- A large percentage of the world’s currency now exists purely as digital data stored on computers, with less than 10% of global money circulating in the form of physical cash or coins. From bank
accounts and financial transactions to cryptocurrencies and digital wallets, most modern economies operate through virtual balances maintained by electronic systems. This shift has fundamentally
transformed the way money moves — through encrypted networks and complex databases — allowing for lightning-fast payments, global financial integration, and new innovations like central bank digital
currencies and decentralized finance. In this digital age, money has become less about paper and more about code.
- In 2025, powerful supercomputers like El Capitan, Frontier, Aurora, Fugaku, LUMI, and Leonardo are at the forefront of high-performance computing. These systems are used for scientific research,
AI development, and other computationally intensive tasks. Additionally, companies like Xanadu are pioneering quantum computing with machines like Aurora.
- Supercomputers:
- El Capitan: Currently the fastest supercomputer, developed by HPE and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
- Frontier: The first exascale supercomputer, located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
- Aurora: An exascale supercomputer developed by Intel and HPE.
- Fugaku: A Japanese supercomputer known for its energy efficiency.
- LUMI: A pre-exascale supercomputer in Finland.
- Leonardo: A pre-exascale supercomputer in Italy.
- Quantum Computing:
- Xanadu Aurora: A modular, room-temperature photonic quantum computer.
- Other Powerful Systems:
- HPC6: Located in Italy, another powerful supercomputer.
- Eagle: Microsoft's cloud-based supercomputer for AI development.
- Sierra and Perlmutter: Supercomputers also utilized for various scientific and research purposes.
- Selene, Eos, Summit: Supercomputers with various strengths.
- The most powerful supercomputer in the U.S. is El Capitan, located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
It became operational in late 2024 and boasts a performance of 1.742 exaFLOPS, making it the fastest supercomputer in the world. Before El Capitan, the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee
held the top spot, reaching 1.1 exaFLOPS. These machines are used for advanced scientific research, including climate modeling, drug discovery, and national security applications.
- El Capitan has surpassed Frontier as the fastest supercomputer in the world. While both are used for scientific research, El Capitan is primarily focused on nuclear security simulations, whereas Frontier supports
a broader range of exascale computing applications.
- Performance: El Capitan reaches 1.742 exaFLOPS, while Frontier previously held the top spot with 1.353 exaFLOPS.
- Architecture: Both systems use AMD processors, but El Capitan features 44,544 AMD Instinct MI300A APUs, integrating Zen 4 CPU cores with CDNA 3 compute dies.
- Energy Efficiency: El Capitan achieves 58.89 gigaflops per watt, making it one of the most efficient supercomputers.
- The most powerful computer in China is the Tianhe-3 supercompute (with the MT-3000 processor) designed by the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) and housed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou1.
NUDT's MT-3000 processor features a multi-zone structure of 16 general-purpose CPU cores with 96 control cores and 1,536 accelerator cores. Tianhe-3 has a peak performance of 2.05 exaflops and a sustained performance of 1.57 exaflops
on High Performance LINPACK, making it one of the most powerful machines in the world.
- Supercomputers are very powerful computers that perform complex calculations and data processing at speeds that are orders of magnitude faster than typical personal computers.
They’re primarily used for complex tasks like climate modeling, quantum mechanics simulations, and even crunching data for research in medicine and physics.
- Frontier (USA): Frontier, or OLCF-5, is the world's first exascale supercomputer built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee, US.
It is based on the Cray EX and is the successor to Summit (OLCF-4). Frontier achieved an Rmax of 1.102 exaFLOPS, which is 1.102 quintillion floating-point operations per second, using AMD CPUs and GPUs.
- Aurora (USA):Aurora is an exascale supercomputer that was sponsored by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and designed by Intel and Cray for the Argonne National Laboratory. It has been
the second fastest supercomputer with a performance of 1.012 exaFLOPS in the world since 2023. The cost was estimated in 2019 to be US$500 million.
