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First electronic computer (1943) : the building of Colossus

By designing a huge machine now generally regarded as the world's first programmable electronic computer, the then Post Office Research Branch played a crucial but secret role in helping to win the Second World War. The purpose of Colossus was to decipher messages that came in on a German cipher machine, called the Lorenz SZ.

The original Colossus used a vast array of telephone exchange parts together with 1,500 electronic valves and was the size of a small room, weighing around a ton. This 'string and sealing wax affair' could process 5,000 characters a second to run through the many millions of possible settings for the code wheels on the Lorenz system in hours - rather than weeks.

The building of SIGSALY (1943) : pioneer digital telephone system

Another secret wartime computer whose existence was finally revealed many years later was SIGSALY - the secret 'scrambling' system devised to protect the security of high level Allied telephone traffic.

SIGSALY - originally codenamed Project X - was also known as 'Green Hornet'. It was the first unbreakable speech coding system, using digital cryptography techniques, with one time digital keys being supplied by synchronised gramophone discs.

SIGSALY was built in the USA, though using pulse code modulation (PCM) digital encoding techniques invented in 1937 by the English engineer Alec Reeves.

The first priority was to protect the hotline between the Cabinet War Room bunker under Downing Street and the White House in Washington D.C. The 50-ton London terminal was shipped over in 1943 and housed in the basement of the Selfridges annexe in Oxford Street, under tight guard.

Windows Vista: Networking and Security
In the past, computer networks primarily existed in schools, businesses and computer enthusiasts' homes. But today, many households have several computers that need to share files, printers and connections to the Internet. Unlike most businesses, many average home users do not have a networking expert to set up and maintain their networks.
For this reason, Windows Vista includes several network setup wizards, which walk users through creating networks and sharing devices. It also has several built-in network tools that are accessible through a Network Center:

Network Explorer lets users find files on networked computers and move them from to place. It's similar to other Windows Explorers that let people find files on their own computers.
Network Map creates a visual map of all the computers and devices on the network.
Vista also includes a Network Awareness feature for people who need to use their computers in multiple locations. Network Awareness detects which network a person's computer is using and applies the appropriate settings.

Photo courtesy © 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
The Network Center

Vista also includes tools to help people maintain and repair their own networks. The Network Diagnostics feature can detect and repair some network issues on its own. It can also walk users through the necessary steps to restore their network connections. To do this, it uses a collection of tools that use the Windows Diagnostic Infrastructure (WDI).
The WDI provides the structure for several components, including the Network Diagnostics Framework (NDF) and several APIs. The NDF identifies and troubleshoots client-side network issues using a Network Diagnostics Engine as well as Microsoft and third-party helper classes. The helper classes are troubleshooting protocols, and the Network Diagnostic Engine communicates with them through the helper class API. Applications that need to access the Internet can also use APIs to access Vista's troubleshooting capabilities.

Microprocessor Logic

Photo courtesy Intel Corporation
Intel Pentium 4 processor

To understand how a microprocessor works, it is helpful to look inside and learn about the logic used to create one. In the process you can also learn about assembly language -- the native language of a microprocessor -- and many of the things that engineers can do to boost the speed of a processor.

A microprocessor executes a collection of machine instructions that tell the processor what to do. Based on the instructions, a microprocessor does three basic things:

Using its ALU (Arithmetic/Logic Unit), a microprocessor can perform mathematical operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Modern microprocessors contain complete floating point processors that can perform extremely sophisticated operations on large floating point numbers.
A microprocessor can move data from one memory location to another.
A microprocessor can make decisions and jump to a new set of instructions based on those decisions.

Trivia Question

Do you think Microsoft Inc will be successful in getting super computer processors in small chip?