A Glimpse at the Past from the Future
Wherein the author shares some excerpts from the 1968 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica's entry on "computer".
Date: December 11th, 2011 @ 16:14
I wanted to get some perspective about data sizes for a project I’m working on. I wanted to see what the 1968 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica had to say about computers—specifically RAM, tape, and disc storage issues.
Emphasis is mine, and my notes are in brackets. I have converted their terms into modern SI terms (a million bytes = 1 megabyte, 1,024 bytes = 1 kibibyte, a word = 36 bits). The entry for “Computer” offers the following: Read more »