- Fugaku (Japan): Fugaku (富岳) is a petascale supercomputer at the Riken Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan. It became the fastest supercomputer in the world in the June 2020 TOP500 list
as well as becoming the first ARM architecture-based computer to achieve this.
- LUMI (Finland): LUMI (Large Unified Modern Infrastructure) is a petascale supercomputer consisting of 362,496 cores, capable of executing more than 375 petaflops, with a theoretical peak performance of more than 550 petaflops,
which places it among the top five most powerful computers in the world; it's located at the EuroHPC JU supercomputing center in Finland
- Summit (USA): Summit or OLCF-4 is a supercomputer developed by IBM; it is the 9th fastest supercomputer in the world on the TOP500 list, and is housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee, US
- Sierra (USA): Sierra or ATS-2 is a supercomputer built for U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and primarily used for predictive applications in nuclear weapon stockpile stewardship.
- Sunway TaihuLight (China): Sunway TaihuLight (神威·太湖之光) is a Chinese supercomputer which is ranked 11th in the TOP500 list (as of November 2023) with a LINPACK benchmark rating of 93 petaflops; it is housed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, China
- Perlmutter (USA): Perlmuttert was built by Cray based on its Shasta architecture, which utilizes Zen 3 based AMD Epyc CPUs ("Milan") and Nvidia Tesla GPUs; it is located at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) in California, US
- Selene (USA): Selene is a supercomputer developed by Nvidia, capable of achieving 63.460 petaflops, ranking as the fifth fastest supercomputer in the world, and housed at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) in California, US
- Apple II, Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80, and Commodore PET
were the first three preassembled mass-produced personal computers in 1977; they made personal computing accessible to a broader audience. However, the first personal computer was the Kenbak-1, invented by
John Blankenbaker in 1971; it had 256 bytes of memory and was designed before microprocessors were invented.
- The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIC) is the first programmable general-purpose electronic digital computer
built during World War II under a contract to the US Army by the School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania; the team lead by American physicist
John Mauchly and American electrical engineer J. Presper Eckert, Jr.
- In 1945, ENIAC roared to life — a towering titan of wires and light, stretching 100 feet long and packed with 18,000 glowing tubes, each pulse a heartbeat in its electric soul. It drank power like a storm, dimming city lights in
its wake, and though it weighed 30 tons, its mind was swift, crunching thousands of calculations in a blink. Engineers waged daily battle within its metallic maze, swapping tubes and soothing its mechanical moans. What once took
rooms now fits in palms, but this gargantuan forebear etched the future — the ancestor of silicon dreams, where bytes now bloom.
- The US-built ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first electronic programmable computer built in the US.
ENIAC, which had full operation in 1945, was huge, weighing 30 tons, using 200 kilowatts of electric power and contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays, and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors.
- Completed in 1945, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was less a computer and more a mechanical behemoth — stretching over 100 feet, tipping the scales at 30 tons, and humming with nearly 18,000 vacuum tubes that
glowed like a sci-fi cathedral. When this monster powered up, legend has it that lights flickered across Philadelphia — a citywide reminder of its enormous appetite for electricity. Despite its intimidating size, ENIAC was a
revolutionary marvel, capable of performing thousands of calculations per second and redefining what machines could achieve. Maintaining it was a high-stakes game of technological whack-a-mole, with engineers constantly replacing
burnt-out tubes and patrolling its labyrinthine insides. It’s surreal to think that this room-sized leviathan, once hailed as the future, has since been dwarfed by sleek, pocket-sized devices we casually tap today — a testament
to how one bulky innovation rewired the trajectory of technology forever.
- Reducing the LCD brightness, disconnecting unused peripherals, disabling Bluetooth when not needed, and choosing shutdown or hibernate over standby mode all help conserve energy. Fine-tuning your laptop’s power management
settings—like adjusting sleep timers and CPU usage plans—can also make a noticeable difference. Together, these habits not only prolong each battery charge but may also extend the battery’s long-term health.
