o r t h and
South America, t h e Caribbean and sub-saharan Africa, began
o p e r a t i o n s on December 2 2 , 1 9 9 7 .

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In October 1998, t h e US G o v e r n m e n t a p p o i n t e d a p r i v a t e
organisation called I n t e r n e t C o r p o r a t i o n f o r Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN) to oversee t h e opening of t h e Domain Name
Registration s y s t e m t o o t h e r c o m p e t i n g companies.

1 3 5 0 . The Domain Registry at t h e I n f o r m a t i o n Sciences I n s t i t u t e of the

U n i v e r s i t y of S o u t h e r n California a d m i n i s t e r s t h e top-level
domain '.us'.

80

Seagate
3 4 9 .

ADSL, the most widely-used DSL s t a n d a r d in the US, can

d o w n l o a d at speeds b e t w e e n 1.5 and 9 Mbps, and can upload at
speeds between 16 and 6 4 0 Kbps.

3 4 8 .

3G, s h o r t for " t h i r d g e n e r a t i o n " , refers to wireless t e c h n o l o g i e s

designed for high-speed voice and data transmission. It promises
p e r f o r m a n c e t h a t ' s h u n d r e d s of times faster t h a n t o d a y ' s technology.

3 4 7 .

The fastest t y p e of i n t e r n e t c o n n e c t i o n is t h e T3, w h i c h can go

up t o 4 4 Mbps. Of course, t h e y ' r e used mostly by ISPs.

3 4 6 .

The f i r s t c o m m e r c i a l m o d e m was t h e Dataphone f r o m AT&T,

in 1960.

fcanarar

3 4 5 .

Bell Labs conceived t h e idea of t h e cellular phone in 1947.

344.

Citizens of N o r w a y can s u b m i t t h e i r tax f o r m s by SMS.

343.

342.
341.

340.

339.

338.

Catholics in the Philippines are not allowed t o confess their sins via
t e x t m e s s a g i n g because t h e Bishops f e e l t h a t e - m a i l and fax
confessions are not secure enough.
The Nokia 5160 series included an edition w i t h Disney characters
Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Donald.
CDMA t e c h n o l o g y uses multiple channels s i m u l t a n e o u s l y . It does
this by assigning each user a code t h a t is used in t h e multiplexing
of data.
Michael Faraday's e x h a u s t i v e research i n t o w h e t h e r space could
conduct e l e c t r i c i t y had an incalculable e f f e c t on cellular
phone d e v e l o p m e n t .
Cell phones w e n t public in 1977, when Chicago began public cell
phone trials w i t h 2 0 0 0 c u s t o m e r s . J a p a n began t e s t i n g cellular
phone services in 1979.
Dr. Mahlon Loomis of Virginia, a dentist, may have been t h e first
person t o c o m m u n i c a t e t h r o u g h wireless via t h e a t m o s p h e r e .

i l . l I I I ! I I M

Seagate
3 3 7 .

Nearly 4 5 countries, including India, have banned t h e use of cell

phones while driving. In Ireland, y o u can be f i n e d $ 3 8 0 a n d / o r
face i m p r i s o n m e n t f o r t h r e e
months.

o
o

Code Division Multiple Access

(CDMA) t e c h n o l o g y was
originally developed f o r
m i l t a r y use in t h e late 1960s.

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335.

336.

3 3 4 .

Studies c o n d u c t e d by NASA
show t h a t the use of cell
phones and other personal
e l e c t r o n i c devices inside and in
t h e vicinity of a i r c r a f t is
potentially dangerous.

333.

332.

Or M a r t i n C o o p e r is
c o n s i d e r e d t h e i n v e n t o r of
the first portable handset.
A s t h e f o r m e r GM f o r t h e
S y s t e m s division at
M o t o r o l a , he w a s t h e f i r s t
p e r s o n t o m a k e a c a l l on a
portable cellular phone.

Japanese t e l e c o m c a r r i e r NTT
DoCoMo launched t h e w o r l d ' s
f i r s t 3G mobile phone services in
J a p a n in October 2001.
A large a m o u n t of t h e r a d i a t i o n
e m i t t e d by a cell phone, gets
absorbed by t h e user's head. A
similar amount of radiation comes
f r o m t h e keypad and t h e m o u t h
D i e c e as w e l l

Studies
phone

31.

The WHO says t h e r e is still no

aircraft

by NASA show

that

cell-

usage in the vicinity

is potentially

of

dangerous

evidence t o prove t h a t cellular phones pose any h e a l t h risks, but

f u r t h e r research is needed.

330.

Mobile phone r i n g t o n e s was t h e most searched-for t e c h n o l o g y

t e r m in Yahool's annual survey, f o l l o w e d by digital c a m e r a s and
mobile phones.

329.

When cordless phones and t h e first analogue cellphones hit t h e

m a r k e t , anybody w i t h a scanner t h a t o p e r a t e d at t h e right
f r e q u e n c y could easily listen in on calls not i n t e n d e d f o r t h e m .
Multiple independent t e s t s have confirmed t h a t t h e
r a d i a t i o n f r o m t h e e a r p i e c e of a c e l l p h o n e is up t o f o u r
times that from the antenna.

83

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3 2 7 .

The Chameleon Card is a p r o g r a m m a b l e card in d e v e l o p m e n t at

Chameleon N e t w o r k t h a t can represent each of t h e o w n e r ' s
credit, debit, and c u s t o m e r cards as required, so t h a t one doesn't
c a r r y all of t h e a f o r e m e n t i o n e d .

3 2 6 .

Cellphones are m o r e popular

in European and Asian countries t h a n t h e y are in t h e
United S t a t e s - m o r e t h a n 9 0
percent of Europeans o w n a
cell phone, c o m p a r e d t o a b o u t
5 0 percent of A m e r i c a n s .

3 2 4 .

323.

325.
On December 3 , 1 9 9 2 , an
engineer named Neil
Papworth sent the first
SMS-"MERRY CHRISTMA S " - t o his colleagues at
Vodafone in Britain.

Cellphones o p e r a t e in t h e 9 0 0
MHz, 1800 MHz and 1 9 0 0 MHz
bands; B l u e t o o t h uses t h e 2.4 GHz band; and Wi-Fi and WiMax
o p e r a t e on t h e 2 . 4 GHz and 5.8 GHz f r e q u e n c y bands.

The 2.4 GHz band is generally a delicensed band, which means that
y o u do not have t o apply f o r a license f o r using devices on this
band.

3 2 2 .

The 2.4 GHz band comes

under t h e so-called ISM band,
which stands f o r I n s t r u m e n t a tion, Scientific and Medical
(usage), specified as t h e 9 0 2 9 2 8 MHz band, t h e 2 4 0 0 - 2 4 8 3
MHz band and t h e 5 7 2 5 - 5 7 8 0
MHz band.

The WHO is researching

posed

by cellphone

the

risks

usage

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T E C H F A C T S

Seagate

321.
320.

The Bose Wave radio, w h i c h is 14" wide, houses a o n e - m e t r e long

waveguide.
Nintendo's release in 1983 of t h e Famicom, in J a p a n , m a r k e d t h e
second age of h o m e video games and the s t a r t of Nintendo's dominance in t h e g a m i n g w o r l d .

319.

The Coleco C o l e c o v i s i o n c o n s o l e , released in 1982, was as

p o w e r - f u l as t h e most p o w e r f u l PCs at t h a t t i m e .

318.

Nolan Bushnell originally named his company 'Syzygy'. Today, this

c o m p a n y is known as A t a r i - p u b l i s h e r s of t h e f a m o u s Unreal game
series.

317.

In 1970, t h e first a l l - c o m p u t e r championship was held in New York

and w o n by CHESS 3 . 0 (CDC 6 4 0 0 ) , a p r o g r a m w r i t t e n by Slate,
A t k i n and Gorlen at N o r t h w e s t e r n University.

316.

On November 2 2 , 1 9 6 6 , a USSR chess p r o g r a m m e began a correspondence m a t c h w i t h t h e K o t o k - M c C a r t h y MIT chess p r o g r a m .

The m a t c h lasted 9 m o n t h s and was w o n by t h e Soviet c o m p u t e r .

3 1 5 .

Did you know t h a t Sega released Sonic t h e Hedgehog in 1991 as a

direct response t o Nintendo's Super NES g a m i n g s y s t e m ?

3 1 4 .

In 1962, Alan Kotok w r o t e t h e first MIT chess p r o g r a m f o r his B.S.

thesis project. He was assisted by J o h n McCarthy of Stanford.

313.

Alex Bernstein w r o t e a chess p r o g r a m in 1957 for an IBM

7 0 4 , which could do 4 2 , 0 0 0 instructions per second and used
7 0 K of m e m o r y . It was t h e first
' p r o p e r ' chess playing p r o g r a m .

311.

310.

3 0 9 .

The Sega Genesis, released as

MegaDrive in J a p a n in 1988,
m a r k e d Sega's e n t r y into t h e
video game m a r k e t .

In 1950, mathematician
Alan Turing wrote the
first chess program.

In 1952, Alick Glennie, w h o

w r o t e t h e f i r s t c o m p i l e r , d e f e a t e d Alan Turing's chess
p r o g r a m , T u r b o C h a m p . He was t h e first person t o beat a
c o m p u t e r p r o g r a m at chess.
A c c o r d i n g t o a s u r v e y in May 2 0 0 0 , one o u t of e v e r y f o u r households in t h e United States had a PlayStation.

3 0 8 .

The first VCR (Video

Cassette Recorder) was
made in 1956 and was t h e
size of a piano.

307.

In 1977, A t a r i released its

VCS (Video C o m p u t e r
System), also called t h e
The first VCR didn't look like
2 6 0 0 . It was t h e f i r s t A t a r i
was the size of a piano!
8 - b i t video console and
r e v o l u t i o n i s e d t h e h o m e video game m a r k e t .

this-it

3 0 6 .

In 1986, Steve J o b s purchased t h e c o m p u t e r graphics division of

Lucas Films L t d for $10 million, and established it as an inde
pendent c o m p a n y c h r i s t e n e d ' P i x a r ' .
I

3 0 5 .

