Computers have come a long way since they were invented. Today, they are being used almost everywhere. Let us find out about a few interesting computer facts, and get ourselves amazed.
I think each and every one of us must know about the evolution of computers. It is one of the most useful machines ever created by humans. The invention of the computer was just the beginning of the ever-increasing thirst for knowledge. I guess, even the inventor of the computer mustn’t have realized the potential that this machine would have. Today, almost all of our work is done by some or the other computing machine. Computers are enhancing technological growth at a rapid rate. Nevertheless, how much ever we know about this super machine, is less. Mentioned below are a few of the little known computer facts.
Fun Computer Facts
Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft was a college drop out.
On one of the world’s most popular shopping websites, eBay, there are transactions of approx. $680 per second.
There are approx. 6,000 new computer viruses released every month.
Of all the pictures available over the Internet, 80 percent of these pictures are of naked women.
‘Crash Course’ is another name for Microsoft Windows tutorials.
The ‘Email’ is older than the World Wide Web.
There are about five porn pages for every ‘normal’ webpage.
Doug Engelbart, invented the first computer mouse in the year 1964, which was made of wood!
One of the world’s leading computer and computer peripheral manufacturer, Hewlett Packard, was first started in a garage at Palo Alto, in the year 1939.
If you open up the case of the original Macintosh, you will find 47 signatures, which is of each member of Apple’s Macintosh division of 1982.
Amongst the most interesting computer facts is, the first Apple computer which was built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, was made by using parts they got for free from their employers. They were made to scrounge spare parts from work.
The group of 12 engineers who designed the IBM PC were called ‘The Dirty Dozen’.
Amazon is a printed book seller company, that now sells more eBooks than printed books.
Over 110 million users are registered on MySpace. If MySpace was a country, it would be tenth largest in the world, while Facebook would be third largest with over a billion users.
About 70% virus writers are actually employed by an organization under a contract.
HP, Google, Microsoft, and Apple have one thing in common. All of them were started in garages.
The Apollo 11 Lunar Lander which was used to travel to the moon, has less processing power than the processor of a cell phone.
Out of the 1.8 billion Internet users, only 450 million can speak English.
The first 1GB hard disk, announced in 1980, weighed about 550 pounds, and was priced at $40,000.
Computer Facts For Kids
A normal human being blinks 20 times a minute, whereas, a computer user blinks only 7 times a minute!
Sweden is a country with the highest percentage of Internet users (75%).
Mosaic’ was the first popular web browser, released in the year 1993.
I am sure most of us must have played the game Tetris. Since the time it was created in the early eighties, it has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, which made its creator richer by $8m.
Almost all computer users must know how destructive a virus can be. But then, it would be interesting to know that a virus cannot corrupt your PC on its own. It corrupts your system only when you activate it, by either downloading infected files from the Internet, or by sharing these infected files.
Computer circuitry can be destroyed by static electricity. It is so mild for humans that we don’t even feel it.
The Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra chip has maximum numbers of transistors on it, approx. 222 million of them.
Konrad Zuse, has the credit of creating the world’s first computer, known as the Z1, in 1936. Three years later, in the year 1939, the first fully-functioning electro-mechanical computer, known as Z2, was developed.
‘Stewardesses’ is the longest word which can be typed with only the left hand.
Today, we find hard drives up to 1TB, but did you know, the first hard drive was created in 1979, and could hold just 5MB of data.
Interface Manager! That’s what Windows was originally named.
If your work involves the extensive use of computers, then by the end of your average working day, your fingers would have traveled 12.6 miles.
The first microprocessor, Intel’s 4004, was designed for the Busicom calculator.
Lenovo stands for ‘new legend’. ‘Le’ for legend, and ‘novo’ stands for new.
80% of the emails sent daily are spammy.
SanDisk was earlier known as SunDisk.
Until September 1995, domain registration was free.
‘Electronic brains’! That’s what computers were called in the 1950s.
One can type 20 times faster using a Dvorak keyboard as compared to using a Qwerty keyboard.
‘ShenMue’ is the most expensive game ever to be made. It was developed for Sega Dreamcast, and was priced at $20 million.
The uses of computers today are endless, with different types of computers being used for different sectors. It is good to see how the world of computers is getting better than ever.