Cirrus Systems

I want to give a BIG shout-out to our team for doing good and looking out for our community! We hosted a food drive last month and in total, we collected 54 lbs of food and this generous donation provided 45 Meals to families in need along the gulf coast!

WAY TO GO TEAM!

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It’s virtually impossible to imagine what the world would look like today without the computer. Though you might not think it, everything from the food we eat to the rockets we send into space needs a computer’s help in some way.

Needless to say, history’s very first computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC), is on a very short list of the most important inventions humans have ever made!

Military scientists started designing the ENIAC during World War II to calculate the trajectories of artillery shells. By the time the power switch was flipped in November of 1945, however, the war was over. Instead, ENIAC became a tool for Cold War weapons — the developers of the first hydrogen bomb went so far as to say that the H-Bomb would never have existed without the ENIAC.

The ENIAC had 17,468 vacuum tubes that blew out every couple of days. It took up 1,800 square feet of warehouse space and weighed more than 25 tons (which is as much as some of the heaviest actual dinosaurs). And for all that, it could execute 5,000 instructions per second.

The ENIAC was a marvel for its time, it was, of course, a dinosaur by today’s standards.

Meanwhile, today’s supercomputers, like IBM’s Blue Gene/P, bare almost no comparison!

The modern supercomputer executes so many instructions per second that computer scientists don’t even measure their speed in instructions per second.

The Blue Gene/P has performed incomprehensible feats such as helping to map the human genome, simulating radioactive decay, flying airplanes, and even replicating human brainpower. Sure, at 1720 pounds, it’s enormous compared to the modern laptop or tablet, but it is able to calculate mind-boggling equations and process an unheard-of amount of data, all while being 30 times smaller than the ENIAC!

Then And Now: The World’s Very First Computer Vs. Today’s Supercomputers!

Plugging in a USB Drive or USB cable the right way feels like a no-brainer, right? Well..Then why do we always get it wrong on the first try?

Here's the TIP: Grab any USB Drive or USB cable sitting around your house or office.

Do you see that symbol on one side? It’s not just a branding or decoration for good looks!

That symbol will guide the way! It will point up if you’re plugging in horizontally and if you're plugging it in vertically, the USB or cable symbol will face you.

Like today's tip? Stick around and check us out next Tuesday for another Tech Tip!