- DDR4 SDRAM (Double Data Rate Fourth-generation Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory) is a type of SDRAM with a high bandwidth ("double data rate") interface.
Released to the market in 2014, it is one of the latest variants of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). DDR4 is the same width as DDR3,
but is slightly taller by about .9mm. DDR4 uses 288 pins and runs at 1.2V with low power modules expected to run at just 1.05V while
DDR3 uses 240 pins and runs at 1.5V with low power modules running at 1.35V. Lower voltage components simply run cooler than their higher voltage counterparts and are generally more reliable. Moreover, the DDR4 standard
allows for DIMMs of up to 64 GiB in capacity, compared to DDR3's maximum of 16 GiB per DIMM.
- DDR3 SDRAM is not backward-compatible with DDR2 SDRAM. Although both types feature 240 pins,
their key notch positions, voltage requirements, and electrical signaling differ significantly, making them physically and functionally incompatible. DDR2 modules typically operate at 1.8V, whereas DDR3 runs at 1.5V or even lower in
energy-efficient variants. Additionally, their timing protocols and prefetch architectures are distinct, further preventing cross-compatibility. So while they may look similar at a glance, attempting to insert a DDR3 module into a
DDR2 slot—or vice versa—is like forcing the wrong puzzle piece: it simply won't fit or function.
- Inside the case of the original Macintosh 128K, Apple molded the signatures of 47 team members from the Macintosh Division—including Steve Jobs, Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, Jef Raskin, and others who helped bring
the groundbreaking computer to life2. The idea, championed by Jobs, was that since the Macintosh was a work of art, the creators should sign it—just like artists do. These signatures were etched into the inside rear panel
of the case and remained present in several early Mac models, including the Mac Plus, as a quiet tribute to the team’s legacy.
- Iomega, founded in 1980, revolutionized portable data storage with the release of its first Zip Drive
in 1994, offering a then-groundbreaking 100MB capacity—a massive leap from the standard 1.44MB floppy disks of the time2. The Zip Drive quickly gained popularity for its speed, reliability, and ease of use, especially among professionals
handling large files like graphic designers and photographers. It came in parallel port and SCSI versions, making it compatible with both PCs and Macs, and was often bundled with a single Zip disk. Within the first 15 months,
Iomega shipped over 2 million units, far exceeding expectations. Later models expanded capacity to 250MB and 750MB, but the rise of CD burners, USB flash drives, and cloud storage eventually rendered Zip Drives obsolete. Still,
they remain a nostalgic icon of 1990s tech innovation.
- The Pentium microprocessor, launched by Intel on March 22, 1993, marked a major leap as the fifth generation in the x86 architecture—the foundational line behind
IBM PCs and their clones. Known internally as the P5 micro-architecture, it was Intel’s first superscalar processor, capable of executing multiple instructions per clock cycle, which significantly boosted performance. The Pentium replaced
the i486 and was eventually succeeded by the Pentium Pro, Pentium II, and Pentium III, each building on its legacy. It became so iconic that even Weird Al Yankovic gave it a shoutout in his parody “It’s All About the Pentiums”.
The Pentium microprocessor introduced several key innovations.
- Dual integer pipelines for parallel instruction execution.
- A much faster floating-point unit (FPU)—up to 10× faster than its predecessor.
- 64-bit burst-mode data bus for quicker memory access.
- Separate code and data caches to reduce bottlenecks.
- Support for MMX instructions in later models for multimedia acceleration.
- The Intel 4004, introduced in 1971, was the world’s first commercially available microprocessor and was originally designed to power calculators for a Japanese company called Busicom. Measuring just 12 square millimeters,
this tiny chip managed to squeeze all the essential functions of a CPU onto a single integrated circuit — performing calculations, processing data, and managing tasks with unprecedented efficiency. Though created for
something as unassuming as a calculator, the 4004 became the cornerstone of the personal computer revolution, kickstarting the journey toward increasingly powerful processors and the modern digital age.