In 1951, Charles Ginsburg, known as t h e f a t h e r of t h e video cassette

recorder, led a research t e a m at Ampex C o r p o r a t i o n in developing
the first practical v i d e o t a p e recorder.

3 0 4 . The still video or digital c a m e r a was first d e m o n s t r a t e d in 1981. It

86

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate

(L

used a f a s t - r o t a t i n g m a g n e t i c disc t w o inches in d i a m e t e r , and

8
r e c o r d e d on it up t o 5 0 images f o r m e d in a solid-state device in t h e 3
camera.
3 0 3 .

The first v i d e o t a p e d m a t e r i a l
on a TV show was "Douglas
Edwards and t h e News", broadcast on CBS on N o v e m b e r 30,
1956.

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302.

'Walkman', 'Pressman',
'Watchman', and
'Discman' are Sony
trademarks.

01
3'

301.

The first c o m m e r c i a l blank

videotape was o f f e r e d by 3M Corp. in 1957. It was priced at $ 3 0 7
per reel.

3 0 0 .

In 1963, Philips d e m o n s t r a t e d its first 'Compact A u d i o Cassette 1

using BASF 1/8-inch tape.

2 9 9 .

The mass p r o d u c t i o n of c o m p a c t audio cassettes began in 1965 in

Hanover, Germany, as did c o m m e r c i a l sales of p r e - r e c o r d e d music
cassettes, known as musicassettes.

2 9 8 .

Akio Morita, Masaru Ibuka and Kozo Ohsone i n v e n t e d t h e p o r t a b l e

'Sony Walkman' audio cassette
player. It was released in 1979.

2 9 7 .

Akio Morita along w i t h Masaru

Ibuka f o u n d e d t h e T o k y o Tele
c o m m u n i c a t i o n s Engineering
C o r p o r a t i o n in 1946. This was
later renamed Sony. Sony's
name takes f r o m t h e Latin
w o r d 'sonus', m e a n i n g sound,
and t h e English w o r d 'sunny'.

2 9 6 .

Sony's first f o r a y i n t o t h e

audio

cassettes

began

in 1965

g a m i n g market was in 1988, w h e n it e m b a r k e d on a deal w i t h

Nintendo to develop a CD-ROM drive for t h e Super NES.
2 9 5 .

Sony acquired Psygnosis, a relatively u n k n o w n European devel

oper, for $ 4 8 million. It was r e n a m e d Sony I n t e r a c t i v e E n t e r t a i n
ment, and is responsible f o r some of the PlayStation's best games,
including WipeOut and D e s t r u c t i o n Derby.

2 9 4 .

W h e n H e w l e t t P a c k a r d ' s c o m p u t e r d i v i s i o n e x h i b i t s at t r a d e
shows, t h e y a l w a y s play t h e s a m e t u n e at t h e e n d of t h e

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s h o w in t h e i r b o o t h - t h e p o p u l a r h y m n A m a z i n g Grace.
2 9 3 .

In 1985, Sony and Philips produced t h e s t a n d a r d f o r CD-ROM disks,

which would use t h e same laser t e c h n o l o g y as t h e audio CD.

2 9 2 .

In 1988, CD sales surpassed LP sales for t h e f i r s t t i m e , leaving the

CD and the audio cassette as the t w o d o m i n a n t c o n s u m e r f o r m a t s .

2 9 1 .

On August 6 , 1 9 9 8 , t h e f i r s t HDTV set went on sale f o r $ 5 , 4 9 9 t o

t h e public in San Diego. It was a 56-inch Panasonic set t h a t was
developed at t h e c o m p a n y ' s research and d e v e l o p m e n t c e n t r e in
San Diego, and m a n u f a c t u r e d in Tijuana.

2 9 0 .

The IMAX s y s t e m has its roots in t h e EXPO ' 6 7 in Montreal. A small

g r o u p of Canadian f i l m m a k e r s and e n t r e p r e n e u r s - G r a e m e Fergu
son, Roman K r o i t o r and Robert Kerr-decided to design a new
s y s t e m using a single, p o w e r f u l projector, r a t h e r t h a n t h e c u m b e r
some multiple p r o j e c t o r s used at t h e time.

2 8 9 .

The IMAX dome, t h e n called

t h e Omnimax, d e b u t e d a t h e
Reuben H FleetSpace
T h e a t r e in San Diego, California, in 1973.

2 8 8 .

Disney released Fantasia

2 0 0 0 in the IMAX film f o r m a t
w i t h 6-channel digital sound
on J a n u a r y 1, 2 0 0 0 .

2 8 7 .

The first HD card radio

January 5, 2004.

was sold on

The first HD car radio was sold on J a n u a r y 5, 2 0 0 4 in Cedar

Rapids, Iowa.

286.

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8 8

From March 6 , 1 9 9 9 , HBO began HDTV satellite m o v i e broadcasts,

s t a r t i n g w i t h "US Marshals" at 8 pm.
In 1998, The Last B r o a d c a s t , a film by Stefan Avalos and Lance
Weiler, p r e m i e r e d as " t h e first desktop f e a t u r e f i l m " , produced and
exhibited digitally, co-sponsored by Texas I n s t r u m e n t s using its
DLP digital cinema p r o j e c t o r .
In November 1997, San Diego's MP3.com was f o u n d e d by Michael
Robertson w i t h 3 , 0 0 0 songs available for f r e e d o w n l o a d . In the
next 12 m o n t h s , it became the #1 music site on t h e I n t e r n e t w i t h 3
million hits m o n t h l y .
10 0 1

T E C H F A C T

S J

Seagate
2 8 3 .

DVD players were i n t r o d u c e d in J a p a n in 1996 and later in t h e US o

o
3
in 1997.
a

2 8 2 .

By 2 0 0 3 , in t h e US, DVD
rentals increased 51.2% and
VHS rentals d r o p p e d 2 9 %
f r o m the previous year; DVD
sales increased 4 2 . 2 % t o $12.1
billion, and VHS sales d r o p p e d
3 4 . 8 % t o $2.4 billion, according to Video Store Magazine.

I 3
a

In 1982, the use of

computer-generated
graphics in movies took a
step forward with Disney's
release of 'Tron'.

2 8 0 .

Dick Tracy, released J u n e 15,

1990 was the first 3 5 m m f e a t u r e film d i s t r i b u t e d w i t h a digital
soundtrack by Cinema Digital Sound (CDS), developed by East
man Kodak and Optical Radiation Corp.

279.

In t h e s t o p - m o t i o n kind of a n i m a t i o n , one must m o v e each joint of

each character f o r e v e r y f r a m e , which means y o u need to stop the
camera and m o v e a n y t h i n g t h a t is moving for e v e r y f r a m e . The
biggest drawback of this kind of a n i m a t i o n is t h a t it is v e r y t i m e
consuming.

2 7 8 .

The longest example of stopm o t i o n a n i m a t i o n was The

N i g h t m a r e Before Christmas,
d i r e c t e d by Henry Selick. This
movie lasted for 7 4 minutes,
w h i c h required a t o t a l of
1 0 6 , 5 6 0 frames! Each of these
had t o be filmed individually.
The characters in t h e m o v i e
were puppets made of f o a m
rubber. Producing t h e e n t i r e
movie required a t o t a l of 3 0 0
puppets for the 7 4 roles.

1 1 7 .

Tron
r e l e a s e d in
In 1993, Jurassic Park released
on May 3 0 as t h e f i r s t f i l m w i t h
DTS sound, developed by T e r r y Beard, f o u n d e r of Digital T h e a t r e
Systems in Westalke Village, CA, partly o w n e d by Steven
Spielberg and Universal Pictures. This digital sound f i l m f o r m a t
records six tracks on s e p a r a t e CD-ROM disks, s y n c h r o n i s e d by an
optical t i m e code t r a c k r e c o r d e d on t h e film, co-existing w i t h a
backup optical s o u n d t r a c k similar t o Dolby Stereo.

89

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2 7 6 .

MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) develops s t a n d a r d s for digi

tal video and digital audio compression. It o p e r a t e s under t h e
auspices of t h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l Organisation f o r S t a n d a r d i z a t i o n
(ISO).
_
_

2 7 5 .

In 1995, amidst g r e a t f a n f a r e , Pixar A n i m a t i o n Studios and Disney

released t h e f i r s t f u l l - l e n g t h c o m p u t e r - g e n e r a t e d film, Toy Story.

2 7 4 .

Toy Story d i r e c t o r J o h n Lasseter had w o n an a c a d e m y a w a r d for

a previous c o m p u t e r - g e n e r a t e d short film, Tin Toy.

2 7 3 .

The sci-fi flick Gog (1954), in which a nuclear 'brain' takes over a
secret laboratory, was the first film to feature a c o m p u t e r as the
main character in a movie.

2 7 2 .

The first true digital camera for the consumer was introduced to
t h e world in 1990. It was the Dycam Model I, and it produced
black and white photos at a
resolution of 3 2 0 x 2 4 0 pixels.
The camera was capable of
storing 32 compressed images
on 1MB of built-in RAM. The
images could be downloaded,
using a cable, t o a PC or a Mac.

271.

The world's first portable video

recording system, t h e D V - 2 4 0 0
Video Rover, was launched by
Sony in 1967. It filmed in B&W
only, and required a separate
unit for playback.

270.

E
c
<5

Toy story was the fjrst

computer-generated

fulHength

film.

In the late 1980s, Sony

introduced their professional ProMavica M V C - 5 0 0 0 . Mavica was
short for "magnetic video cam", and that's really what it was. It
was a professional level digital camcorder that had the ability to
take freeze-frame pictures, and not a still digital camera.

r.

2 2 6 9 .
o>
c

Io 268.
90

In 1992, Sharp, in its quest to make filming easier, introduced the

first colour LCD screen, so videographers could see the display on a
screen, w i t h o u t having to squint t h r o u g h a viewfinder. Today, this is
a standard f e a t u r e on all camcorders.
Phillips developed the first wearable CD player. It was manufactured
attached to a jacket, in 2003.
1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

2 6 7 .

Tetris has sold o v e r 4 0 million copies worldwide, since it began in

1982. That comes t o $ 8 0 0 million in revenues!

2 6 6 .

