Calum Grant

Girls and computers

No, this isn't going to be a sexist rant about women. Well, at least not yet.

In the olden days, the power of a computer used to be measured in "girls". In the second world war, the US unit of computing power was not the megaflop or the mega-Hertz but the kilogirl. This is because calculations used to be done manually, usually by low paid young women. Thus, a kilogirl computer would have the computing power of 1000 girls.

Wow, 1000 computing girls... I mean statistically speaking they surely can't all have beards?

posted by Calum Grant @ 6:20 PM