Seagate

presents

TRIVIA THAT GIVES YOU THE EDGE

 Seagate
presents

TRIVIA THAT GIVES YOU THE EDGE

3 •
 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
• 4
 CONTENTS
Topic Page No.

The History of Computing 9

The Internet 19
Networking 32
Various Timelines 35
Processors and Components 42
Storage 52
Operating Systems 55
Companies and Personalities 60
Supercomputer 66
Displays 70
Imaging 72
Telephony 77
Cellphones 82
Entertainment 85
Games 91
Human Interface Devices 95
Miscellaneous Tech Facts 98

mwmtm ^
 INTRODUCTION
In 1981, in an apparent 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. 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 991.
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
It is much debated
c o m p u t e r , ' w o r k i n g at twice t h e whether any single person
speed of t h e ENIAC. can be said to have
invented the first
990. In 1969, c o m p u t e r f i r m Honey computer. Examples of
well released t h e H316 " K i t c h e n candidates are Charles
C o m p u t e r " , t h e f i r s t home Babbage and Konrad Zuse.
c o m p u t e r , priced at
$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 predic-
tion: " 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
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 o
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 .
•o
c
1*
986. 5'
9 8 5 . In 1970, Steve Wozniak played a
>o
huge prank by d i s t r i b u t i n g J i m Knopf is known as t h e •o
2 5 , 0 0 0 leaflets for a non-exis (D
' f a t h e r of shareware'. His 3
t e n t c o m p u t e r , w h i c h was later (D
f i r s t shareware p r o g r a m ™1
r e f e r r e d t o as t h e Zaltair 0)
was PC-Fiie, in 1 9 8 2 , which l/l
Hoax.
Knopf published under t h e 0
-1
9 8 4 . The ENIAC had 2 0 , 0 0 0 v a c u u m pseudonym J i m Button. <
-h
tubes and 4 0 racks of equip- 01
o
ment, 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 transistor
Electronics, and Ed Roberts
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
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.

a w n
I d
 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

975.
company to transmit human voice
In 1991, 4 5 0 complete
across the Atlantic, on January 25,
works of literature were
1915. The exercise was
published on one CD-ROM.
conducted to celebrate the open
ing of the Panama Canal to Alexa-
nder Graham Bell.

9 7 4 . 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 .

9 7 3 . 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 e-
c 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. In 1949, J Woodland and B Silver

o i n v e n t e d t h e bar code. It was
(0 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
I 968. In 1971, Intel launched the w o r l d ' s f i r s t Internet
single-chip m i c r o p r o c e s s o r , t h e Intel
(0
L- 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 .
<u
O)
CP

• 12
 Seagate

o
9 6 6 . 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 o
biggest ever solid state disk (SSD) f r o m Texas M e m o r y 3
Systems.

965. 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 "S
3
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 , m m
— — • !
t h e Electric Pencil.
' ~ 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 Chester Carlson invented the

partnership of Bill Gates and Paul photocopier machine at Xerox

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
Dan B r i c k l i n and Bob
9 5 8 . Edmund Gunter of England F r a n k s t o n in 1 9 7 9 .
invented t h e slide rule as R e t a i l i n g f o r $ 9 9 apiece,
early as 1692.
V i s i C a l c sold o v e r
7 0 0 , 0 0 0 copies.
9 5 7 . 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
 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 arch-
i 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-process-
ing 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 Thomp-
The Intel Pentium processor
son and D Ritchie, was released in
was relased in 1993
1971.

9 5 1 . 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.

950. In 1991, Linus Torvalds, t h e n a

949.
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
doing a (free) o p e r a t i n g multiprocessing.
o
(O 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 busi-

ness f r o m Novell Corporation.
(0

S 9 4 7 . In August, 1995, Microsoft Windows 9 5 was released. It sold m o r e

at
o> 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.

946. 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
• 14
 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 o

o
in December. It w o n t h e case in 3
early 2 0 0 4 .
•o
944.
THE HISTORY OF COMPUTERS AND
ARPANET, the first iO
COMMUNICATION n
'Internet', was launched in 3
fl>
9 4 4 . C o m p u t e r s w e r e sold c o m m e r - 1969. —

cially f o r t h e f i r s t t i m e in 1951. ' a;

i/i'
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 0
<
103, in 1962.
01
o
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

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 . Cray Research Incorpo-

rated 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.

937. 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

935. 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.

932.
931. Time magazine named t h e
c o m p u t e r t h e Man of t h e Year BASIC was written in
in 1983. The f i r s t cellular 1964 by Tom Kurtz and
phone n e t w o r k was launched
John Kemeny of
t h e same year in the US.
Dartmouth.

9 3 0 . The Apple Macintosh was

released in 1984, along w i t h IBM PC AT.

9 2 9 . 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. 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.

9 2 7 . 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.

926. 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
u t r a c e by w a r t i m e b o m b i n g
<0 d u r i n g WW II.

1925. K o n r a d Zuse, a c o n s t r u c t i o n
Sir Tim Berners-Lee,
of the World Wide Web
the father

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
to
L. p r o g r a m m a b l e c o m p u t e r in 1941.
01
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• 16
 Seagate

9 2 3 . 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 8

Byron, published t h e first
computer programs.
922.
921. In 1972, Bob M e t c a l f e c r e a t e d
In 1 9 6 4 , t h e A m e r i c a n
Ethernet, a t r a d e m a r k of t h e n>
Standards Association 3
Xerox C o m p a n y . ®
adopted ASCII (American
I w
920. In December, 1968, Douglas C. S t a n d a r d Code f o r —
Engelbart, of t h e S t a n f o r d Information Interchange)
r+
as a s t a n d a r d code f o r °
Research Institute,
<-I
d e m o n s t r a t e d his s y s t e m of data transfer.
I —*
keyboard, mouse and w i n d o w s !1 Oi
O
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.

919. 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.

' 18. 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.

917. In 1801, J o s e p h - M a r i e J a c q u a r d The QWERTY keyboard was

invents a machine to a u t o m a t i - actually designed with the
cally c o n t r o l t h e p a t t e r n s in intention of slowing down
fabrics using punch cards. They were typists

called J a c q u a r d Looms.

916. 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.

( 15. 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
 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 by Alain Comerauer.

9 0 8 . The C o m p u S e r v e online service

was launched in 1979. 909.
9 0 7 . S o f t w a r e A p p l i c a t i o n giants, In 1989, Microsoft's sales
Aldus and Adobe, m e r g e d in reached $1 billion, the first
1994F. year to do so.

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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1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
• 18
900. 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 !

899. 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.

898. 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.

897. 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.

896. 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.

895. 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 .