The first all-computer c h a m p i o n s h i p was held in New York in 1970,

and was w o n by CHESS 3 . 0 - a p r o g r a m w r i t t e n by Slate, Atkin
and Gorlen at N o r t h w e s t e r n University, Illinois.

2 6 5 .

In Spring 1967, MacHACK VI became t h e f i r s t chess p r o g r a m t o

beat a human, at t h e Massachussets State Chess Championship.

2 6 4 .

The Sega Dreamcast, released in 1999, was t h e f i r s t console game

machine to sport a 128-bit a r c h i t e c t u r e .

2 6 3 .

On 2 2 n d November, 1966, a USSR chess p r o g r a m m e began a correspondence m a t c h w i t h t h e K o t o k - M c C a r t h y MIT chess p r o g r a m .

The m a t c h lasted 9 m o n t h s and was won by t h e Soviet c o m p u t e r ,
w i t h 3 wins and 1 loss.

2 6 2 .

Sega released Sonic t h e Hedgehog in 1991 as a d i r e c t response to

Nintendo's Super NES g a m i n g system.

2 6 1 .

D I G I T

In 1968, I n t e r n a t i o n a l Master David Levy made a $ 3 , 0 0 0 bet w i t h

J o h n McCarthy, r e s e a r c h e r in Artificial Intelligence at S t a n f o r d
University, t h a t no chess c o m p u t e r would beat him in 10 years. He
w o n his bet!

2 6 0 .

In 1988, Sega e n t e r e d t h e video

g a m e m a r k e t w i t h Genesis,
which was called MegaDrive in
Japan. The console, w i t h its 16bit processor, was t h e f i r s t t o
challenge Nintendo's monopoly.

259.

The f i r s t a r c a d e v i d e o
game t h a t used vector
g r a p h i c s i n s t e a d of a
r a s t e r d i s p l a y w a s Space

2 5 8 .

Wars. T h e g a m e w a s
r e l e a s e d in 1 9 7 7 .

2 5 7 .

In 1978, A t a r i Football became the first arcade g a m e t o use a track

ball.

2 5 6 .

The first c o m p u t e r book t o sell one million copies was 101 BASIC
Computer Games. It was published in the US by Creative Computing in 1978.

2 5 5 .

The first 32-bit h o m e video game s y s t e m was t h e Panasonic 3 D 0

released in 1993.

2 5 4 .

Sony released a m a t t e black version of its P l a y S t a t i o n in 1997,

which enabled p r o g r a m m e r s
t o c r e a t e t h e i r o w n video
games in the C p r o g r a m m i n g
language. It was called Net
Yaroze.

253.

2 5 2 .

i/)
<D
E

The Mattel Intellivision was

released in 1980, and was t h e
f i r s t 16-bit h o m e g a m e console.

In 1972, t h e f i r s t c o m m e r c i a l
home game s y s t e m was
launched t h e Magnavox
Odyssey, by Magnavox, in t h e
US.
A matte black version
The first s o f t w a r e t o be
PlayStation
i m p o r t e d f r o m t h e Soviet
Union to t h e US was Tetris, developed in 1985 by
Alexey Pazhitnov.

of the

Sony

In 2 0 0 3 , a 1 4 - y e a r - o l d R o m a n i a n boy c o l l a p s e d and was

251.

hospi t a l i s e d b e c a u s e he'd been p l a y i n g a c o m p u t e r

g a m e - C o u n t e r S t r i k e - f o r nine d a y s in a r o w .

m
w

9 2

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate
2 5 0 .

Mario, one of the best known video game characters, was named
after Nintendo's landlord.

2 4 9 .

Playstation 2 hit the shelves in Japan on March 4, 2 0 0 0 , and

sold 9 8 , 0 0 0 units in four hours.

2 4 8 .

In 1988, Deep Thought and Grandmaster Tony Miles shared first

place in the US Open chess championship.

2 4 7 .

Deep Blue's chess playing p r o g r a m is w r i t t e n in C and runs under

the AIX operating system. It is capable of evaluating 10 crore
positions per second.

2 4 6 .

Did you know that an estimated 1 lakh copies of the PlayStation

game Tiger Woods 9 9 were recalled after The Spirit of
Christmas, a clip in which Jesus Christ and Santa Claus get into
fistfight over the t r u e meaning of Christmas, was discovered in a
hidden file on the CD-ROM? The recall was necessitated due to
the fact that the clip was unauthorised and was full of expletives.

2 4 5 .

The year 1984, made

famous by George Orwell, is
also the year the great
crash of the video game
market occurred.

244.

William Higginbotham
created what might have
been the first video game,
in 1958. His game, called
'Tennis for Two', was
characters
created and played on a
Brookhaven National L a b o r a t o r y oscilloscope.

2 4 3 .

Designed by Ralph Baer, the first commercial video game

console that could be used in the home, the Odyssey, was released
by Magnavox in 1972.

2 4 2 .

On June 17,1980, Atari's 'Asteroids' and 'Lunar Lander' were the

first two video games to ever be registered in the Copyright Office.

n>
VI

2 4 0 .

Nintendo s t a r t e d its e n t e r p r i s e in 1889, w h e n t h e g r e a t - g r a n d f a t h e r of the c u r r e n t Nintendo president, Fusajiro Yamauchi,

f o u n d e d N i n t e n d o Koppai, which made special playing cards
called Hanafunda ( " f l o w e r cards").

2 3 9 .

In 1981, Shigeru M i y a m o t o ,
guided by Gunpei Yokoi,
made the first game f o r
Nintendo s t a r r i n g Mario,
which was p r e v i o u s l y t h e
arcade game Donkey
Kong.

2 3 8 .

In 1952, A S Douglas
Microsoft's
Flight Simulator
was the
c r e a t e d t h e f i r s t graphical
bestselling
PC game of all time
c o m p u t e r game. It was a
version of Tic-Tac-Toe, p r o g r a m m e d on t h e EDSAC vacuumt u b e c o m p u t e r , which had a cathode ray t u b e display.

237.

Gunpei Yokoi was t h e c r e a t o r of t h e Game Boy and V i r t u a l Boy. He

w o r k e d on Famicom, t h e Metroid series, Game Boy Pocket, and did
extensive w o r k on t h e s y s t e m we know t o d a y as t h e Nintendo
E n t e r t a i n m e n t System.
PacMan got its name f r o m t h e Japanese w o r d " p a c u " , meaning " t o
m u n c h " . Since " p a c u " is p r o n o u n c e d t h e same as " f y o u " , only
w i t h a 'p' sound, its name was changed to " P a c M a n " .

235.

234.

The w o r d N i n t e n d o is c o m p o s e d of t h r e e J a p a n e s e Kanji
characters, Nin-ten-do. These characters can be t r a n s l a t e d into
" H e a v e n blesses hard w o r k " .
The most expensive game ever developed was ShenMue for Sega
Dreamcast. It cost $ 2 0 million.

Seagate

2 3 3 .

2 3 2 .

(C

The QWERTY k e y b o a r d was present on t h e v e r y f i r s t t y p e w r i t e r

called the 'Sholes & Glidden Type Writer', p r o d u c e d by g u n m a k e r s
E Remington & Sons in llinois, New York.
Mice first broke o n t o t h e public stage w i t h t h e i n t r o d u c t i o n of the
Apple Macintosh in 1984.

231.

Everytime a mouse moves or t h e user clicks a b u t t o n , t h e mouse

sends t h r e e bytes of data t o t h e c o m p u t e r it's a t t a c h e d to.

2 3 0 .

The first i n f r a r e d wireless k e y b o a r d for M i c r o s o f t ' s WebTV set-top

box was m a n u f a c t u r e d by Sejin Electron Inc in Korea.

2 2 9 .

228.

2 2 7 .

The QWERTY k e y b o a r d layout is 129 years old!

Dvorak keyboards, n a m e d a f t e r Dr A u g u s t Dvorak, have nine of
t h e most used letters in t h e middle row of the keyboard. This allows
y o u t o w r i t e over 3 , 0 0 0 w o r d s w i t h o u t t h e f i n g e r s reaching out t o
t h e other rows. In c o n t r a s t , only about 5 0 w o r d s can be t y p e d on
a QWERTY k e y b o a r d w i t h o u t reaching o u t t o t h e middle or home
row.
In September of 1940, G. R. Stibitz d e m o n s t r a t e d t h e Model 1

[ D I G I T

95D

c o m p u t i n g device, which, f o r t h e first t i m e , utilised input f r o m a

t e l e t y p e k e y b o a r d or paper tape and p r e s e n t e d o u t p u t on t h e m
as well. This d e m o n s t r a t i o n was additionally unique in t h a t it was
accomplished in r e m o t e fashion
over t e l e p h o n e lines, some
t h i n g t h a t w o u l d not be duplicated for a n o t h e r decade.

226.

225.

0>
U
10

224.

96

Research o r i e n t e d t o w a r d s
A u t o m a t i c Speech Recognition
and T r a n s c r i p t i o n technologies
began in 1936 at AT&T's Bell
Labs. At t h a t t i m e , most
H I
research was f u n d e d and
The mouse became popular
when
p e r f o r m e d by Universities and
Apple Macintosh
was launched in
t h e U.S. G o v e r n m e n t , p r i m a r i l y
1984
by t h e Military and DARPA. It
wasn't until t h e early 1980s t h a t the t e c h n o l o g y reached the
commercial market.
The now u b i q u i t o u s direct m a n i p u l a t i o n i n t e r f a c e , w h e r e visible
objects on t h e screen are d i r e c t l y m a n i p u l a t e d w i t h a pointing
d e v i c e - l i k e w i t h a mouse or a light p e n - w a s f i r s t d e m o n s t r a t e d
by Ivan S u t h e r l a n d in
SketchPad,which was his
1963 MIT PhD thesis.
SketchPad s u p p o r t e d t h e
m a n i p u l a t i o n of objects
using a light pen, including
g r a b b i n g objects, m o v i n g
t h e m , changing size, and
using c o n s t r a i n t s . The
s y s t e m was built at
Lincoln Labs w i t h s u p p o r t
f r o m the Air Force and
NSF.
The first pen-based input
device, the RAND tablet,
was f u n d e d by ARPA.
Later, A m i t Teitelman, in
1964, developed t h e first
trainable g e s t u r e
recogniser. A v e r y early
d e m o n s t r a t i o n of g e s t u r e

The QWERTY
129 years

keyboard

layout

is

old
1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate (C
r e c o g n i t i o n was T o m Ellis' GRAIL system on t h e RAND tablet.
2 2 3 .