- The Intel first microprocessor was Intel 4004, which was designed for a calculator, contained only 2300 transistors and worked at a clock rate of 740 kHz. The Intel Sandy Bridge-E, one of the latest microprocessors from Intel,
contains 2270 million transistors!
- Linux, a Unix-like and POSIX-compliant computer operating system
assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution, was designed and released by Finnish university student Linus Torvalds in October 1991.
- Each month, thousands of new computer viruses and worms emerge, exploiting vulnerabilities and challenging cybersecurity systems worldwide. One of the most infamous examples was the MyDoom worm, which surfaced in 2004 and swiftly
spread via email, masquerading as a benign message. Once activated, it unleashed devastating denial-of-service attacks and opened backdoors into infected machines, leading to an estimated $38 billion in global damages. MyDoom wasn’t
just a technical menace—it was a pivotal moment that exposed the fragile nature of digital infrastructure and accelerated the development of modern cybersecurity defenses, which continue to evolve in response to increasingly
sophisticated threats.
- The first computer virus, called "Creeper," was created in 1971 by Bob Thomas at BBN Technologies as an experimental self-replicating program rather than a malicious threat. It spread across computers connected to ARPANET, the precursor
to the internet, and displayed the playful message, “I’m the creeper: catch me if you can.” Though it didn’t cause harm or corrupt data, Creeper demonstrated the possibility of autonomous code movement between machines and inspired
the creation of the first anti-virus software, "Reaper," which was designed to hunt down and delete Creeper — marking the beginning of digital defense in computing history.
- A computer virus is a malware program that, when executed,
replicates by inserting copies of itself (possibly modified) into other computer programs, data
files, or the boot sector of the hard drive;
when this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be "infected". There are about 200 new computer viruses released every day.
- Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), is an e-mail encryption program created by
Phil Zimmermann in 1991 while working at PKWARE, Inc,
as a tool for people to protect themselves from intrusive governments around the world.
- In 1980, IBM introduced the first portable 1-gigabyte hard disk drive as part of its 3380 series — a groundbreaking advancement in data storage despite its massive scale and cost. Weighing approximately 550 pounds and
priced around $40,000 per unit, the drive was roughly the size of a refrigerator and required substantial infrastructure to operate and cool effectively. Although it was intended for large institutions and data centers, it
represented a major leap in capacity, consolidating what previously required multiple smaller disks into a single unit. The 3380 set the stage for the evolution of hard drive technology, from bulky mechanical giants to
today’s sleek solid-state and flash storage devices.
- The IBM 5120, released in 1980, holds the distinction of being one of the heaviest desktop computers ever manufactured, weighing approximately 105 pounds on its own, with an additional 130-pound external floppy drive unit.
Aimed primarily at small business users, it came equipped with dual 8-inch floppy drives, a built-in monochrome screen, and ran both the IBM Basic Programming Support and the IBM Disk Operating System. While its bulk made it
far from portable, the 5120 represented a significant step forward in bringing computing power to offices and professionals — albeit with serious muscle required to move it around.
- In 1979, the world saw the debut of the first portable hard drive, a technological marvel for its time despite its humble capacity — just 5 megabytes. Created by Seagate Technology, this early drive was part of the
ST-506 series and marked a shift toward mobile data storage for personal and business computing. Although today's smartphones easily handle thousands of times more data, the ST-506’s launch represented a leap in miniaturizing
and mobilizing information. Housed in a hefty metal casing, it was anything but sleek by modern standards, yet it laid the groundwork for decades of portable storage innovation — from floppy disks to USB flash drives and cloud computing.
- In the late 1970s, floppy disks measured a sizable 8 inches in diameter and were housed in flexible plastic sleeves, which gave rise to the term "floppy." Developed by IBM, these early magnetic storage devices could hold
between 80 to 256 kilobytes of data — minuscule by modern standards, but revolutionary for transferring and saving files across machines. Their large size eventually led to the development of more compact formats, including
the 5.25-inch version in the late '70s and the 3.5-inch disks of the 1980s, paving the way for widespread personal computing and portable digital storage.