8 9 4 . 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 circum-
v 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
U n i v e r s i t y of N e v a d a ,
889. 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.

8 8 8 . 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.

8 8 7 . 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 average for internet
8 8 6 . WAIS stands f o r 'Wide Area penetration 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 .

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
885. information about which sites they visit.

1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
• 20
 Seagate

884. 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. |
c
883. On the Internet, a 'bastion host' is the only host computer t h a t 2.
a company allows to be 2
addressed directly f r o m the
public network.
882. o
3

Did you know that the

8 8 1 . 'Carnivore' is the Internet original URL of Yahoo!
surveillance system developed 3
was http://akebono. n
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 . 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.

877. Did you know that the name of the

n
famous search engine AltaVista
came into existence when some
T^ 'Jbi'ST*
one accidentally read and
suggested the w o r d 'Alto' w r i t t e n Boeing was the first arliner to
near the w o r d 'Vista' on an discover the Y2K problem.
unclean whiteboard as 'AltaVista'?

876. 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
870.
as a Y2K p r a y e r o f f e r i n g .
On an average, each
person receives 2 6 . 4 e-
8 6 9 7The m o r n i n g a f t e r Internet
mails a day.
Explorer 4 was released, certain
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 The Internet was initially
V i r t u a l Holdings, was opened by Lee called Galactic Network.

Stein in 1994.

8 6 3 . 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,

•22
 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 o

'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 Networks, launched the a
RealAudio s y s t e m on April 10,1995. 2>
ID
859. ' B r o w s e r safe colours' refer t o
t h e 216 colours t h a t are 858.
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 T h o u g h t h e W o r l d Wide
systems. 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 . The 'Dilbert Z o n e ' Web site was C E R N is m a i n l y i n v o l v e d
t h e f i r s t s y n d i c a t e d comic strip in research for particle
site available on t h e Internet. physics.
QP/"
O J D . 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. 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 was the first
852. Telnet is one of t h e oldest f o r m s of comic strip to go online.

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.

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 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.

848.
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 elec- ' C o n t e n t , c o m m e r c e and
tronic mail in 1972. He used c o m m u n i t y " are referred
t h e @ t o distinguish between
t o as ' t h e t h r e e big Cs',
t h e sender's name and n e t w o r k
the most important
name in t h e e-mail address.
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
Satyam Online
companies sold t h e i r Satyam Online was the first private ISP to
p r o d u c t s online by offer Internet connections in India
2 0 0 0 , as c o m p a r e d t o
2 4 percent in 1998.

8 4 2 . 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.

E 841.
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.
c 8 4 0 . 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
5: 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

839. 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
• 24
 Seagate

o
newspapers and Yellow Pages. o
3
3
8 3 8 . 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)
If
8 3 7 . As of now, t h e r e are over 2 6 0 million people w i t h Internet access o"
worldwide. 3
3
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 ft)

show t h a t t h e US high-tech
835.
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 Did you know that Digital
n a t i o n ' s largest i n d u s t r y . Equipment Corporation
was the first computer
8 3 4 . 1 o u t of 6 people used t h e Inter-
company to register a
net in N o r t h A m e r i c a and
domain name?
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. 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 .

831. 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; account-
ant; a c t u a r y ; bookkeeper.'

830. 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, accord-
ing t o a s t u d y sponsored by N o r t e l
Networks.

8 2 9 . 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 "A computer is a... actu-
licited e-mails e v e r y day. ary ... bookkeeper"

8 2 8 . 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.

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 822.
t h a t in 2 0 0 3 , spam actually
In 1993, there were
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
2 6 , 0 0 0 domain names in
m o r e t h a n 5 6 percent of all inte- use. In 1999, there were 5
rnet e - m a i L . i n just one year! 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.

I 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 o

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 3
workplace. |

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 per- 5-
capita use.

to
. (1. Where do most news addicts go 3
Which companies spend IV
t o on t h e Web? The t o p t h r e e e
t h e m o s t on Web a d v e r t i -
destinations are msnbc.com,
sing? Microsoft tops the
w e a t h e r . c o m and cnn.com.
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
a US navy spy plane and a TRUSTe the third.
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 s SUBHASH CHAI sum El
widely p r o m o t e d on the Net.
J i 4

8087 Ziggy, a cat, has become t h e first

r jgdSBUa M j
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.

iw
8 0 7 . 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 ' M4AM
snwasi: if O'S
Web site Cadabra (as in 'abra
Taal was the first Bollywood
cadabra') due to c o p y r i g h t flick to be promoted online.
issues. He later named it
amazon.com.

8 0 6 . China had 150 billion junk e-mails last year, m a k i n g it the

1
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 801.
u s e - s c o r e s of free 'bulletin
b o a r d services' (BBSs)
According to a study by
s p r a n g up a r o u n d the United Nielsen Media Research,
States. The first free households with Internet
public BBS was 'Cleveland access watch 13 percent
Free-Net', and t h e y shut d o w n less TV than households
On 1 st O c t o b e r 1999, because that are not online.
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 . 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.

799. 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.

798. 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
a> map and explore the 'Deep Web',
c t h e p a r t of t h e Web t h a t
t_
a>
search engines typically do not
c
crawl. As a result of this, much,
c m u c h m o r e of t h e Web will be
o Saddam: Most searched.
accessible via Yahool's search engines.
a
o
E
3
E
E
o
u

•28
 Seagate

o
9 6 . Y o u get spam because y o u r e-mail address makes its way t o o
s p a m m e r s t h r o u g h various channels. For example, if you sign up 3
3
f o r a n e w s l e t t e r , t h e site may c
sell y o u r e-mail t o a s p a m m e r . 3_
794. 0
Sites m a i n t a i n e-mail lists t h a t 01
t h e y send spam to. Prices can In 2 0 0 3 , t h e t o p 10
z
o
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 3
r+
n
P o t t e r , A m e r i c a n Idol,
3
7 9 5 . Many researchers and surfers B r i t n e y Spears, 5 0 Cent, A
consider t h a t t h e first search
E m i n e m , WWE, P a r i s
engine was Archie, created in
H i s t o n , N a s c a r and
1990 by Alan Emtage, a s t u d e n t
Christina Aguilera.
at McGill University in Montreal.

9 3 . 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.

7 9 2 . 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 Yahoo! is now ^pping the •Deep Web'.
t o load photos directly f r o m
a digital c a m e r a t o a website.

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
 790.
timeline 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
789. 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".