(Jn

The first 3-D s y s t e m was p r o b a b l y T i m o t h y J o h n s o n ' s 3-D CAD

. g

system, in 1963.

2 2 2 .

221.

3
TS

The 'Lincoln Wand' by L a r r y Roberts was an ultrasonic 3D

location sensing system, developed at Lincoln Labs in 1966. An
early use was f o r m o l e c u l a r modelling.
David Canfield S m i t h coined t h e t e r m ' i c o n ' i n his 1975 S t a n f o r d

PhD thesis on Pygmalion, f u n d e d by ARPA and NIMH. S m i t h later

popularised icons, as one of t h e chief designers of t h e Xerox

Star.

5
01

o
<D

[ D I G I T

97D

220. T i t a n i u m is t h e name of a popular laptop c o m p u t e r f r o m

Apple.

It's called so because it's encased in t i t a n i u m .

219.

218.
217.

216.
215.
10
3

<v

VI

214.

In graphic design, t o ' f e a t h e r ' is to s o f t e n an edge of an

image by m a k i n g t h e edge gradually fade o u t until it becomes
transparent.
To 'quiesce' is t o put a c o m p u t e r , a p r o g r a m , a t h r e a d , or
s o m e o t h e r c o m p u t e r r e s o u r c e i n t o a t e m p o r a r i l y i n a c t i v e or
inhibited state.
OXGA ( Q u a n t u m Extended Graphics A r r a y ) is a display specificat i o n capable of s u p p o r i n g a r e s o l u t i o n of 2 0 4 8 x 1536.
The 'Quiet zone' is t h e blank m a r g i n on e i t h e r side of a bar code
t h a t is used t o tell t h e barcode reader w h e r e a barcode's symbology starts and stops.
' P r o j e c t B a n j a r a ' was t h e c o d e n a m e g i v e n by
t o its d e v e l o p m e n t of J U M P (Java User M i g r a t i o n
Path). The project was e x e c u t e d at Hyderabad.

Microsoft

The first Indian s o f t w a r e e n t e r p r i s e to c r e a t e a video t h a t went

on t o win a G r a m m y was Bangalore-based 'Thinking
Pictures', f o r t h e video Deep Forest.
1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

213.

Mobile service p r o v i d e r Orange

had bought Ananova, t h e virtual
newscaster, f o r 9 5 million
pounds, f r o m Digital A n i m a
tions Group based in Bellshill
near Glasgow.

212.

i/i
o

'Nerd' was coined in 1950

by Dr Seuss in the book 'If
I Ran the Zoo'. 'Worm'
was coined by writer John
Brunner in 1975 for selfreplicating malicious
programs.

211.

PERL, the p r o g r a m m i n g
language, was c r e a t e d by L a r r y
Wall w i t h t h e i n t e n t i o n of
re-humanising c o m p u t i n g technology.

210.

It was once f e a r e d t h a t on September 9 , 1 9 9 9 , c o m p u t e r s would

shut down because p r o g r a m m e r s o f t e n use a series of nines as a
code t o shut d o w n systems.

2 0 9 .

In t h e IT world, a 'PnP r e c r u i t ' means an e m p l o y e e , who, like a Plug

and Play device, can i m m e d i a t e l y be p r o d u c t i v e t o t h e c o m p a n y
because of his skills and knowledge.

2 0 8 .

Fiat claimed t h a t it had made one of the most p o w e r f u l engines, but

not for cars. They had developed t h e p r o g r a m m a b l e pacemaker
for the h u m a n heart.

2 0 7 .

A car named Fingo was in t h e

news when it w e n t a r o u n d t h e
world, because it was r e m o t e
c o n t r o l l e d and had no steering
wheel. It was d e v e l o p e d by
Fernando Lopez and Osvaldo
Malvestitti of A r g e n t i n a .

2 0 6 .

A special parallel-processing
c o m p u t e r called ' B e o w u l f was used
f o r t h e special e f f e c t s in t h e multiOscar-winning m o v i e Titanic.

2 0 5 .

D I G I T

orange
Orange

bought

95 million

Ananova

for

pounds

Despite having radios and e-mail, t h e Orissa state police force uses
7 0 0 'pigeon police' t o s h u t t l e messages b e t w e e n distant stations.

99D

01
3
m

2 0 3 . The NEC Turbografx-16, released in J a p a n in 1988 as t h e PCEngine, was t h e first s y s t e m to

have a CD player a t t a c h m e n t .
201.

2 0 0 .

199.

198.

W T .

196.

The original Apple C o m p u t e r

logo p i c t u r e d Sir Isaac Newton.
Atari's c o m p u t e r , called t h e
520ST, was d u b b e d
'Jackintosh' after Atari owner
Jack Tramiel.

202.

Apple had once planned t o

s h o r t e n t h e n a m e of t h e
Macintosh computer to
simply 'Mac', to stand for
'Mouse-Activated
Computer'.

In J u l y 1995, Bob Massey of

CompuServe, Steve Case of AOL, and Edward Bennett of Prodigy
w r o t e and signed a letter to Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, urging him
t o un-bundle t h e M i c r o s o f t N e t w o r k (MSN) f r o m Windows 95.
In 1899, V a l d e m a r Poulsen invented the f i r s t m a g n e t i c recordings, using m a g n e t i s e d steel tape as t h e r e c o r d i n g medium.
Loudspeakers were also invented t h e same year.
In 1994, the 'Annie' awards,
given each year f o r t h e best
a n i m a t e d c o m m e r c i a l s , went for
the first t i m e t o a c o m p u t e r generated animated commercial
done for Coca Cola. It f e a t u r e d
a n i m a t e d Polar Bears.
In 1977, the c r e a t o r s of t h e RSA129 e n c r y p t i o n scheme
e n c r y p t e d a message w i t h a
4 3 0 - b i t public key and o f f e r e d
$100 to anyone w h o could
d e c r y p t t h e message. The
message was d e c r y p t e d in
1994, using parallel c o m p u t i n g
resources.

V
%

:i((|P' 1
n

ik

Newton

on the

Computer

logo

was pictured

inal Apple

orig-

In 1 9 0 2 , G u g l i e l m o M a r c o n i t r a n s m i t t e d r a d i o s i g n a l s

195.

f r o m C o r n w a l l t o N e w f o u n d l a n d - t h e f i r s t r a d i o signal
across the Atlantic.

100

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate (C
194.

1 9 2 .

In the 1997 book 'TechnoStress', by Michelle Weil and

Larry Rosen, it's m e n t i o n e d
t h a t some people b e c o m e so
i m m e r s e d in t e c h n o l o g y t h a t
t h e y risk losing t h e i r o w n ident i t y , a s y n d r o m e called
'technosis'.

in
to
5T

1 9 3 .
Using v i r t u a l reality

h e a d s e t s is k n o w n t o
r e s u l t in a h e a l t h d i s o r d e r
called binocular dysphoria.

The n u m b e r one use f o r home c o m p u t e r s is w o r d processing.

Number t w o is g a m i n g .

191.

190.

189.

1 8 8 .

1 8 7 .

SWF/LFM-926 was t h e first c o m p u t e r virus t o use Macromedia's

Shockwave Flash files t o t r a n s m i t itself w h e n a v i c t i m ran t h e
Flash movie.
From t h e smallest m i c r o p r o c e s s o r t o t h e largest of m a i n f r a m e s ,
t h e average A m e r i c a n depends on m o r e t h a n 2 5 0 c o m p u t e r s per
day.
Did y o u know t h e f i r s t p r o d u c t to
have a bar code on its package
was Wrigleys c h e w i n g g u m ?
More t h a n 3 0 0 t e c h n i c a l s t a f f e r s
g a t h e r e d at M i c r o s o f t ' s head
The first product
to use a barq u a r t e r s on New Year's Eve of
code was Wrigleys chewing
gum
2 0 0 0 , expecting s o m e t h i n g t o go
w r o n g as t h e new m i l l e n n i u m dawned. N o t h i n g happened.
Puma ( P r o g r a m m a b l e Universal Machine f o r A s s e m b l y ) was
designed by Vic S c h i e n m a n in t h e 1970s, and was built by Swiss
company Staubli Unimation. It is the most c o m m o n l y used robot for
assembly lines and u n i v e r s i t y laboratories.

1 8 6 .

MetaCreations' Fractal Design Painter, a graphics s o f t w a r e , is pac

aged in a paint can!

S o u t h K o r e a ' s SK T e l e c o m o f f e r s an i n a u d i b l e r i n g t o n e
t o i t s c u s t o m e r s w h i c h , it c l a i m s , c a n r e p e l m o s g u i t o e s .

[ D I G I T

101D

to
o

'Booting' y o u r c o m p u t e r means s t a r t i n g it up, but did y o u know

t h a t t h e w o r d comes f r o m 'pulling yourself up by y o u r bootstraps'?

183.

181.
180.
1 7 9 .

178.

In 1986, Honda c o m m e n c e d
the h u m a n o i d research
p r o g r a m . It was in S e p t e m b e r
1997 t h a t a r o b o t , weighing
130 kg, was designed. It was
named ' H u m a n o i d P3'.

182.

AT&T Bell Labs was t h e first

c o m p a n y to t r a n s m i t h u m a n
voice across t h e A t l a n t i c on
2 5 t h J a n u a r y , 1915.

C o r n i n g Glass i n v e n t e d
t h e O p t i c a l F i b r e in 1 9 7 0 .
It r e v o l u t i o n i s e d t h e
communications industry,
as GE a n d A T & T began
testing the transference
of s o u n d a n d i m a g e d a t a
t h r o u g h these fibres.

Ken T h o m p s o n designed t h e 'B'

language for c o m p u t e r s t h a t were s w i t c h e d t o C in t h e early 1970s
by Dennis Ritchie.
The Biztalk Server is a Microsoft product. It unites e n t e r p r i s e
application i n t e g r a t i o n (EAI) and
business-to-business (B2B)
i n t e g r a t i o n in a single product.
Dr. Seymour Papert, in 1968, created
t h e Logo language, aimed at
teaching p r o g r a m m i n g to schoolchildren.