- IBM’s 1311 disk drive, introduced in 1961, was a landmark in early data storage and roughly the size of a washing machine. Designed for use with
the IBM 1401 computer system, it featured a removable disk pack that could store approximately two million characters — or about 2 megabytes by
today’s standards. The disk pack consisted of six 14-inch platters stacked vertically inside a protective case, allowing users to swap out storage units as needed. Though bulky and primitive compared to modern
flash drives, the 1311 represented a major step toward flexible, reusable data storage in business computing and laid foundational groundwork for future hard disk technology.
- Each year, over 300 million inkjet cartridges and 70 million laser cartridges are sold in the United States, reflecting the widespread demand for
home and office printing. Despite the rise of digital documents, physical printing remains deeply embedded in personal, educational, and professional workflows — from photos and school projects to business reports and legal
paperwork. However, this massive consumption also contributes significantly to environmental waste, prompting efforts to promote recycling programs, remanufactured cartridges, and refillable options to reduce the ecological
footprint of print technology. The numbers are a powerful reminder of how even everyday tech can leave a lasting impact.
- Approximately 1.3 billion inkjet cartridges are used around the world annually and less than 30 percent are currently being recycled. Each year over 350 million cartridges are thrown out to landfills.
- Apple Lisa was the first personal computer that offered a graphical user interface and
a mouse. It was sold around $10,000 during the early 1980.
- The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products
It had a hard drive of only 5 megabytes when it was launched.
- Apple Macintosh Portable, the first battery-powered
portable Macintosh
personal computer, was released on September 20, 1989, weighs 16 pounds and had a 16MHz processor
- Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Inc. in 1976, blending Jobs’s visionary leadership and flair for design with Wozniak’s engineering brilliance. Jobs revolutionized user experience with sleek product designs and intuitive
interfaces, driving the success of groundbreaking devices like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and orchestrating Apple’s resurgence in the late '90s. Meanwhile, Wozniak designed the Apple I and Apple II, pioneering user-friendly hardware
innovations like color graphics and expansion slots, which made personal computing accessible to everyday users. Together, they didn’t just build a company—they launched a technological revolution that reshaped modern life.
- The first Apple computer, the Apple I, debuted in July 1976, designed by Steve Wozniak and backed by the entrepreneurial vision of Steve Jobs. Powered by a MOS 6502 processor running at 1 MHz, it featured 4 KB of memory (expandable to 8 KB)
and used a cassette tape interface for storage. Unlike its contemporaries, the Apple I came fully assembled, connected directly to a keyboard and a TV monitor, and cost $666.66—a quirky touch from Jobs. Only about 200 units were made,
and the duo famously funded its production by selling personal items, including a calculator and a VW van, marking the humble yet groundbreaking start of Apple Inc.
- Microsoft transformed Xbox from a pure gaming device into a dynamic multimedia hub by integrating popular streaming services like YouTube, Boxee, and others. This strategic upgrade redefined how users interacted with their
consoles—offering instant access to video content, social media platforms, and web-based apps right from the dashboard. The result wasn’t just entertainment—it was immersion. Xbox became the heartbeat of the living room,
blending gameplay, binge-watching, and online engagement into one seamless experience. This move marked a turning point in digital convergence, where gaming, streaming, and social connectivity collided to create a unified entertainment
ecosystem.
- The first "IBM" personal computer that run on batteries was the IBM PC
Convertible released in 1986.
- The world's first computer, called the Z1, which contained almost all parts of a modern computer, i.e. control unit, memory, micro sequences,
floating-point logic and input-output devices, was invented by Konrad Zuse in 1936. His Z2
and Z3 were follow-ups based on many of the same ideas as the Z1.