788. 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".

xc 784
01
•»•>
c
^
c 783. The White House launches its website, w w w . w h i t e
?o house.gov.
ID
O
C Initial commerce sites are established and mas
3
E 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
E term 'spamming'.
o
u

1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
• 30
 Seagate
h-r o
Marc Andreessen and J i m Clark i n t r o d u c e the o
Navigator browser. 3
3
c
780. CompuServe, A m e r i c a Online, and Prodigy start 3
0
p r o v i d i n g dial-up Internet access. Sun Microsys terns 01
«f
launches Java. o"
3
79. s A r o u n d 4 5 million people are using t h e Internet, w i t h 5"
r o u g h l y 3 0 million of those in t h e US and Canada, 9 million m
3
in Europe, and 6 million in Asia Pacific. m

778. 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* " 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.

776. 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
 ' i ' l w J M
771. '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 .

770. 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 client-

server 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 mot-

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

I 766. 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'.

765. 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

c 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.
o

764. 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.

7 6 3 . 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
• 32
 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
and is b e t t e r in t e r m s of 754.
s t r e n g t h and flexibility.
Most intercontinental
Internet traffic passes
59. A t y p i c a l f i b r e - o p t i c cable five-
t h o u s a n d t h s of an inch thick can
through underwater fibre-
c a r r y up t o 2.5 billion bits of optic cables. The first
data per second, or 3 2 , 0 0 0 such layout was across
s i m u l t a n e o u s t e l e p h o n e calls. the Atlantic, in 1988.

58. 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 technol-
ogy 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 token-
ring a r c h i t e c t u r e has become
an i n d u s t r y s t a n d a r d f o r LANs. The construction of a fibre-optic
cable

33 •
 755. 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.

754. Chuq v o n Rospach of Apple C o m p u t e r , circa 1983, coined t h e wor

'netiquette'.

753. 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.

752. 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 .

751. 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.

750. 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.

7 4 9 . 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 special-
i 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.

01

(0
o
'E 'Toothing' is random sending of sexually charged, flirtatious
3
E 748. messages that users of Bluetooth enabled mobile devices
E broadcast to other Bluetooth enabled devices in the area.
o
o
1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
• 3 4
 Seagate

COMPUTER VIRUS TIMELINE

7 4 7 . Theories f o r self-replicating p r o g r a m s are first

1949

developed.

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

00 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

I
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.

745. 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."

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

1986

replace the executable code in t h e boot sector of a f l o p p y disk

1
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.

743.
1987

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

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. o
a> 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 .

740. 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

I 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.

739.
1992

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

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

1990

a toolkit that turns ordinary viruses into polymorphic viruses. The

Virus Creation Laboratory (VCL) is also made available.

737. 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

1994

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.

736. Word Concept becomes one of t h e most prevalent

1995

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
735. 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.

734.
1998

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.

733. 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
1999

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.

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

2000

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 .

731. 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
2000

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
• 36
 Seagate

o
China t i g h t e n s regulations against viruses, m a n d a t i n g o
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 . 3
•o
c
729. The 'Stages' virus, disguised as a joke e-mail about the 3'
•a
stages of life, spreads across t h e Internet.

3
'Stages' is hidden in an a t t a c h m e n t w i t h a false " . t x t " m
extension, luring recipients i n t o opening it. 5"
n>
</)
Shortly a f t e r the S e p t e m b e r11thattacks, 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

U M U
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 .
o
m
720. in The Greeks use a phonetic alphabet w r i t t e n f r o m left
F-
t o right.
O
m
719. o Oldest r e c o r d of w r i t i n g in China,
o
on bones.
o
m
718. o
r^
The first encyclopedia is w r i t t e n in
w Syria.
(J
CO
717. o The very first postal service, f o r g o v e r n m e n t use, in
o China.
0*
o
m
716. vO First r e c o r d e d use of h o m i n g pigeons used to send a
N message t h e winners of t h e Olympic Games t o Athenians.
1-
o
m
715. o The Greeks start
n
in t h e very first library.
o
CD
714. o to 170 BC: Papyrus rolls and early p a r c h m e n t s made of
o 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.
in
U
713. 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.
Q
712. < The Romans establish
2
postal services.

711. n 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.

710. 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.

in
709. First w o o d e n p r i n t i n g press invented in China, which
II used symbols carved on a w o o d e n block.
0*
708. 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

r>
707. The first newspapers appear o
in Europe. 3
- - "o
cr+
J o h a n n e s Gutenberg invents a p r i n t i n g press with metal 5'
m o v a b l e t y p e . His first p r i n t e d book? The Holy Bible. "SU

705. 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
693. Thomas Edison patents t h e p h o n o g r a p h i t h a wax

1877
cylinder as recording m e d i u m .

692.
1879

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 .

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

1887

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.

689.
6881

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.

688. Guglielmo Marconi

1894

i m p r o v e s wireless t e l e g r a p h y .

687. First t e l e p h o n e a n s w e r i n g machines

1898

c o m e up.

686. First regular comic

1904

books.

685. 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

1906

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.

o
684. 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.

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
683. 5j
call made.

vO
682. 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
stations.

681. Iconoscope, the firstTV camera, is invented by Vladimir

1923

Kosma Z w o r y k i n .

680.
1925

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
• 40
 Seagate

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

<•>
o
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 3
TJ
sound and m o t i o n p i c t u r e t r a c k s upon playback. C
i+
5"
>£2
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
3
The Jazz Singer, the first successful talking m o t i o n picture. 2L
5"
(D
677. Radio p o p u l a r i t y spreads w i t h t h e Golden Age of radio. m
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.

76. a Scheduled TV broadcasts

begin.

675. 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.

D I G I T
 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 .

2 6 6 8 . Intel co-founder Gordon Moore said in 1965, "The a m o u n t of i n f o r

^u m a t i o n storable in one square inch of silicon will double e v e r y 18
w m o n t h s . " This came t o be k n o w n as Moore's Law.
e
1 6 6 7 In 1963, Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse as a pointing device
o. 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 . VisiCalc, invented in 1979, was t h e first spreadsheet p r o g r a m

UJ
available for o m p u t e r s .
u
a.

1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
• 42
 Seagate

6 6 5 . IBM was i n c o r p o r a t e d in 1911 i

664. o
under the name Computing-
<•>
Tabulating-Recording
o
Company. 1984 was the year of the
3
GUI. Apple introduced the o
6 6 3 . Intel's Flying Pentium Ads Macintosh, the first PC
and t h e 'Intel Inside' logo w e r e with a graphical user
made on an Apple Macintosh.
w
interface. o
•a
c
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 occu-
pied a full city block. This chip is more powerful than
a room-sized '40s computer
658. 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 Macin-

tosh, you would find 4 7 signatures, one for each member
of Apple's Macintosh division as of 1982.