177.

Adobe, or A d o b e Systems Incorporated, is t h e second-largest PC

s o f t w a r e c o m p a n y in the world,
after Microsoft.

1 7 6 .

'Convergence' refers to how sharply

an individual color pixel on a monitor
appears. Each pixel is composed of

Humanoid
September

P3, designed

in

1997

t h r e e d o t s - a red, a blue, and a green one.

In 1971, t h e f i r s t s p e e c h r e c o g n i t i o n s o f t w a r e , H e a r s a y ,

175.

102

w a s d e v e l o p e d in India.

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate (C

74.
7 3 .

172.

Project Chicago was t h e code name for Windows 9 5 .

(/i
o
<0

In December 2 0 0 3 , L i t t l e GLORIAD (Global Ring N e t w o r k f o r

Advanced A p p l i c a i '
development) started operations,
consisting of a n e t w o r k e d ring w i t h connections in Chicago,
A m s t e r d a m . M o s c o w , Beijing and
Hong Kong.

Garret Gruener, c o - f o u n d e r of
AskJeeves.com, was a Democratic
candidate in t h e f a m o u s recall
election of California involving
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who
is a Republican.

171.

170.

169.

1 6 7 .

1 6 6 .

The Bell Telephone C o m p a n y set

up by Alexander Graham Bell in
1877 has m o r p h e d over t h e years
into t o d a y ' s AT&T.

Graham

Bell giving

stration

of his

demon-

invention

The ring, t h e bus and t h e star are ways in w h i c h c o m p u t e r s are

a r r a n g e d in a LAN. In a ring, for example, t h e c o m p u t e r s are
c o n n e c t e d in a ring-like fashion, with each one c o n n e c t e d t o t w o
others.
"To get a m a z o n n e d " means
t h a t one has lost a significant
p o r t i o n of one's business t o a
dotcom enterprise.

168.

In 2 0 0 3 , flash mobs, organised

over t h e 'Net, s t a r t e d in New
York and quickly f o r m e d in
cities w o r l d w i d e .

The

s y m b o l has no

particular designation,
a l t h o u g h i t is o f t e n
r e f e r r e d t o as t h e
' c o m m e r c i a l a'.

" A u d i o m i n i n g " is t h e t e r m used to refer t o e x t r a c t i n g data f r o m

audio recordings. The process uses speech recognition techniques.

A s of t h e y e a r 2 0 0 0 , 9 6 per c e n t of all e - c o m m e r c e

165.

w e b s i t e s w e r e in E n g l i s h , w h i l e half of all I n t e r n e t u s e r s
were native English speakers.

[ D I G I T

103D

164.

162.

161.
160.
159.

158.

157.

In 1994, J e f f Hawkins invented

Graffiti, t h e h a n d w r i t i n g recog
nition s y s t e m used in some
PDAs.
Leonardo Chiariglione and
o t h e r s developed t h e MP3
f o r m a t in 1988 at t h e University of Erlangen, Germany.
MP3 stands f o r 'MPEG Layer3'.

163.
Metcalfe's Law,
propounded by the
d e s i g n e r of t h e E t h e r n e t
protocol, states t h a t the
u t i l i t y of a n e t w o r k is
proportional t o t h e square
of t h e n u m b e r of u s e r s .

In CDs, bumps and flat areas on

t h e disk's s u r f a c e represent 1s and Os. The bumps and flats are
a r r a n g e d in a c o n t i n u o u s spiral track t h a t is five k i l o m e t r e s in
length.
The vi editor was the de facto Unix standard editor until about 198'
when Emacs t o o k over. The a c r o n y m stands f o r Visual Interface.
The Economist magazine r e p o r t e d t h a t Lee Stein opened the firs
t r u l y e l e c t r o n i c bank on t h e Internet in 1994 called 'First
V i r t u a l Holdings'.
Apple named t h e f i r s t
release of its Mac OS X 10.0.
The second v e r s i o n was
called J a g u a r .
A c c o r d i n g to t h e book
'The Cuckoo's Egg' by Clif
f o r d Stoll, an a c c o u n t i n g
discrepancy of 7 5 cents on
a c o m p u t e r at L a w r e n c e
Berkeley Labs, led t h e

Apple

has come

first

release

a long

way since

its

a u t h o r t o u n c o v e r a German hacker ring. This happened in t h e

late 1980s.
1 5 6 .

In 1993, a fire destroyed a Sumitomo Chemical Company plant in

Japan and memory prices skyrocketed, since the plant supplied 6 0
percent of the world's supply of Cresol, used in memory chip casings.
" T r e e w a r e " is s l a n g f o r a n y p a p e r - b a s e d m a t e r i a l .
T e c h i e s use it t o r e f e r t o d o c u m e n t a t i o n m a n u a l s .

104

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate
1 5 4 .

153.

In t h e 1980s, a stir was c r e a t e d in the Unix c o m m u n i t y when a

publicly d i s t r i b u t e d i m p l e m e n t a t i o n of Unix f o r PCs was
released. It was called Minix.
Thriller w r i t e r Robert Harris
w r o t e a semi-fictional a c c o u n t ,
in 1996, of t h e breaking of t h e
German codes at Bletchely
park, England, d u r i n g World
War II, in his book Enigma.

D)
n

o
c

152.

i/i

In 1980, there was only

one country in the world
with no telephonesBhutan.

151.

The US Congress passed laws

in 1999 t o discourage t h e p r a c t i c e - k n o w n as c y b e r s q u a t t i n g - o f
registering t r a d e m a r k d o m a i n names for t h e sole purpose of
resale and p r o f i t .

1 5 0 .

One of t h e earliest f o r m s of mechanical i n f o r m a t i o n storage was

an ancient Peruvian device consisting of a c o r d w i t h k n o t t e d
strings of various colours a t t a c h e d . The device was called t h e
Ouipu. The Chinese had a similar
device with beads, called the
abacus.

1 4 9 .

The FBI r e c r u i t e d t h r e e 14-year-old

girls in J u n e 2 0 0 3 t o t e a c h agents
how t o c o m m u n i c a t e like y o u n g girls
on the 'Net. The o p e r a t i o n aims at
t r a c k i n g d o w n paedophiles.

1 4 8 .

In 1990, f a m e d c o m p u t e r e d u c a t o r
Donald Knuth gave s o m e t h i n g
up and is now, as he asserts, 'a happy
man'. He was r e f e r r i n g t o e-mail.

147.

The first c o m p u t e r t h a t was operated

w i t h a mouse was t h e Xerox Alto.

1 4 6 .

GNU s o f t w a r e is c o p y r i g h t e d . S o f t w a r e c r e a t e d under t h e
GNU Public License is f r e e t o r e p r o d u c e but carries c e r t a i n

to reach

a million

in sales

restrictions. This concept is called ' c o p y l e f t ' .

144.
142.

141.
140.

139.

138.

The DVD of t h e movie 'Matrix'

was the f i r s t t o reach one
million in sales.
Did you know C o m p a q
C o m p u t e r was f o r m e d in 1982,
and t h e i r f i r s t p r o d u c t ,
a n n o u n c e d in N o v e m b e r 1982,
was the Compaq Portable?

Did you know that the

world's first transistor is
located at Murray Hill,
New Jersey?

Did you know t h a t Bill Gates and Paul Allen s t a r t e d a c o m p a n y

called Traf-O-Data t o m o n i t o r t r a f f i c f l o w ?
HP's first p r o d u c t to hit
the market
2 0 0 A - a resistance capacity audio
oscillator, w h i c h was used to test
sound e q u i p m e n t .
The first ' t e c h n o l o q y ' c o r p o r a t i o n
t o m o v e into California's Silicon
Valley was Hewlett-Packard, in
1938.
The first web browser w r i t t e n in
Java was by J a m e s Gosling. Initially
called 'WebRunner', it was later
......
r e n a m e d

137.

143.

H o t J a v a

T counter paedophiles, the

FBI recruited

'

this year to teach officers to

behave like girls on the Net

teenage

girls

The servers are in Denmark. The

s o f t w a r e is f r o m Estonia. The domain is registered in Australia, and
the c o r p o r a t i o n is on a South Pacific island. That's K a z a a - t h e
world's f a v o u r i t e P2P s o f t w a r e .

1 3 6 .

'Stewardesses' is the longest w o r d you can t y p e w i t h y o u r left hand

using t h e usual t w o - h a n d e d t y p i n g m e t h o d .

1 3 5 .

American cartoon artist Paul Kinsella has set up a Web site called
'Afterlife telegrams', where the living can send telegrams to the dead.

I Did you know that the first glossary of computer

I technology came out in 1954? it was edited by Rear
I Admiral Grace Hopper of the US Navy.

106

Seagate
133.

132.

131.

129.

128.
127.

126.
125,
124.

Messages were left by 5.8 lakh people on t h e official Web site of

t h e British m o n a r c h y in S e p t e m b e r 1997, f o l l o w i n g t h e death of
Princess Diana.

An average of 4 0 million H o t m a i l e-mails are sent

each day,
and MSN has e s t i m a t e d tthhaatt t h e i r service saves 5 0 0 t r e e s - a b o u t
7 2 , 7 2 0 Kg of paper per day.

The lobby of Cyrix Corporation's c o r p o r a t e h e a d q u a r t e r s

has a m a u s o l e u m w i t h t h e
inscription " I n t e l Inside."

130.
Scott McNealy of Sun
Microsystems has a dog
called Network.

Toonz A n i m a t i o n India, an
a n i m a t i o n c o m p a n y based in
T h i r u v a n a n t h a p u r a m , p r o d u c e d the film Stone Crusher, free of
charge, for UNICEF.
The Apple ' T h i n k D i f f e r e n t ' c a m p a i g n used M a h a t m a Gandhi's
philosophy in one of its ads.
Before c o - f o u n d i n g Apple, Steve J o b s w o r k e d f o r Atari, t h e
c o m p u t e r and video g a m e maker.
Sending e-mails w i t h CCs m a r k e d
t o f a m o u s personalities are called
mail droppings in t h e IT world.
'Bloatware' is s o f t w a r e t h a t ' s t o o
large for its utility.
Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee was t h e f i r s t subscriber t o
India's first p r i v a t e I n t e r n e t Service
Provider, S a t y a m Infoway.