- Konrad Zuse, an inventor and computer pioneer,
created the world's first programmable computer, the functional program-controlled Turing-complete
Z3 became operational in May 1941.
- The first IBM PC, officially known as the IBM 5150, debuted on August 12, 1981, and marked a pivotal moment in personal computing history. With a base price of $1,565, it came equipped with an Intel 8088 processor, 16KB of memory,
and no disk drives or color-graphics adapter — a barebones setup that required additional investments to unlock its full potential. Designed to be modular and accessible, the IBM PC laid the groundwork for a rapidly expanding
ecosystem of compatible software and hardware, establishing the PC architecture that still underpins many modern computers today. Its open design also encouraged a flourishing clone market, fueling the rise of companies like
Compaq and transforming personal tech from a niche hobby into a global industry.
- People tend to blink significantly less when using computers — often as little as one-third their normal rate — which can lead to a condition called digital eye strain or computer vision syndrome. Blinking is essential for
keeping eyes moist and removing irritants, and reduced blinking results in dry, irritated eyes, as well as symptoms like blurry vision, headaches, and even neck or shoulder discomfort. Fortunately, small adjustments can help
alleviate these issues: following the 20-20-20 rule (looking 20 feet away every 20 minutes for 20 seconds), adjusting screen brightness and contrast, positioning screens just below eye level, using artificial tears or a humidifier,
and considering specialized computer glasses all offer relief in a screen-heavy world.
- The first search engine, called "Archie Query Form," was created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal, and it marked a quiet but significant milestone in internet history. Designed to index the
contents of public FTP servers, Archie didn’t search text within files but instead helped users locate specific filenames scattered across the early web. Though rudimentary and lacking the sleek interfaces and algorithms we
associate with modern search engines, Archie laid the groundwork for digital information retrieval and set the stage for future giants like Google to build smarter, broader systems for navigating cyberspace.
- In the early 1990s, researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory invented the first webcam with one highly practical — and amusing — purpose: to monitor a shared coffee pot. Tired of trekking to the break room only
to find it empty, they set up a camera that streamed live footage of the pot across their local network, enabling colleagues to check the coffee status from their desks. What began as a caffeine-saving hack ended up as the first live
video feed on the internet, running for years and evolving from grayscale to full color before its retirement in 2001. This humble experiment unexpectedly helped pave the way for modern livestreaming and the internet’s visual culture.
- Graphical user interface, Computer mouse, laser printing,
and the network card were all developed by Xerox located in Palo Alto, CA
- Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), established in California, was a hotbed of technological innovation during the 1970s and beyond, responsible for creating foundational components of modern computing. Among its
pioneering breakthroughs were the computer mouse, refined from Douglas Engelbart's invention into a practical input device; the graphical user interface (GUI), which introduced the use of icons and windows for intuitive screen
interaction; laser printing, invented by Gary Starkweather to deliver high-speed, high-quality output; and the network interface card (NIC), which enabled local-area networking and set the stage for connected computing. Although
Xerox itself didn’t fully capitalize on these transformative ideas, companies like Apple and Microsoft later adopted and popularized them, forever shaping the digital landscape.
- For eight years, from 1962 to 1970, the U.S. military reportedly used the shockingly simple password "00000000" to control access to nuclear missile systems governed by the Permissive Action Link (PAL) safeguard — a mechanism meant
to prevent unauthorized launches. The decision, allegedly driven by fears that a complex password could delay response times in a crisis, prioritized ease over security in one of the most sensitive defense systems on Earth. This jaw-dropping
lapse in cybersecurity has since become a cautionary tale, fueling debates about the critical balance between operational readiness and digital safety in high-stakes environments.
- In 1964, Doug Engelbart unveiled a curious invention at the Stanford Research Institute — the first computer mouse, crafted from wood and fitted with two perpendicular wheels. Though officially dubbed the “X-Y Position Indicator
for a Display System,” its cord trailing like a tail earned it the enduring nickname “mouse.” Far from a mere novelty, this wooden block was part of Engelbart’s grand vision for interactive computing, which he dramatically showcased
in his legendary 1968 “Mother of All Demos.” That presentation didn’t just introduce the mouse — it previewed hypertext, video conferencing, and windowed computing, laying the foundation for the digital interfaces we take for granted today.