43 •
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 . Intel c r e a t e d t h e Timna proces-
sor 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).
651.
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 key-
o 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
The comptometer, an early
p r e v e n t e d applications f r o m o v e r
calculating machine
w r i t i n g key system files.

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 .

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

642. 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
• 44
 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- &
g r a t i o n in a single p r o d u c t . o
o
3
•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 o
phone p l a t f o r m t h a t was unveiled in 2001. 3
n>

,
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
o
w o r k s t a t i o n has equivalent
c
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
J a v a at Sun
639. PROM ( P r o g r a m m a b l e Read- M i c r o s y s t e m s . He c a m e
o n l y M e m o r y ) is m e m o r y
up w i t h t h e n a m e ' J a v a '
p r o g r a m m e d at t h e t i m e of
while debating over it at a
manufacturing.
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 / n a monitor,the voltage gets boost-

g
It t o develop a cult following. ed to 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
6 5 1 .
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 ,
The CD-ROM made its
retinal, and voice scans.
debut in 1984 through the
6 3 2 . The high-speed data high combined efforts of
ways of the Internet are called Phillips and Sony.
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. 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
3 t h e 1970s. The first laptop c o m p u t e r was designed in 1979 by
CL
O William Moggridge of Grid Systems Corp. It had 3 4 0 kilobytes of
bubble m e m o r y .
c
<D
C
o
Q.
E
o
u
Uf
o
Q.
 Seagate Isrf

623. 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

•o

sedans were now running t h e Windows CE embedded o p e r a t i n g

s y s t e m . Passengers could f>
o
access and control in-car 3
navigation,telephone and 618. •a
o
3
e n t e r t a i n m e n t systems. <D
W i t h i n j u s t s i x y e a r s of 3
622. In CD-ROM drives, 1X is equal t o t h e r e l e a s e of t h e 8 0 2 8 6
150 KBps. In DVDs, 1X equals p r o c e s s o r , a w h o p p i n g 15 TJ
C
1.38 M B p s - a little over nine million 286-based
t i m e s faster t h a n CDs. personal c o m p u t e r s were
installed globally.
620. 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. 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.

615. In 1980, Microsoft i n t r o d u c e d t h e Z-

8 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.

614. 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.

613. Many medical schools in t h e US PDAs have come a long way

provide financial aid t o s t u d e n t s t o since devices like the Newton
purchase handhelds as they o f f e r

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 •
 services like patient trackers,
d r u g databases, etc. 651.
The P e n t i u m III p r o c e s s o r
612. 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
Apple's N e w t o n Message Pad. e n h a n c e d p e r f o r m a n c e of
But t h e N e w t o n was t o o big, a dvanced applications.
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 .

6 1 0 . 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.

6 0 8 . 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 . 'MIDI' stands for Musical I n s t r u m e n t A cabinet should

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

•o
r>
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 , er>
while t h e latter are pressed. 'Pressing' is a m a n u f a c t u r i n g o
o
t e c h n i q u e very d i f f e r e n t f r o m burning. 3
•o
o
I 3
6 0 3 . In 1953, Remington-Rand
developed the first high-speed
600. <D
3
p r i n t e r for use on the Univac 'Colossus' was the first
computer. •a
totally electronic c
602. The nVidia GeForce 6 8 0 0 Ultra
computing device. It used
only vacuum tubes, and
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
had no relays.
m a x i m u m number of transistors
o n a chip.

601. 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."

599. 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 •
 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. 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 .

591. 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
590. 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>
589. CO
0>
The 4 8 6 DX m i c r o p r o c e s s o r . With this, the user
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 .

a
u 588. m The Pentium processor. This processor allowed
0*
o* c o m p u t e r s t o process real-world data, such as sound,
c h a n d - w r i t t e n and p h o t o images.
a>
c
o
a. 587. The Pentium Pro processor. It was designed
E
o specifically to fuel 32-bit server and w o r k s t a t i o n
u applications. The processor e v e n t u a l l y propelled speedy
c3
c o m p u t e r - a i d e d design.
u
a.
1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
 Seagate

ii
•a
6 i
U I (J\- The P e n t i u m II Processor. This chip enabled PC users n
t o capture, edit and share digital photos via t h e I n t e r n e t .
o
o
585. The P e n t i u m II Xeon Processor. This processor 3
TJ
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 O
3
t h r i v i n g on business applications. fl>

! 4 . o>
1 0*
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.
O
TJ
C

583. 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 .

IBBwy' o 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.

581. 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. 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.
i
.; • s Intel releases t h e P e n t i u m 4 Processor Extreme Edition t h a t
• • O 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
5 H I
MB of L3 cache, and is designed for gamers and t h e like.

577. 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.

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

c Random Access M e m o r y (SRAM) chip.
0)
1 5 7 1 . Static Random Access M e m o r y (SRAM) is faster and b e t t e r t h a n
E Dynamic Random Access M e m o r y (DRAM).
o ———
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

o 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 .
+»
M

• 52 1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
 Seagate

o
5 6 8 . 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 o
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. 3
•o

5 6 7 . 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>
Magnetic Storage o
o
3
•a
o
I 3
566. On April 2 2 n d 2 0 0 4 , scientists a>
at S t a n f o r d announced t h e 565. _ _
d i s c o v e r y of t h e upper speed
Contrary to what most
limit at which data can be
people believe, a hard disk
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 head does not touch the
is achieved by c u r r e n t drives. platter surface. It floats a
few micrometres above
564. The first hard drives the platter.
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
$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. 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.

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

558. 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.

557. 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 556.
t h e disk's surface. The d a m a g e
GDDR3 is a new standard
usually cannot be repaired,
for RAM in graphics,
causing data loss and h a r d disk
damage.
aimed at increasing speed
and reducing power
5 5 5 . NRAM is a new kind of RAM 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 128-

bit, 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. 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 .

541. David Bradley w r o t e t h e code for t h e [Ctrl] + [ A l t ] + [Delete] key

sequence.

540. 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 .

539. 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.

5 3 8 . 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 . 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
CP IBM 7 0 4 .
c

5 3 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 object-
oriented language and OS.

1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
• 56
 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
3
,0
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
V)
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 <
d i f f e r e n t hardware.
3
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'.

I 525 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
o> third, f o u r t h and f i f t h editions followed.

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

01
Q. was released late 1979.
o

| 523. SCO was f o u n d e d by Doug and L a r r y Michels as a UNIX

a> 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 .
c
JH
"5 SCO delivers its f i r s t packaged UNIX system, called SCO XENIX
o
i/) System V for Intel 8 0 8 6 and 8 0 8 8 processor-based PCs.