Vajpayee
Infoway's

was
first

Satyam
subscriber

123.

In c o m p u t e r slang, an o r d i n a r y , postal mail is called snail mail.

122.

HP came up w i t h an a l t e r a t i v e t o Java, called Chai, in 2001.

121.

Did you know that Seagate was the first company to

manufacture hard disks for microcomputers?

107O

|j|

120,
119.

In t e c h parlance, 'chip j e w e l l e r y ' is an o u t d a t e d c o m p u t e r .

Windows 1.0 was released in 1985. Bill Gates and Apple CEO J o h n
Sculley signed c o n f i d e n t i a l
a g r e e m e n t s t h a t allowed
Microsoft t o use e l e m e n t s
of the Apple GUI in its soft
Steve Wozniak, co-founder
ware.

of Apple, worked for

Hewlett-Packard as a
summer trainee.

117.

Infosys was t h e f i r s t Indian

c o m p a n y t o release its
annual r e p o r t in CD-ROM
format.

116.

The T u r i n g A w a r d , given by t h e Association f o r C o m p u t i n g

Machinery, based in New York, is a w a r d e d t o people w h o have
made significant c o n t r i b u t i o n s of a technical n a t u r e t o
t h e c o m p u t i n g c o m m u n i t y . It is r e f e r r e d t o as 'the Nobel Prize of
c o m p u t i n g ' , and is named after Alan Turing, t h e well-known
British m a t h e m a t i c i a n and c o m p u t e r scientist.

115.

A 'Turing m a c h i n e '
defines our n o t i o n
t o d a y of w h a t a
c o m p u t e r is. It consists
of a tape head, a tape
w i t h 1s and Os on it
which can scroll in
either d i r e c t i o n , and
something to interpret
what t h e sequence of
1s and Os mean.

A demonstration

of the Univac

in

action

114.

Fly-by-wire is a t e c h n o l o g y where a c o m p u t e r c o n t r o l s the flight

of an a i r c r a f t and w h e r e the pilot's responses are relayed t o a
c o m p u t e r , which t h e n gives t h e a p p r o p r i a t e response t o t h e
a i r c r a f t ' s h y d r a u y l i c systems.

113.

The first f l y - b y - w i r e test flight was held in 1972 on a NASA F-8

test plane. The first passenger a i r c r a f t t o get f l y - b y - w i r e tech-

112.

Hewlett Packard started at a garage in Palo Alto in

1939.

Seagate
nology was t h e Airbus A 3 2 0 ,
launched in 1988.
110.

i/>
o
2L

In 2 0 0 3 , software
The origin of t h e t e r m 'taped
companies
lost $5.5
o u t ' comes f r o m t h e process
billion
due
to
piracy in
of creat ing an optical mask for
Asia.
a s e m i c o n d u c t o r device. It was
done by laying out p i e c e s ' o f '
tape r e p r e s e n t i n g t h e various parts of t h e chip on large tables.

57

3
o
c
tfl

1 0 9 .

In 1952, a c o m p l a i n t was filed against IBM, alleging monopolistic

practices in its c o m p u t e r business, in v i o l a t i o n of t h e Sherman
Act.

1 0 8 .

BASIC, t h e name of t h e popular beginners' p r o g r a m m i n g

language, is an a c r o n y m for Beginners' A l l - p u r p o s e Symbolic
Instruction Code.

107.

V i e t n a m War p r o t e s t e r s a t t a c k e d u n i v e r s i t y c o m p u t e r centres in
1970. At t h e U n i v e r s i t y of Wisconsin, t h e toll was one h u m a n and
f o u r machines.

1 0 6 .

On election night, N o v e m b e r 4,
1952, CBS News b o r r o w e d a
UNIVAC t o make a scientific
prediction of t h e o u t c o m e of t h e
race for t h e presidency between
Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai
Stevenson.

1 0 5 .

The US Navy spent

$ 3 7 5 , 0 0 0 on an ' a e r o d y n a m i c
analysis of t h e self-suspended
flare'. The research proved
t h a t the frisbee was not feasible
as m i l i t a r y h a r d w a r e .

1 0 4 .

nally called

OS/2

magazine

Google recently added linear local search capabilities to its

existing services.

Macquariums are aquariums made from old

Macintosh computers.

J
109O

102.

100.

9 9 .

Content P r o t e c t i o n f o r
Removable Media (CPRM) is a
hardware-based t e c h n o l o g y
designed t o e n f o r c e copy
p r o t e c t i o n restrictions.
The publication 'Windows
Magazine', on since February
1992, was launched in
1990 under t h e name 'OS/2
Magazine'.

There are more than 2 0 0

satellites orbitinq earth
just for private communications services-including
the pager, telephone, and
Internet services.

The f i r s t Comdex was held in 1979 w i t h 150 companies and 4 , 0 0 0

visitors.
In Silicon Valley slang, ' m e a t l o a f ' means unsolicited personal mass
mailings.
The Sony VAIO, a cool
and a f f o r d a b l e line of
c o n s u m e r PCs and
laptops, is a popular
brand. 'VAIO' stands for
'Video A u d i o I n t e g r a t e d
Operation'.
"10.22.38" was t h e f i r s t
ever Xerox taken, on
October 2 2 , 1 9 3 8 , at a
place called Astoria,
by Xerox Machine
f o u n d e r Chester
Carlson.

95.

9 4 .

HDTV made its debut

a long time

but still hasn't

to the

gotten

ago,

masses

Dropping a c o m p u t e r one f o o t o n t o a flat surface was an Appleendorsed p r o c e d u r e for t h e Apple III t o ensure t h a t t h e
machine's i n t e g r a t e d circuits were securely in t h e i r sockets.
By t h e early 1980s, MS Word had became t h e most popular w o r d
processing p r o g r a m .
Half a b y t e is c a l l e d a nibble.

110

1001

TECHFACTS

Seagate

92.
91.

90.

2001 was t h e serial n u m b e r of t h e f i r s t Apple t h a t rolled out of

u>
o
2.
5T
3
<D
O
c

t h e assembly line.
Taxes made headlines in 2 0 0 3 ,
as US I n t e r n e t retailers
collected taxes on all
purchases. Some US states
taxed I n t e r n e t b a n d w i d t h and
t h e EU r e q u i r e d all I n t e r n e t
companies t o collect Value
Added T a x ( V A T ) o n
digital d o w n l o a d s .

8 4 0

IA

W h e n t h e O r i g i n a l Mac
was introduced, priced at
$ 6 6 6 , many Christians
were against it because
6 6 6 is ' S a t a n ' s n u m b e r ' .

A NUKE InterNETWORK poll in

2001 f o u n d t h a t 5 2 per cent of
Internet users had cut back on w a t c h i n g TV in o r d e r to spend
m o r e t i m e online; 12 per cent had cut back on seeing t h e i r
friends.

89.

88.

87.

86.

In 1989, HDTV made its debut in Japan.

Air c o n d i t i o n i n g was invented
by Willis Carrier t o help a
Brooklyn, New York, p r i n t e r t o
get decent c o l o u r d u r i n g hot,
humid w e a t h e r . Air c o n d i t i o n ing wasn't used f o r cooling
people until 1924 w h e n it made
its debut at t h e J L Hudson
D e p a r t m e n t S t o r e in Detroit,
Michigan.
The w o r d r o b o t comes f r o m t h e

1
One of the first

Apple

Macs

Czech w o r d ' r o b o t a ' meaning

' d r u d g e r y ' , ' s e r v i t u d e ' , or ' f o r c e d labour'. The w o r d came into
English in t h e early 1920s f r o m a play, R.U.R (Rossum's Universal
Robots), by Karel Capek. Capek's b r o t h e r suggested t h e word.
1975 saw t h e e m e r g e n c e of t h e first w o r d processing
s o f t w a r e , t h e Electric Pencil. WordStar was released in 1978.
The t e c h n o l o g y c o n t a i n e d in a s i n g l e G a m e B o y u n i t in
2 0 0 0 e x c e e d s all t h e c o m p u t i n g p o w e r t h a t w a s used t o
p u t t h e f i r s t m a n on t h e Moon in 1 9 6 9 .

D I G I T

84.

8 2 .

81.

80.
79.

78.

77.

The r e c o r d i n g i n d u s t r y lost
m o n e y as a result of t h e
'Napster Revolution', but some
people did make m o n e y off it:
f r o m 1999 t o 2001, sales of CD
b u r n e r s and blank CDs
skyrocketed.
1975 saw t h e e m e r gence of
t h e f i r s t w o r d processing soft
ware, the Electric Pencil.
WordStar was released in 1978.

It was only on the 3rd of

July, 1978, that the New
York Times began using
computerised word
processing.

SGI machines, hailed as high p e r f o r m a n c e graphics w o r k s t a t i o n s ,

use a c u s t o m developed UNIX-like OS, IRIX, and used to use CPUs
f r o m a c o m p a n y called MIPS.
In 1990, M i c r o s o f t shipped Windows 3.0 o n May 22. Compatible
w i t h all DOS p r o g r a m s , it was t h e f i r s t successful version of
Windows t h a t finally o f f e r e d satisfactory p e r f o r m a n c e to PC users.
DEC ( m e r g e d w i t h Compaq, which
has since m e r g e d w i t h HP) used t o
assemble Apple Macs in India.
IBM developed an early m e m o r y
t e c h n o l o g y k n o w n as Bubble
M e m o r y ; as a part of a deal w i t h
Intel t o m a n u f a c t u r e and use the
8 0 8 6 processors in t h e i r Display
Write Intelligent T y p e w r i t e r , IBM
exchanged t h e IPR f o r Bubble
M e m o r y w i t h Intel.
Alan

turing

Steve J o b s and Steve Wozniak

f o u n d e d Apple C o m p u t e r in 1976. M i c r o s o f t was l a t e r o f f i c i a l l y
f o u n d e d in 1977.
Apple's MacOS X utilises elements f r o m BSD Unix, OpenStep, and
MacOS9. The Unix base of OS X is Darwin, w h i c h is open source.