- Douglas Carl Engelbart is best known for his work on the challenges of human–computer interaction,
particularly while at his Augmentation Research Center Lab in SRI International,
resulting in the invention of the computer mouse in 1964, and the development of hypertext,
networked computers, and precursors to graphical user interfaces.
- The first electronic digital calculating device used about 300 vacuum tubes, with capacitors fixed in a mechanically rotating drum for memory. The Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC), developed in the late 1930s and early 1940s by physicist
John Atanasoff and his graduate student Clifford Berry, marked a pivotal moment in computing history as the first electronic digital calculating device. Utilizing around 300 vacuum tubes to perform arithmetic and logic operations,
the ABC embraced binary representation and automated processing — a major leap beyond mechanical calculators. Its memory system was particularly innovative: capacitors fixed to a mechanically rotating drum stored data, showcasing
one of the earliest approaches to electronic memory. Though often overshadowed by later machines like ENIAC, the ABC introduced critical concepts that shaped the architecture of digital computing as we know it today.
- The first transistorized computer in the United States, known as TRADIC (TRAnsistorized DIgital Computer), was developed by Bell Labs in 1954 for the U.S. Air Force to enhance their military operations, particularly in bombing
and navigation. It replaced vacuum tubes with 684 transistors and over 10,000 germanium diodes, operating at 1 MHz while consuming less than 100 watts—an impressive leap in energy efficiency and reliability. Though not the fastest
machine, its compact size and low power needs made it ideal for airborne use, including installation in aircraft like the B-52 Stratofortress. TRADIC’s success demonstrated the feasibility of transistor-based computing and helped
ignite the transition to second-generation computers, driving the broader adoption of digital technology across industries.
- Alan Turing was the first to conceptualize the modern computer through his 1936 introduction of the Universal Turing Machine — a theoretical
construct designed to read, write, and manipulate symbols on an infinite tape based on a set of logical rules. What made this idea groundbreaking was Turing’s realization that such a machine could simulate any other computational
device, effectively laying the foundation for general-purpose computing. Though not a physical machine, it defined the very essence of computation and established the intellectual blueprint for every modern computer — proving
that with the right instructions, one machine could perform any calculable task.
- Charles Babbage is a mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, he is best remembered for originating the concept of a digital
programmable computer in 1833.
- The electronic computers developed around the 1940’s had the size of a large room and consumed huge amounts of electricity.
- Hewlett Packard, one of the world's leading computer and computer peripheral manufacturer, was first started in a garage at Palo Alto, CA,
in the year 1939.
- A computer with the processing power of the human brain would need to perform trillions — possibly even quadrillions — of operations per second to match the mind’s ability to handle countless simultaneous tasks, driven by its
roughly 86 billion neurons and billions of synaptic connections. In terms of storage, estimates suggest the brain holds several terabytes to possibly petabytes of information, making it an extraordinary organ for encoding and
recalling experiences, thoughts, and skills. What’s even more remarkable is the brain’s energy efficiency: it runs on just about 20 watts, roughly the power of a dim lightbulb, while outperforming even our most advanced machines
in adaptability, multitasking, and learning.
- Computers are designed to execute instructions that break down into basic, repetitive tasks such as adding numbers, comparing values, and transferring data between memory locations. These operations are performed at lightning
speeds using binary-coded machine language, which tells the processor exactly what to do, step by step. Even complex software — whether it's a video game, financial tool, or graphic design program — ultimately relies on billions
of these simple instructions working together in harmony, forming a digital foundation where tiny computations build vast systems of functionality and interactivity.
- David Bradley is credited for implementing the "Control-Alt-Delete" key combination that was used to reboot the computer.
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