• 58 1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
 Seagate

521. Ultrix
1984 1.0 was released. ui
o
2.
520. The GNU m a n i f e s t o is published in the March 1985 issue aT
3
1985

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
later. c
</>
.—
o
519. 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 •a
(D
-t
1987

ing in the next decade w i t h an alliance t o develop UNIX System QJ

r+
V Release 4. 5"
tO
HP-UX 2.0 was released. <1/1
1988

V)
Version 3.0 f o l l o w e d . r-f
a>
3
517. 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 i/)
1989

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.

O
516. 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.

515. | FreeBSD 1.0 was released in December.

514.
1994

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

513. 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.

m u 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.

S 503. 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
ID
l/l t h a t none of t h e building's c o m p u t e r keyboards had Ws!
0)
'E
>0 5 0 2 . 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
Q.
E days at M i c r o s o f t . Steve Ballmer, a college buddy w h o later
o became t h e c o m p a n y ' s president, recalled t h a t Gates never put
u
sheets on his bed, and once left f o r vacation in t h e middle of a
0 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.
01
JE 5 0 1 . Bill Gates once said, " T h e r e are people w h o d o n ' t like capitalism,
g 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
.12 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
• 60
 Seagate

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

w
o
499. Bill Gates visited Belgium in February 1998, and was hit in t h e face <D
w i t h a cream pie. Y o u ' d expect him to have pressed charges, or 5T
3
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 m
o
t h a t t h e pie wasn't v e r y t a s t y . c
—
n
o
498. A s t r o n a u t David Wolf was t h e
first A m e r i c a n t o exercise his 4 9 7 .
0)
r i g h t t o vote f r o m space. He
e-mailed his v o t e f o r t h e Hous- S t e v e J o b s a n n o u n c e d to
in
t o n Mayoral elections in N o v e m Apple's partnership w i t h Q>
ber 1997, while a b o a r d t h e Microsoft during the
Russian space s t a t i o n Mir. August 1997 MacWorld I "g
to
trade show. The audience
496. 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.

495. 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!

494. Mashayoshi Son f o u n d e d Soft-

bank 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
 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 491.
its J u l y 1998 issue, began in
S e p t e m b e r 1975. Of the many rumours
about Microsoft, one was
4 9 0 . Did y o u know t h a t c o m p o s e r , a spoof news release in
c o m p u t e r scientist and a u t h o r
1994 that claimed
J a r o n Lanier coined t h e t e r m
Microsoft was purchasing
' v i r t u a l reality'?
the Catholic Church.
4 8 9 . The t e r m 'cyberspace' was
coined by sci-fi a u t h o r William Gibson, and appeared in his 1984
novel Neuromancer.

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 . 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,
2 called Shockwave Rider.

4 8 5 . Did y o u know t h a t t h e t h r e e
Byte Magazine ceased publi-
f o u n d e r s of Compaq all c a m e f r o m
cation with its July 1998 issue
c Texas I n s t r u m e n t s ?

4 8 4 . 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

<o a u t h o r of t h e book Literary Machines.

1483. 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.

• 62
 Seagate (<L

481. 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
480. 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
VI
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 o
behind t h e house of f o u n d e r J o h n Warnock. 0
3
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
patches t o code w r i t t e n f o r (D-
I/I
NCSA's h t t p d daemon. The 01
result was 'A PAtCHy' server; 477.
thus, t h e name Apache. I-a
Bill Hewlett and Dave a>
-i
in
4 7 6 . The name IBM was started by an Packard tossed a coin t o o
3
ex-employee of National Cash decide w h e t h e r t h e CD

Register. To one-up t h e m in all company they founded

fl>
respects he called his c o m p a n y w o u l d be c a l l e d H e w l e t t - I/I

International Busines Machines. P a c k a r d or P a c k a r d -

Hewlett.
4 7 5 . L a r r y Ellison and Bob Oats were
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 . The t e r m 'Silicon Valley' was coined by

j o u r n a l i s t Don Hoefler.

4 7 3 . 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
Adobe
Adobe is the second
largest software com-
'San Francisco'.
pany 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 •
 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 Jeff Hawkins invented the
Germany. It remained an inde Palm Pilot.
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

billion—90 times t h e latter's earnings.

464. 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.

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

462. 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
(/>
01 on 2 9 t h November, 1975. In t h e
letter, t h e name was spelt 'Micro-
Soft', but the hyphen was e v e n t u a l l y
o dropped.
01
Q. 461. 3 C o m changed t h e name of t h e
PalmPilot to simply 'Palm' because
Ifl Pilot Pen Company t h r e a t e n e d a
0) t r a d e m a r k lawsuit, c i t i n g possible
E
(D
Q. brand confusion. So 3 C o m backed
E d o w n and changed t h e name t o
o 'Palm'. The irony is t h a t t h e Palm t h r o w n a t him• a n d he {ust
o „ . ... ,, remarked it wasn t tasty
Pen Company makes styli usable on
3 Palm, Windows CE and o t h e r pen based devices.
o
fl>
c
4 6 0 . 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.

•64 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 •o
QJ
named Lakeside P r o g r a m m i n g 3
Group. Gates and his f r i e n d 5"
in
Paul Allen signed an agree- 0)
3
m e n t w i t h C o m p u t e r Center a.
C o r p o r a t i o n to r e p o r t bugs in -a
to
PDP-10 s o f t w a r e , in e x c h a n g e in
f o r c o m p u t e r time.
forefront of PC innovatin, in keep- o
ing with it's trademark "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
 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 . 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 .

12 4 5 4 . 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 petro-
leum exploration.

s 453. General Motors has purchased an IBM s u p e r c o m p u t e r t h e

<u
Q. 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
3
V) 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,
c 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
<u
c 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 .

I 452. 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

u 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 .
u
Q.

1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
• 66
 Seagate

•o
4 5 1 . 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.
n
o
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
• 3
to
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 3
<+
t/>
t h a t would be 1,000 times faster
t h a n Deep Blue. I
C
448. T3
ID
447. The fastest s u p e r c o m p u t e r in MIPS stands for 'millions
f*
O
India is the 574-CPU cluster at of instructions per 3
Intel, Bangalore. T3
second'. This is a measure C

of the speed at which a

446. 'FLOPS' refers t o 'floating point
computer can perform
operations per second', and
programmed instructions.
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 high-
performance 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.

4 4 5 . 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.

444. Apple powers the world's t h i r d most

powerful s u p e r c o m p u t e r - V i r g i n i a A view of the Japanese
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 •
 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 supercomput-

ers 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 a supercomputer looks something like this
t h r o u g h high speed
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. CDAC's ParamPadma cluster supercomputer was ranked in June

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

S. 4 3 8 . "Central iron" is slang for a centrally funded c o m p u t i n g resource,

w 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.