In the late 8 0 s and early 90s, the Union Budget was

made on Apple computers gifted to the Finance
Ministry.

112

1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate (C

74.

72.

An i n t e r e s t i n g historical
aspect of t h e classic Mac OS
was a relatively u n k n o w n
One of India's first parallel
secret p r o t o t y p e Apple s t a r t e d
processing computers, an
work on in 1992, code-named
Project Star Trek. The goal of
early PARAM, used
this project was t o c r e a t e a
Transputer CPUs from a
version of Mac OS t h a t w o u l d
British company called
run on I n t e l - c o m p a t i b l e x 8 6
INMOS.
PCs. It was s h o r t lived, being
cancelled only one year later
in 1993, due t o political infighting, w i t h t h e goal not having been
met. A l t h o u g h a direct port was never released, it did eventually
become possible t o r u n t h e classic Mac OS on x 8 6 PCs by using
t h i r d - p a r t y M a c i n t o s h e m u l a t o r s , such as vMac and Basilisk II.
The S t r o n g A R M m i c r o p r o c e s s o r is a f a s t e r v e r s i o n of t h e
Advanced RISC Machines ARM design. It was c r e a t e d by Digital
Equipment C o r p o r a t i o n , but later sold t o Intel, w h o continues t o
produce it t o d a y as t h e XScale.
The Turing Test d e t e r m i n e s
w h e t h e r Al has been reached.
The setup is of a c o m p u t e r in
one room, a h u m a n in t h e other,
and an i n t e r r o g a t o r in t h e t h i r d .
The Loebner
Award, for a machiIf t h e i n t e r r o g a t o r c a n n o t make
ne passing
the Turing
Test
out the h u m a n f r o m t h e
c o m p u t e r , t h e l a t t e r is declared intelligent.

70.
69.

68.

The Loebner A w a r d is a prize consisting of a solid 2 4 - k a r a t gold

medal t o one w h o makes a machine pass t h e T u r i n g Test.
Intel produced t h e i 8 6 0 , a RISC microprocessor, which was released
in 1989. The processor f o u n d limited m a r k e t s in w o r k s t a t i o n s as a
graphics a c c e l e r a t o r .
Magnetic t a p e was f i r s t used t o r e c o r d data in 1951. The r e c o r d i n g
m e d i u m was a t h i n band of solid steel.

67.
[ D I G I T

Did you know Apple and Sun came very close to a

merger in 1996?

113D

<D

o
c

i/>

66.
i v iMILI urneiei :> IUMLJ, aciudiiy
has six s t r u m m a b l e strings.

64.

Q u a n t u m c r y p t o g r a p h y is the
u l t i m a t e f o r m of c r y p t o g r a p h y .
The chances of an eavesdrop
per being u n d e t e c t e d are one in
trillions or quadrillions, which
means for all practical purposes
in t h e universe, nil.

Xerox was the first

company to develop
technology to protect
digital intellectual
property rights.

6 3 .

Under Hong Kong laws, t h e t e r m " c o m p u t e r " is defined as " a n y

device f o r s t o r i n g , processing or r e t r i e v i n g i n f o r m a t i o n " .
A c c o r d i n g t o this definition, a slide rule and a pocket calculator are
computers.

6 2 .

On 3 0 t h April 2 0 0 4 , Peter Burke and his t e a m at t h e University of

California at Irvine built a high-speed, c a r b o n n a n o t u b e t r a n s i s t o r .
This is t h e latest in a string of devices t h a t can be made w i t h
nanotubes, and a c c o r d i n g to t h e researchers, is t h e next step
t o w a r d s replacing silicon in a v a r i e t y of e l e c t r o n i c applications.

61.

Apple was t h e first mass-market c o m p u t e r m a n u f a c t u r e r to eschew

t h e floppy a l t o g e t h e r , w i t h t h e release of t h e iMac in 1998. The first
iMac had no f l o p p y disk drive.

60.

OI14

How t h e 5.25 inch floppy is t h a t

large is i n t e r e s t i n g . In 1976, J i m
Adkisson, was a p p r o a c h e d by
An Wang of Wang Laboratories,
The 'nanoguitar'-a
guitar on the
w h o felt t h a t t h e 8 " f o r m a t of
nanoscaie
with actual
strings
t h e t i m e was t o o large f o r t h e
desktop w o r d processing machines he was developing at t h e time.
A f t e r m e e t i n g in a bar in Boston, Adkisson asked Wang what size
he t h o u g h t t h e disks should be, and Wang p o i n t e d t o a napkin and
said " a b o u t t h a t size". Adkisson t o o k t h e napkin back to California,
f o u n d it t o be 5.25 inches wide, and developed a new drive of this
size s t o r i n g 110 KB.

Seagate (wLi
5 8 .

Apple selected t h e Sony 3 1/2" f o r m a t for t h e i r Macintosh c o m p u t - 3

ers, t h e r e b y f o r c i n g t h e 3 1/2" t o become t h e s t a n d a r d f o r m a t f o r $
floppy drives in t h e US.
5:
Q)

5 7 .

A c c o r d i n g t o an IDSA estimate, w o r l d w i d e piracy cost t h e US enter

t a i n m e n t s o f t w a r e i n d u s t r y $3.2 billion in 1998.

5 6 .

P r o g r a m m i n g languages are c o m m o n l y divided i n t o f o u r

g r o u p s - i m p e r a t i v e , declarative, logical, and o b j e c t - o r i e n t e d .
Respective examples are C,
Lisp, Prolog, and J a v a .

5 5 .

128-bit SSL e n c r y p t i o n is so
s t r o n g t h a t it w o u l d t a k e
much, m u c h longer t h a n t h e
age of t h e universe t o crack a
message e n c r y p t e d using it.
Even 2 0 years f r o m now, if
c o m p u t e r s are a million times
faster, it w o u l d still t a k e
longer t h a n t h e age of
t h e universe t o crack it.

5 4 .

53.
52.

51.

5 0 .

D I G I T

2002:1

billion

PCs sold so far

An expert s y s t e m is a c o m p u t e r s y s t e m t h a t answers questions

t h a t would t a k e a h u m a n e x p e r t t o be a n s w e r e d p r o p e r l y . They are
used, for example, in medical diagnosis. Mycin, one of t h e oldest
expert systems, is m o r e a c c u r a t e t h a n a h u m a n d o c t o r at answering questions a b o u t diagnosis.
In 2 0 0 2 , t h e one billion m a r k for n u m b e r of PCs sold was reached.
The 2 billion mark, it is e s t i m a t e d , will be r e a c h e d in 2 0 0 8 .
The field of A r t i f i c i a l Life aims at c r e a t i n g complex, life-like
behaviours in c o m p u t e r p r o g r a m s . A r t i f i c i a l Life can evolve, and
produce results, or behaviours, not e n v i s i o n e d by t h e
p r o g r a m m e r s , or, beyond what the p r o g r a m m e r s defined in t h e
first place.
Xerox and TDA research are w o r k i n g on p r o j e c t s t h a t could ulti
m a t e l y lead t o t h e r e p l a c e m e n t of silicon in chips by plastic
polymers. One p o l y m e r , Pedot, shows special promise.
The Cyc p r o j e c t , p i o n e e r e d by Doug L e n a t , aims at c r e a t i n g a
database of c o m m o n - s e n s e , which all c o m p u t e r s can use so t h a t
t h e y b e c o m e " a u t o m a t i c a l l y " m o r e intelligent.

115D

00

49.

47.
46.
45.

A c c o r d i n g t o a N o v e m b e r 2 0 0 3 e s t i m a t e , Google receives a 2 0 0
million hits a day.
There are a p p r o x i m a t e l y 2 5 million .com d o m a i n names registered
worldwide.
Urban India stands at position 11 in t h e w o r l d in t e r m s of I n t e r n e t
p e n e t r a t i o n , w i t h a rate of 19%.
It was in 1972 t h a t Ray Tomlinson developed t h e first n e t w o r k e d based e-mail p r o g r a m . He i n t r o d u c e d t h e '<E>' sign in addresses.
ICO was t h e first instant messaging p r o g r a m , and t h a t ' s notable
because it's still running, a l t h o u g h it's been b o u g h t by AOL.

4 4 .

The JPEG s u b - c o m m i t t e e was set up by t h e ISO in t h e late 1980s

t o r e c o m m e n d a file f o r m a t for t h e s t o r a g e of high quality still
images. The c o m m i t t e e delivered, instead, an image c o m p r e s s i o n
standard. JPEG stands f o r J o i n t P h o t o g r a p h i c Experts Group.

4 3 .

Claude Shannon is arguably t h e f a t h e r

of I n f o r m a t i o n Technology. In 1948, he
published " A M a t h e m a t i c a l T h e o r y of
C o m m u n i c a t i o n " in t h e Bell System
Technical J o u r n a l . This paper f o u n d e d
t h e subject of i n f o r m a t i o n t h e o r y .

4 2 .

The f i r s t high-level p r o g r a m m i n g
language was Fortran. It was developed
in 1956 by an IBM t e a m headed by J o h n
Backus. F o r t r a n became c o m m e r c i a l l y
available in 1957.

Claude

Shannon

The f i r s t o b j e c t - o r i e n t e d language was Simula, a l t h o u g h it was not

c o m p l e t e l y o b j e c t - o r i e n t e d . It was d e v e l o p e d by Kristen Nygaard
and Ole-Johan Dahl in t h e mid 1960s.

40.
(/)
3
O
<u
c

I<0 3 9 .
"53

u
</)

116

ELIZA was t h e first well-known example of a " t a l k i n g " Al p r o g r a m .

It m i m i c k e d a psychiatrist talking to one of her patients, and was
reasonably realistic f o r t h e t i m e .
The t e r m ' b a n d w i d t h ' is c o m m o n l y used t o refer t o how fast data
can t r a v e l over a connection. Actually, b a n d w i d t h refers t o t h e
range of f r e q u e n c i e s t h a t t h e data is t r a n s m i t t e d over.
1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate r e
3 8 .

