Interesting Facts In Electronics

Aircraft Carrier: An aircraft carrier gets about 6 inches per gallon of fuel.


Airplanes: The first United States coast to coast airplane flight occurred in 1911 and took 49 days. A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight (120ft).


Aluminum: The Chinese were using aluminum to make things as early as 300 AD Western civilization didn't rediscover aluminum until 1827.


Automobile: George Seldon received a patent in 1895 - for the automobile. Four years later, George sold the rights for $200,000.


Coin Operated Machine: The first coin operated machine ever designed was a holy-water dispenser that required a five-drachma piece to operate. It was the brainchild of the Greek scientist Hero in the first century AD.


Compact Discs: Compact discs read from the inside to the outside edge, the reverse of how a record works.


Electric Chair: The electric chair was invented by a dentist, Alfred Southwick.


E-Mail: The first e-mail was sent over the Internet in 1972. Eye Glasses: The Chinese invented eyeglasses. Marco Polo reported seeing many pairs worn by the Chinese as early as 1275, 500 years before lens grinding became an art in the West.


Things We Like to know about Computing:
The term ‘computer’ originally referred to a person who performed numerical calculations, often with the help of a mechanical calculating device.


The most common form of computer in use today that is the normal PC is the ‘embedded computer’, which is a small device used to control other devices.


The distinction of being the first portable computer goes to the ‘Xerox NoteTaker’, developed at Xerox PARC in 1976.


Early CPUs were made up of separate components. However with the introduction of the first microprocessor (Intel 4004) and the first widely-used microprocessor (Intel 8080) in 1970, this class of CPUs has almost completely taken over all other CPU implementation methods.


In the event software is stored in hardware that cannot be easily modified, it is sometimes called ‘firmware’ to indicate it comes under a grey area somewhere between hardware and software.


Apple Computer’s Macintosh or Mac computer system derives it’s name from McIntosh, a popular type of apple.


The term ‘booting’ or ‘bootstrapping’ a computer derives from the story of Baron Munchhausen who at one instance, pulled himself out of a swamp by the straps on his boots.


The term, ‘Bug’ as we know today refers to a fault in a computer program that prevents it from working correctly. The term is often but erroneously credited to Grace Hopper, who in 1946 after joining the Harvard Faculty at the Computation Laboratory traced an error in the Harvard Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay.



Computers:ENIAC, the first electronic computer, appeared 50 years ago. The original ENIAC was about 80 feet long, weighed 30 tons, had 17,000 tubes.


The first "modern" computer (i.e., general-purpose and program-controlled) was built in 1941 by Konrad Zuse. The computer was launched in 1943, more than 100 years after Charles Babbage designed the first programmable device.