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| When pigs fly! |
My husband tells me that his mother, born in 1895, never believed that the astronauts landed on the moon. She knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, it was just staged. What absolutely amazes me is there is more computing power and memory in my old flip-top cell phone that I still insist on using than those first astronauts had on their trip.The invention in any field you care to name over these last, say seventy, years could just bowl you over.
The Writer’s Almanac today tells us that on this date in 1951, Remington Rand signed the government contract to build the second UNIVAC. The essay tells us the computer was the size of a one-car garage. My first data programming was done for a Burroughs computer the size of a large refrigerator. Its computing power could fit into a virtual sugar canister in the home laptop I’m using to write this. Unlike my mother-in-law, I do believe all this, but I still shake my head in amazement and awe.
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