Did you know?

 

003. Did you know that following WWII, the Allies forbade German firms to construct certain electronic devices, so that although some German universities (like those of Göttingen where the Max Planck Institute was located, the Technical University of Berlin, and the Munich Institue of Technology) designed and even built experimental machines, no commercial models were built until well after 1955 when the ban was lifted. (Standard Elektrik Lorenz, in collaboration with Siemens and Konrad Zuse eventually produced the first commercial machine in 1959.) [see Kenneth Flamm, Creating the Computer]

 

002. Did you know that ENIAC was considerably faster than its predecessor computing machines and could perform 5,000 operations per second; and that its inventors liked to point out that ENIAC could calculate the trajectory of a speeding shell faster than the shell could fly! [see Campbell-Kelly & Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine]

 

001. In many monasteries of medieval times, prayers were recited even at night-time, and before mechanical clocks were invented (in the 14th century), various methods were used for keeping time (such as sundials, waterclocks, sandglasses, and notched candles and graduated ol vessels). Did you know, however, that some monasteries even turned to the stars by appointing junior brothers to note the changing positions of the stars relative to the monastery buildings! One such example states that… ‘On Christmas Day, when you see the Twins lying, as it were, on the dormitory, and Orion over the chapel of All Saints, prepare to ring the bell. And on January 1st, when the bright star [Arcturus] in the knee of Artophilax [Bootes] is level with the space between the first and second window of the dormitory and lying as it were on the summit of the roof, then go and light the lamps.’ [see H. C. King, The Background of Astronomy]