1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
• 68
 Seagate (C

4 3 5 . 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
3
434. 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 3-
teraFLOPs 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
o
433. When it was introduced, Fortune magazine called the IBM 3 6 0 g
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." J3"

[ D I G I T
69D
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.
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.
429.
Self-Scanned A m o r p h o u s Silicon Integrated Display (SASID) tech-
nology is used in flat-panel displays in notebook and p o r t a b l e
computers.
428.
TOLED (transparent organic light-emitting device) is a display tech-
nology 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).
427.
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'.

•70
 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 appli-

cations 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 . 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
• 7 2
 Seagate (C

408. 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'
•a
407. 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 .

406. 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 Inter-
face) 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

404. 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.
__ A flatbed scanner's important compo-
nents are the light source and the pho-
403. G e o r g e J . L a u r e r is tosensitive device, usually a CCD array
considered t h e i n v e n t o r of
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.

.4001
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 - A CD-RW disk can, in
was issued t o i n v e n t o r s J o s e p h general, be r e - w r i t t e n about
Woodland and Bernard Silver on a t h o u s a n d t i m e s . In
October 7 , 1 9 5 2 .
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
399. J a c o b Rabinow was t h e inven-
u 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
p r o b l e m of i d e n t i f y i n g HDCD is a new digital encoding/decod-
c o n v i c t e d criminals and ing process for CD/DVD recording

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.

. 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
394. 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.

1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
• 74
 Seagate

same m e t h o d s used by t h e Chinese for centuries. 3

0)
•2.
393. EyeDentify, a Belgian c o m p a n y f o u n d e d in 1976, developed The 5'
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 . 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.

391. 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 CD-
player 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 ECMA-

130 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
 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

1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
• 76
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 e-

mail 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.

l a w " 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 recog-
nised 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.
Modems were developed because <
366. In 1 9 7 0 , a t e a m o f r e s e a r c h e r s the NAAD's 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. 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.
c
o
364. 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.

|363. 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
(O
o

• 78
 Seagate

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

- , 3
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 Wash-
i n g t o n to Baltimore, only
five years later. The electric telegraph was born in
1930 in the United States

3 5 9 . 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 Wash-
i 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 technol-
ogy to do so was n o n e x i s t e n t .

3 5 8 . 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 .

357. 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 .

3 5 6 . 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 .

355. 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 cord-

less 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. 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.

3 5 3 . On April 3 0 , 1 9 9 6 , APNIC was registered in Seychelles as non-profit

international organisation.

352. 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
c
o South America, t h e Caribbean and sub-saharan Africa, began
-C o p e r a t i o n s on December 2 2 , 1 9 9 7 .
Q. — — — 1 —a
<u

•2 3 5 1 . 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
c 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
o
Numbers (ICANN) to oversee t h e opening of t h e Domain Name
(0
.2 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 tech-
nology.

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. 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.

342. The Nokia 5160 series included an edition w i t h Disney characters

Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Donald.

341. 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.

340. 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 .

339. 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.

338. 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 o

o
phones while driving. In Ireland, y o u can be f i n e d $ 3 8 0 a n d / o r 3
face i m p r i s o n m e n t f o r t h r e e 3
months.
335. r>
01
336. Code Division Multiple Access Or M a r t i n C o o p e r is O
(CDMA) t e c h n o l o g y was 3
c o n s i d e r e d t h e i n v e n t o r of
originally developed f o r O
the first portable handset. ID
m i l t a r y use in t h e late 1960s.
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 O
3 3 4 . Studies c o n d u c t e d by NASA 3
IB
M o t o r o l a , he w a s t h e f i r s t VI
show t h a t the use of cell
p e r s o n t o m a k e a c a l l on a
phones and other personal
e l e c t r o n i c devices inside and in portable cellular phone.
t h e vicinity of a i r c r a f t is
potentially dangerous.

333. 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.

332. 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 by NASA show that cell-
phone usage in the vicinity of
aircraft is potentially dangerous
31. The WHO says t h e r e is still no
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 •
 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 coun-
325.
tries t h a n t h e y are in t h e On December 3 , 1 9 9 2 , an
United S t a t e s - m o r e t h a n 9 0 engineer named Neil
percent of Europeans o w n a Papworth sent the first
cell phone, c o m p a r e d t o a b o u t SMS-"MERRY CHRISTM-
5 0 percent of A m e r i c a n s .
A S " - t o his colleagues at
Vodafone in Britain.
3 2 4 . 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.

323. 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
The WHO is researching the risks
MHz band.
posed by cellphone usage

<u
c
o

o
u

<0
o

E
E
o
o
1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
• 84
 Seagate ^

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

waveguide.

320. 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 dom-
inance 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 corr-

espondence 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. The Sega Genesis, released as In 1950, mathematician

MegaDrive in J a p a n in 1988, Alan Turing wrote the
m a r k e d Sega's e n t r y into t h e first chess program.
video game m a r k e t .

310. 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.

3 0 9 . 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 house-

holds 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
2 6 0 0 . It was t h e f i r s t A t a r i The first VCR didn't look like this-it
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 .

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

1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
• 86
 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
3 0 3 . The first v i d e o t a p e d m a t e r i a l 302. .Q
on a TV show was "Douglas <D
'Walkman', 'Pressman', 3
Edwards and t h e News", broad-
cast on CBS on N o v e m b e r 30, 'Watchman', and
'Discman' are Sony 01
1956. 3'
trademarks. 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'.

audio cassettes began in 1965

2 9 6 . Sony's first f o r a y i n t o t h e
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

j | | J | | 87D
 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, Cali-
fornia, in 1973.

2 8 8 . Disney released Fantasia

2 0 0 0 in the IMAX film f o r m a t The first HD card radio was sold on
w i t h 6-channel digital sound January 5, 2004.
on J a n u a r y 1, 2 0 0 0 .

