The Dawn of an Electronic Era

The computer age began when ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) was completed in 1945. The first multipurpose computer, ENIAC set speed records with an amazing 5,000 additions per second. Computers have come a long way since—a laptop today can do 500,000,000 additions per second.

That’s not the only difference. ENIAC weighed more than 30 tons, filled an 1,800-square-foot room and included 6,000 manual switches. It used so much electricity that it sometimes caused power shortages in its home city of Philadelphia. By contrast, a notebook PC today might weigh in at about 3 pounds.

Booting Up

You may know that “booting” your computer means starting it up. But did you know the word comes from “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps”? That’s an expression that means taking charge of yourself, which is what a computer seems to do when it starts up!

Bugging Out

The term “bug” has been used for problems in machinery since electricity was invented. But the first computer bug was actually a moth! In 1945, a computer being tested at Harvard University stalled when a moth got caught inside. The engineers taped the moth into their computer log with the note, “First actual case of bug being found.”