T h r e e MIT s c i e n t i s t s , Ronald Rivest, A d i S h a m i r , and L e o n a r d

A d l e m a n i n v e n t e d t h e RSA cipher in 1978. The RSA public-key
e n c r y p t i o n a l g o r i t h m remains t h e most widely-used e n c r y p t i o n
s t a n d a r d by secure Web sites etc.

3 7 .

DVD-18 is a s t a n d a r d t h a t increased DVD capacities t o 17 GB. The

s t a n d a r d provides f o r 2 layers of data on e i t h e r side of t h e disk,
t h a t is, dual-sided dual-layered. The f i r s t c o m m e r c i a l DVD-18 title,
The Stand, was released in October 1999.
A m o n g Unix users, a bang is an e x c l a m a t i o n point.

3 5 .

Nieman-Marcus o f f e r e d a
Honeywell H316 c o m p u t e r in
1969 f o r $10,600. That was t h e
first t i m e a h o m e c o m p u t e r was
o f f e r e d f o r sale by mail o r d e r .

3 4 .

In 1995, Iomega Corp. went

f r o m $3.5 a share t o $ 4 8 . 6 3 ,
Rivest, Shamir and Adleman,
the
f o r a gain of 1396%. This made
men behind RSA
encryption
it t h e c o m p a n y t o have t h e
greatest p e r c e n t a g e gain of all NASDAQ h i g h - t e c h stocks ever.

3 3 .

The n e t w o r k 'ping' p r o g r a m get its name f r o m t h e sound of a

sonar. The c r e a t o r , Mike Muuss, says he n a m e d it a f t e r t h e sound
t h a t a sonar makes, inspired by the principle of echo-location.

3 2 .

Bridgeville in N o r t h e r n California, t h e f i r s t t o w n t o be a u c t i o n e d
on eBay, was p u r c h a s e d recently f o r $ 7 0 0 , 0 0 0 , by a S o u t h e r n Cali
f o r n i a financial adviser.
The t e r m 'silver bullet', which applies t o any new t e c h n o l o g y or
practice t h a t will easily cure a major prevailing problem, originates
f r o m t h e m y t h t h a t only a silver bullet could kill a w e r e w o l f .
'.

2 9 .

C r y p t o g r a p h y , t h e study of ways t o c o n v e r t i n f o r m a t i o n f r o m its

normal, c o m p r e h e n s i b l e f o r m into an o b s c u r e d and unreadable
guise, o r i g i n a t e s f r o m t h e f r o m Greek w o r d s ' k r y p t o s ' ( " h i d d e n " )
and 'graphein', ( " t o w r i t e " ) .
The technique of compressing text or images into microdots to
prevent their viewing by unintended recipients was invented by the
Germans during World War II. It was later used by several countries to
pass messages through insecure channels.

H Q D

117

2 8 .

Smart cards, t i n y secure c o m p u t - ers f o r c a r r y i n g out c r y p t o

graphic o p e r a t i o n s e m b e d d e d w i t h i n a credit card-sized or smaller
cards were i n v e n t e d and p a t e n t e d in France by Roland Moreno in
t h e 1970s.

2 7 .

The IKONOS satellite, used for c o m m e r c i a l satellite p h o t o g r a p h y ,

can c a p t u r e satellite images u p t o a r e s o l u t i o n of 1m. The Quick
bird satellite can go upto a reso
lution of 0 . 7 m - w h i c h means cars
esfRSH
can be i d e n t i f i e d using photos
A
^TTW"""III 1
B
K 2 2 Z X Z 2 H
f r o m these satellites!

2 6 .

George Philbrick was a pioneer

in analogue c o m p u t i n g . During
t h e 9 3 0 s , he developed the
o p e r a t i o n a l amplifier, which was
key t o t h e d e v e l o p m e n t of
analogue c o m p u t e r s .

24.

MttJA

* VA EST,AMOS
Smart

cards

and used in

2 5 .

cassor--

were

first

patented

France

The Last Starfighter, released in 1984

and directed by Nick Castle, was the first movie to do all special effects
(except makeup) on a computer. All shots of spaceships and space were
generated on a Cray computer. All of the special effects shots took just
eight hours to generate.
Some regard Alan T u r i n g as t h e f a t h e r of Al, some say it is J o h n
McCarthy. M c C a r t h y also invented t h e LISP language. Alan Turing
is well-known f o r cracking German codes d u r i n g WWII, and some
say it's due t o him t h a t we Indians speak English now instead of
German.

2 3 .

LISP is a p r o g r a m m i n g language w r i t t e n in LISP itself. When y o u

define f u n c t i o n s in LISP, t h e e n t i r e language gets modified.

2 2 .

Under Hong Kong laws, the term "computer" is defined as "any device
for storing, processing or retrieving information". According to this
definition, a slide rule and a pocket calculator are computers.

21.
o

<u

a>
u
V)
1 2 0 .

118

In t h e Deep Web, t h e part of t h e Web not c u r r e n t l y catalogued by

search engines, public i n f o r m a t i o n is 5 0 0 t i m e s larger t h a n on the
WWW. The Deep Web contains 7 , 5 0 0 t e r a b y t e s , c o m p a r e d t o 19
t e r a b y t e s o n t h e surface Web. It contains nearly 5 5 0 billion indi
vidual d o c u m e n t s c o m p a r e d t o t h e 1 billion of t h e surface Web.
Many researchers and surfers consider t h a t t h e first search engine
1 0 0 1

T E C H F A C T S

Seagate (C
was Archie, c r e a t e d in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a s t u d e n t at McGill
University in M o n t r e a l .

19.

PL-I is a c o m p u t e r language developed by

IBM t h a t never

3
o

<p
2j

reached wide usage. That was because it t r i e d t o be s o m e t h i n g

of e v e r y t h i n g , s o m e t h i n g usable in business, m a t h e m a t i c s , and

5
other disciplines. Business users, for example, began using COBOL,
and scientific users m i g r a t e d t o Fortran.
,
,

18.

The first high-level p r o g r a m m i n g

language was F o r t r a n . It was developed
in 1956 by an IBM t e a m headed by J o h n
Backus. F o r t r a n b e c a m e c o m m e r c i a l l y
available in 1957.

17.

The first o b j e c t - o r i e n t e d language was

Simula, a l t h o u g h it was not c o m p l e t e l y
o b j e c t - o r i e n t e d . It was developed by
Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl in
the mid 1960s.

QuickTime,
the most

in 1992,
popular

was
codec

16.

The BIOS, or Basic I n p u t / O u t p u t System, will be superseded by

technologies such as Phoenix's CME (Content M a n a g e m e n t
Engine) and t h e EFI (Extensible F i r m w a r e Interface).

15.

To a u t h o r and p r o d u c e digital video t e c h n o l o g y w h e n it first

appeared on t h e scene averaged $ 2 0 , 0 0 0 . Today, a school
district can utilise digital video at a very low cost and can
produce digital video technologies for as little as $ 2 , 0 0 0 .

14.

In 1992, w o r k i n g w i t h digital video t e c h n o l o g y r e q u i r e d at least

$ 6 , 0 0 0 at s t a r t up. Today, you can increase t h e price of a G3 by
$130 for it t o have audio-visual capabilities. This is a 9 7 %
decrease in 5 years t i m e .

13.

When QuickTime was developed, it played 5 f r a m e s per second.

Today, y o u can achieve b r o a d c a s t - q u a l i t y f r a m e rate and speed
w i t h some digital video and s t r e a m i n g t e c h n o l o g i e s .

12.

It was in t h e early 1990s t h a t digital video was i n t r o d u c e d o n t o

the t e c h n o l o g y f r o n t , with no compression.

11.

In 1992, QuickTime 1.0 a r r i v e d on t h e scene as t h e p r i m a r y

codec p r o g r a m . Only a f e w m o n t h s a f t e r QuickTime's release,
Video for Windows was released as an AVI f o r m a t .

[ D I G I T

119D

10.
9.

8.
7.
6.

5.
4.
3.
2.
1.

120

MPEG1/Motion JPEG arrived on the scene as the latest codecs in 1995.

1 , 5 2 5 , 0 0 0 , 0 0 0 , or 152 crore, miles of t e l e p h o n e wire is s t r u n g
across t h e U.S.
The f i r s t device w i t h an in-build h a r d drive f o r image r e c o r d i n g
was t h e Kodak DCS 2 0 0 , in 1992.
In 1994, t h e Apple Quick Take 100 was t h e first mass-market
colour digital camera. It had a 6 4 0 x 4 8 0 pixel CCD. Up to eight
6 4 0 x 4 8 0 r e s o l u t i o n images could be s t o r e d in internal m e m o r y
It had a fixed-focus 5 0 m m lens, and an in-built flash.
The RDC-1 was t h e first digital c a m e r a t o o f f e r b o t h still and
m o v i n g image and sound r e c o r d i n g / r e p r o d u c t i o n . Its r e c o r d i n g
capacity on a 2 4 M B PC card was 2 4 6 still pictures in s t a n d a r d
mode, or 4 9 2 in e c o n o m y mode, or f o u r video scenes of five
seconds each w i t h sound. This was in 1995.
The f i r s t mass usage of ' s m a r t cards' was p a y m e n t in French
payphones, beginning in 1983. They w e r e called 'Telecartes'.
In 1952, Alick Glennie, w h o w r o t e t h e f i r s t c o m p u t e r compiler,
d e f e a t e d British m a t h e m a t i c i a n Alan Turing's chess p r o g r a m ,
T u r b o C h a m p . He was t h e first person t o beat a c o m p u t e r
p r o g r a m at chess.
In 1957, Nobel laureate Herbert Simon said t h a t w i t h i n 10 years, a
digital c o m p u t e r would be t h e w o r l d ' s chess c h a m p i o n .
A r t i f i c i a l Intelligence was listed by Wired Magazine in 2 0 0 3 as
one of t e n 'ideas t h a t failed'.
It is said t h a t in t h e late 1800s, t h e US p a t e n t o f f i c e said t h a t it
m i g h t as well close, because e v e r y t h i n g t h a t could be invented
had already been invented. This is similar t o w h a t physicist L o r d
Kelvin said in 1900: " T h e r e is n o t h i n g new t o be discovered in
physics n o w . "

g ^ M M M g i W i i S ^ ^

10 0 1

T E C H F A C T S j