2 8 7 . 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. From March 6 , 1 9 9 9 , HBO began HDTV satellite m o v i e broadcasts,

c
<D s t a r t i n g w i t h "US Marshals" at 8 pm.
e
c
"(0 285. 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
<D
A-* exhibited digitally, co-sponsored by Texas I n s t r u m e n t s using its
c
IV DLP digital cinema p r o j e c t o r .
cr
c
284. In November 1997, San Diego's MP3.com was f o u n d e d by Michael
3
Q. 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
E 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
o
u million hits m o n t h l y .
10 0 1 T E C H F A C T S J
• 8 8
 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 oo

in 1997. 3
•a
c
2 8 2 . By 2 0 0 3 , in t h e US, DVD
I 3
rentals increased 51.2% and •a
VHS rentals d r o p p e d 2 9 % n
3
f r o m the previous year; DVD In 1982, the use of
sales increased 4 2 . 2 % t o $12.1 computer-generated
billion, and VHS sales d r o p p e d graphics in movies took a 3
3 4 . 8 % t o $2.4 billion, accord- 3
step forward with Disney's n>
ing to Video Store Magazine. 3
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 stop-

m 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 . In 1993, Jurassic Park released Tron r e l e a s e d in

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 •
 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. Toy story was the fjrst fulHength

computer-generated film.
270. 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
E was a professional level digital camcorder that had the ability to
c
<5 take freeze-frame pictures, and not a still digital camera.
r.
•2 2 6 9 . In 1992, Sharp, in its quest to make filming easier, introduced the
first colour LCD screen, so videographers could see the display on a
o> screen, w i t h o u t having to squint t h r o u g h a viewfinder. Today, this is
c
a standard f e a t u r e on all camcorders.

Io 268. 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
• 90
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 corre-

spondence 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 . 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!
D I G I T
 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 16-
bit processor, was t h e f i r s t t o
challenge Nintendo's monopoly.
2 5 8 . 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.
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
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 Comput-
ing 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. 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.

2 5 2 . The first s o f t w a r e t o be A matte black version of the Sony

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.

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

i/)
<D 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
E 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.
— n>
VI
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.
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
c r e a t e d t h e f i r s t graphical Microsoft's Flight Simulator was the
c o m p u t e r game. It was a bestselling PC game of all time
version of Tic-Tac-Toe, p r o g r a m m e d on t h e EDSAC vacuum-
t 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.
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 " .
234. The most expensive game ever developed was ShenMue for Sega
Dreamcast. It cost $ 2 0 million.
 Seagate (C

2 3 3 . 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.

2 3 2 . 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 . The QWERTY k e y b o a r d layout is 129 years old!

228. 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.

2 2 7 . 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 dupli-
cated for a n o t h e r decade.

226. 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
research was f u n d e d and • • • • H I
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.

225. 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
0>
U t h e m , changing size, and
10
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.

224. 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 The QWERTY keyboard layout is
d e m o n s t r a t i o n of g e s t u r e 129 years old

1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
• 96
 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. «

(Jn
2 2 3 . 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. 3
— TS
o
2 2 2 . 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.

221. 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 3

PhD thesis on Pygmalion, f u n d e d by ARPA and NIMH. S m i t h later a
popularised icons, as one of t h e chief designers of t h e Xerox a
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. 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.

218. 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.

217. OXGA ( Q u a n t u m Extended Graphics A r r a y ) is a display specifica-

t 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.

216. 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 symbol-
ogy starts and stops.

215. ' 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 Microsoft

10 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
3 Path). The project was e x e c u t e d at Hyderabad.
o

I 214. 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

<v on t o win a G r a m m y was Bangalore-based 'Thinking
o
VI
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 212. i/i
o
newscaster, f o r 9 5 million
pounds, f r o m Digital A n i m a 'Nerd' was coined in 1950 01
3
tions Group based in Bellshill by Dr Seuss in the book 'If m
o
near Glasgow. I Ran the Zoo'. 'Worm'
was coined by writer John
211. PERL, the p r o g r a m m i n g Brunner in 1975 for self-
language, was c r e a t e d by L a r r y replicating malicious
Wall w i t h t h e i n t e n t i o n of programs.
re-humanising c o m p u t i n g tech-
nology.

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
orange
Orange bought Ananova for
f o r t h e special e f f e c t s in t h e multi-
95 million pounds
Oscar-winning m o v i e Titanic.

2 0 5 . 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.

D I G I T 99D
2 0 3 . The NEC Turbografx-16, released in J a p a n in 1988 as t h e PC-
Engine, 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 .
202.
201. The original Apple C o m p u t e r
logo p i c t u r e d Sir Isaac Newton. Apple had once planned t o
s h o r t e n t h e n a m e of t h e
2 0 0 . Atari's c o m p u t e r , called t h e Macintosh computer to
520ST, was d u b b e d simply 'Mac', to stand for
'Jackintosh' after Atari owner 'Mouse-Activated
Jack Tramiel. Computer'.

199. 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.

198. 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 record-

ings, 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.

W T . 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

V
:i((§|P' 1

%
a n i m a t e d Polar Bears.
n
196. In 1977, the c r e a t o r s of t h e RSA-

ik
129 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
Newton was pictured on the orig-
message was d e c r y p t e d in
inal Apple Computer logo
1994, using parallel c o m p u t i n g
resources.

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. In the 1997 book 'Techno-

1 9 3 . in
Stress', by Michelle Weil and
to
Larry Rosen, it's m e n t i o n e d
Using v i r t u a l reality 5T
t h a t some people b e c o m e so 3
h e a d s e t s is k n o w n t o to
i m m e r s e d in t e c h n o l o g y t h a t o
t h e y risk losing t h e i r o w n iden- r e s u l t in a h e a l t h d i s o r d e r
t i t y , a s y n d r o m e called called binocular dysphoria.
'technosis'.

1 9 2 . 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. 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.

190. 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.

189. 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 ?

1 8 8 . 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
q u a r t e r s on New Year's Eve of The first product to use a bar-
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.

1 8 7 . 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 .

101D
[ D I G I T
 '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. 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.
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

181.
communications industry,
AT&T Bell Labs was t h e first as GE a n d A T & T began
c o m p a n y to t r a n s m i t h u m a n testing the transference
voice across t h e A t l a n t i c on
of s o u n d a n d i m a g e d a t a
2 5 t h J a n u a r y , 1915.
t h r o u g h these fibres.

180. 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.

1 7 9 . 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.

178. 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 school-
children.

177. Adobe, or A d o b e Systems Incorpo-

rated, 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

Humanoid P3, designed in
an individual color pixel on a monitor September 1997
appears. Each pixel is composed of
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. w a s d e v e l o p e d in India.

• 102 1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
 Seagate (C

74. Project Chicago was t h e code name for Windows 9 5 .

(/i
o
<0
7 3 . 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.

172. 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. The Bell Telephone C o m p a n y set

up by Alexander Graham Bell in
Graham Bell giving a demon-
1877 has m o r p h e d over t h e years
stration of his invention
into t o d a y ' s AT&T.

170. 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.

169. "To get a m a z o n n e d " means

168.
t h a t one has lost a significant
p o r t i o n of one's business t o a The s y m b o l has no
dotcom enterprise. particular designation,
a l t h o u g h i t is o f t e n
1 6 7 . In 2 0 0 3 , flash mobs, organised
r e f e r r e d t o as t h e
over t h e 'Net, s t a r t e d in New
' c o m m e r c i a l a'.
York and quickly f o r m e d in
cities w o r l d w i d e .

