Some Facts About the Computer

The only capability a computer has is the circuitry to detect the difference between two voltages. A digital signal is 'high' or low, either 'true' or 'false'. Computer Engineers use this capability as the building block to create all the amazing features of modern computers.

• Thomas Watson, founder of IBM, is sometimes quoted as asserting that the world would probably never need more than 5 computers. He was referring, of course, to mainframe computers, which his company built.
• Bill Gates dropped out of college (Harvard) before founding Microsoft.
• Early hard drives in Personal Computers held 20 MB, or 20 Megabytes, and cost about $800. By comparison, an $8 flash drive holds 2 GB, or 2 Gigabytes. That's a 100-fold decrease in price and a 100-fold increase in capacity.
• Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first Apple computers from parts they got for free from their employers. They originally approached their employers with their idea for a 'personal computer', but they were rebuffed. They were actually encouraged to scrounge spare parts from work and complete their project in their spare time.
• The computer mouse, the windowing GUI, laser printing, and the network card were all developed at one company; Xerox.
• The computer in your cell phone has more processing power than all the computers in the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander that put 2 men on the moon.
• Admiral Grace Hopper, the first female admiral in the US Navy, invented the popular programming language COBOL.