IT Awarness - 9

1.      A byte is 8 bits. The term was invented by Werner Buchholz in the 1950s. originally it stood for the smallest amount of data from which a computer could make a calculation.

·         1 kilobyte (KB) = 1024 bits

·         1 Megabyte (MB) = 1024 KB

·         1 Gigabyte (GB) = 1024 MB

·         1 Terabyte (TB) = 1024 GB

·         1 Petabyte (PB) = 1024 TB

·         1 Exabyte (EB) = 1024 PB

·         1 Zettabyte (ZB) = 1024 EB

2.      At the heart of information technology revolution is digitization: a process of converting information in all forms into the 0/1 on/off digital language of the computer. Each 0 or 1 is known as binary digit – or bit – a term used by Claude Shannon in the July 1948 issue of “Bell System Technical Journal”.

3.      Bandwidth – the amount of information which can be carried on an electronic transmission system – is measured in terms of bits a second (bps) or (the same thing) baud, a term derived from the scientist Emile Baudot.

4.      A lot of information needs to be converted from analog signals to digital signals (modulation) before it is transmitted digitally and then, at the end of the network, reconverted from digital to analog (demodulation) and, for this purpose, a device called a modem is used.

5.      In the same way that a bit is the basic element of information, so a pixel – a term which comes from the words picture and element – is the basic level of graphics.

6.      A typical screen with 1,000 x 1,000 pixels in full colour needs 24 million bits of memory.

7.      In the American Standard Code of Information Interchange (ASCII), the letter A is represented in decimal terms as 65 and in binary terms as 01000001.

8.      The transistor – the origin of the semi – conductor or microelectronics industry – was invented in 1947 by Bell Laboratory scientists Williams Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain.

9.      The silicon Integrated Circuit (IC) is more commonly known as the chip – a device containing many interconnected transistors – was invented simultaneously in 1959 at Fairchild Semiconductor by Robert Noyce and at Texas Instruments by Jack kilby.

10.  Moore’s Law – first conceived in 1965 by Gordan Moore, later co-founder of Intel – predicts that on average the number of transistors on a microchip will double every year 18 months and so far the ‘Law’ has proved valid.

11.  Moore’s second Law – much less quoted – is that the cost of chip manufacturing doubles with each generation of chip.

12.  The microprocessor – a special kind of chip that includes the functions of the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer – was first made by Intel in 1971 from a design by Marcian Hoff.

13.  The first microprocessor in 1971 had 2300 transistors.

14.  The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. He called his assistant Thomas Watson in the next room and announced: “Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you”.

15.  Bell disliked the telephone and refused to have one in his study; when he died in 1922, every telephone served by the Bell system in the USA and Canada was silent for one minute.

16.  Optical fibre was invented in 1966 by two British scientist called Charles Kao and George Hockham working for the British company Standard Telecommunication Laboratories (“Power of Speech”, Peter Young, 1983).

17.  Optical transmission systems use miniature lasers smaller than a grain of salt which generates signals which pass down glass fibre as fine as human hair and travel at the fastest speed known to physics, the speed of light which is 186,281 miles per second.

18.  Most satellite communications system utilize transponders circling in a geo-stationery orbit which is 22,240 miles above the earth’s surface and, at this height, these satellites appear to be stationary above the earth’s surface – such satellites can cost $60 million to build but only three of them are needed to cover all of the earth’s surface.

19.  The NASDAQ stock exchange in the USA – a world centre of capitalism – was totally disabled in December 1987 when a squirrel burrowed through a telephone line.

20.  The mobile phone was invented by a team led by Martin Cooper at Motorola in 1973. It weighed two kilos and the battery life was a mere 20 minutes.

Compiled By: Chaudhary Amit V.