1 6 6 . " 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. 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.
162. 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 Univer-
sity 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 .

161. 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.

160. 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.

159. 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
158. 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
157. '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 Apple has come a long way since its
a c o m p u t e r at L a w r e n c e first release
Berkeley Labs, led t h e
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 .

1 0 0 1 T E C H F A C T S
• 104
 Seagate

1 5 4 . 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 3

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. =
D)
n
153. Thriller w r i t e r Robert Harris
152. o
c
w r o t e a semi-fictional a c c o u n t , i/i
in 1996, of t h e breaking of t h e In 1980, there was only
German codes at Bletchely one country in the world
park, England, d u r i n g World with no telephones-
War II, in his book Enigma.
Bhutan.

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.

to reach a million in sales

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
 restrictions. This concept is called ' c o p y l e f t ' .

144. The DVD of t h e movie 'Matrix'

143.
was the f i r s t t o reach one
million in sales. Did you know that the
world's first transistor is
142. Did you know C o m p a q
located at Murray Hill,
C o m p u t e r was f o r m e d in 1982,
New Jersey?
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?

141. 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 ?

140. 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 .

139. 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.

138. 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 T° counter paedophiles, the
...... , FBI recruited teenage girls
r e n a m e d H o t J a v a ' this year to teach officers to
behave like girls on the Net
137. 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. Messages were left by 5.8 lakh people on t h e official Web site of 3
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. =

132. An average of 4 0 million H o t m a i l e-mails are sent each day, o

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 |j|
7 2 , 7 2 0 Kg of paper per day.

131. The lobby of Cyrix Corpora-

tion's c o r p o r a t e h e a d q u a r t e r s 130.
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." Scott McNealy of Sun
Microsystems has a dog
129. Toonz A n i m a t i o n India, an called Network.
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.

128. 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.

127. 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.

126. 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.

125, 'Bloatware' is s o f t w a r e t h a t ' s t o o

large for its utility.

124. 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
Vajpayee was Satyam
Provider, S a t y a m Infoway. Infoway's first 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.

Did you know that Seagate was the first company to

121. manufacture hard disks for microcomputers?

107O
120, 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 .

119. 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
117. Infosys was t h e f i r s t Indian Hewlett-Packard as a
c o m p a n y t o release its summer trainee.
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-

Hewlett Packard started at a garage in Palo Alto in

112. 1939.
 Seagate

nology was t h e Airbus A 3 2 0 ,

launched in 1988.
i/>
o
2L
110. The origin of t h e t e r m 'taped In 2 0 0 3 , software 57
3
o u t ' comes f r o m t h e process companies lost $5.5 m
o
of creat ing an optical mask for billion due to piracy in c
tfl
a s e m i c o n d u c t o r device. It was Asia.
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.

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 nally called OS/2 magazine
as m i l i t a r y h a r d w a r e .

1 0 4 . Google recently added linear local search capabilities to its

existing services.

Macquariums are aquariums made from old

Macintosh computers.

J
109O
102. 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 There are more than 2 0 0
p r o t e c t i o n restrictions. satellites orbitinq earth
just for private communic-
100. The publication 'Windows ations services-including
Magazine', on since February the pager, telephone, and
1992, was launched in Internet services.
1990 under t h e name 'OS/2
Magazine'.

9 9 . 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 HDTV made its debut a long time ago,
but still hasn't gotten to the masses
Carlson.

95. Dropping a c o m p u t e r one f o o t o n t o a flat surface was an Apple-

endorsed 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.

9 4 . 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.

1001 TECHFACTS
•110
 Seagate

92. 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>
t h e assembly line. o
2.
5T
91. Taxes made headlines in 2 0 0 3 , 3
<D
as US I n t e r n e t retailers O
8 4 0 c
collected taxes on all IA

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 .
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 ' .

90. 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. In 1989, HDTV made its debut in Japan.

88. 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. 1 ^
87. The w o r d r o b o t comes f r o m t h e
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.

86. 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. 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: It was only on the 3rd of
f r o m 1999 t o 2001, sales of CD July, 1978, that the New
b u r n e r s and blank CDs York Times began using
skyrocketed. computerised word
processing.
8 2 . 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.

81. 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.

80. 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.

79. 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.

78. 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
77. 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. 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
secret p r o t o t y p e Apple s t a r t e d One of India's first parallel
processing computers, an <D
work on in 1992, code-named o
Project Star Trek. The goal of early PARAM, used c
i/>
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.

72. 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 machi-
If 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. 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.

69. 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 .

68. 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.

Did you know Apple and Sun came very close to a

67. merger in 1996?

[ D I G I T 113D
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 Xerox was the first

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 . company to develop
The chances of an eavesdrop technology to protect
per being u n d e t e c t e d are one in digital intellectual
trillions or quadrillions, which
property rights.
means for all practical purposes
in t h e universe, nil.

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. 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,
w h o felt t h a t t h e 8 " f o r m a t of The 'nanoguitar'-a guitar on the
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.

OI14
 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

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
2002:1 billion PCs sold so far
longer t h a n t h e age of
t h e universe t o crack it.

5 4 . 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 answer-
ing questions a b o u t diagnosis.

53. 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 .

52. 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.

51. 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.

5 0 . 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.

D I G I T 115D
 49. 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.
•00

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.

47. 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%.

46. 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.

45. 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. 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
3 reasonably realistic f o r t h e t i m e .
O
<u
c
I<0 3 9 . 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
"53 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
u
</) 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.

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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 ,
f o r a gain of 1396%. This made Rivest, Shamir and Adleman, the
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 .

'. 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 " ) .

2 9 . 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
f r o m these satellites! B • K 2 2 Z X Z 2 H

2 6 . George Philbrick was a pioneer

in analogue c o m p u t i n g . During • cassor-- MttJA

t h e 9 3 0 s , he developed the
o p e r a t i o n a l amplifier, which was * VA EST,AMOS
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 . Smart cards were first patented
and used in France
2 5 . 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.

24. 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. 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
o
<u 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
a> 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.
u
V)
1 2 0 . 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
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 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 3

University in M o n t r e a l . o
<p

19. PL-I is a c o m p u t e r language developed by IBM t h a t never 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 QuickTime, in 1992, was
Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl in the most popular codec

the mid 1960s.

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. MPEG1/Motion JPEG arrived on the scene as the latest codecs in 1995.

9. 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.

8. 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.

7. 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.

6. 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.

5. 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'.

4. 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.

3. 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 .

2. 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'.

1. 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 . "

• 120 g ^ M M M g i W i i S ^ ^ 10 0 1 T E C H F A C T S j