The Best Historical Comparisons
Hi: Over the years many people have constructed historical comparisons to illustrate the rate of progress of development of computer technology. A colleague just sent me this example: " There used to be a standard illustration of the effects of Moore's Law, along the lines of "if mechanical engineering had progressed at the same rate a Rolls Royce would do 250K mph, 1M miles to the gallon, cost 2p and be a quarter of an inch long (these aren't the actual figures but you get the idea). Similarly I used to say that the 16 Gigabit memory that I used to carry around in my pocket would have weighed as much as an aircraft carrier in the technology of the 360/67. I recall that the 256K memory units in the 360 each weighs either a quarter or half a ton, including the integrated pipes for the cooling system. (As above the figures may no longer be accurate but they were whenever I said it.) Similar comparisons give a scale to the rates of progress in technology." I wonder what is the best, and most up to date, comparison in common use these days. Season's greetings Brian Randell — School of Computing, Newcastle University, 1 Science Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TG EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/people/profile/brianrandell.html
" There used to be a standard illustration of the effects of Moore's Law, along the lines of "if mechanical engineering had progressed at the same rate a Rolls Royce would do 250K mph, 1M miles to the gallon, cost 2p and be a quarter of an inch long (these aren't the actual figures but you get the idea).
The second half of that infamous comparison goes, "But the car would crash twice and day and ask 'Are you sure?' before the airbags deploy." I like to compare historic computing measurements in terms that modern users can understand, especially young people. I wrote an article in 2019 for our university website, about the first computer we had here in 1962. It was an IBM 1620. With some technical assistance from CHM docent Carl Claunch, I did the math and explained to our college-aged readership: "For comparison, 8 kilobytes is 131 thousandths of a gigabyte, or two-tenths of a second of the CeeLo Green song 'Forget You'."
Another take on this topic is: what historical predictions have proved the most prophetic? I'll bid this one: In 1959, Pierre de Latil suggested in Figaro Littéraire that the French National Library would one day fit into six square centimetres. [The citation I have is Jacques Lethève, La profession de bibliothécaire est-elle menacée de disparaître?, Bulletin d’Informations de l’A.B.F., 79-83 (1960). The context is in https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~brian/rutherford8.html] Regards Brian Carpenter On 17-Dec-21 06:06, Evan Koblentz wrote:
" There used to be a standard illustration of the effects of Moore's Law, along the lines of "if mechanical engineering had progressed at the same rate a Rolls Royce would do 250K mph, 1M miles to the gallon, cost 2p and be a quarter of an inch long (these aren't the actual figures but you get the idea).
The second half of that infamous comparison goes, "But the car would crash twice and day and ask 'Are you sure?' before the airbags deploy."
I like to compare historic computing measurements in terms that modern users can understand, especially young people. I wrote an article in 2019 for our university website, about the first computer we had here in 1962. It was an IBM 1620. With some technical assistance from CHM docent Carl Claunch, I did the math and explained to our college-aged readership: "For comparison, 8 kilobytes is 131 thousandths of a gigabyte, or two-tenths of a second of the CeeLo Green song 'Forget You'." _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
participants (3)
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Brian E Carpenter -
Brian Randell -
Evan Koblentz