My How Far We Have Come In 29 Years

[Iroquois]

I found a 1974 copy of the Guinness Book of Records and was looking through it. It's amazing how technology has changed in three decades. Here are some of the more interesting tech records from the GBofR 1974 as compaired to the GBofR 2002.

Most Powerful Computer
1974: The CDC 7600. Performs 36 million operations per second. Two memery cores of  80Kb and 853Kb. Actually had 320GB of storage space. Costed $15 Million US
2002: The IBM RS/6000 ASCI White. Preforms 12 Trillion Calculations per second. It has 6 Terabytes of RAM and has 160 Terabytes of storage space, enough to hold the entire Library of Congress. Can do complex math problems in 1 second which would otherwise take 1 person 10 million years to do with a pencil and calculator.
(Note: As I understand it, a PC's processer can do 1 calculation/clock cycle, therefore an AMD Athlon XP 3000, the fastest on the market can do 3 billion calculations/second.

Ship: Largest
1974: RMS Queen Elizabeth, at 82,998 tons with a length of 1031ft and a width of 118ft.
2002: Voyager of the Seas, at 144,000 tons with a length of 1020ft and a width of 157.5ft.

Building: Tallest
1974: CN Tower in Toronto at 1815ft, 5in.
2002: CN Tower still reigns as tallest.

That's enough for now, more tech records to come.
I also found a sheet predicting records for 2000 in the 1974 edition. Most were pretty accurate.  

[Loafing Smurf]

Yup, we still reign with the tallest structure.

If any other country tries to make one taller, I'll tamper with the blue prints.

J/K  ;D

[Oso]

Is that still taller than the building in Singapore or somewhere over there - if you add the height of the towers on top of it?

[SilverFox441]

The CN Tower is the tallest free standing structure...the towers you are referring to are the tallest buildings.

They've seperated the category now as some complained that most of the CN Tower is uninhabitable and is only there for support.

[Oz]

Yeah, how technology evolves in the blink of an eye, imagine, just 100 years ago, the first airplane was made of wood and some weak material and looked barely airworthy to our standards, then 100 years into the future, we've got giant 747's flying high, fighter jets thatn can go past mach 2, and space vehicles going into orbit....imagine what things will be like in 100 more years....

[Maccers]

Can do complex math problems in 1 second which would otherwise take 1 person 10 million years to do with a pencil and calculator.

thats a long time to find a piece of paper to use the pencil with! lol

[ozzy72]

The tallest building in the world these days is acknowledged as the Petronias Towers in Malaysia.
As for computer technology, it appears that Gordon Moore was bang on with Moores Law! I can't wait to see what happens in the next 3 decades. Its going to be v.exciting times to live in.

Ozzy

[Iroquois]

The GBofR used to separate the categories but don't anymore. The CN Tower has been categorized as tallest building where as the Petronas Towers (1482ft) in Kuala Lampur are categorized as tallest office building.
Also the New World Trade Center will still be 200ft shorter than the CN tower.

[katana_1000]

comp stats practicly double every what month?in 2010 if u buy a week old comp it will be obsolete and not handle alot of software:Panyway think of where weve come

[Loafing Smurf]

An interesting reference to make is that in the late 1960s we made it to the moon. A hundred years before there were barely metal ships.

It make you wonder what can happen in the next hundred. Will it be like The Jettsons, or like in The movie Minority Report.