a crank’s progress

Museum of pre-historic technology (I):

From The Hunt for Red October (1984):

During her last overhaul, the Dallas had received a very special toy to go with her BQQ-5 sonar system. Called the BC-10, it was the most powerful computer yet installed aboard a submarine. Though only about the size of a business desk, it cost over five million dollars and ran at eighty million operations per second.

Emphasis mine.

Twenty years and 13 or so cycles through Moore’s law later, this kind of massive computing power comes in a rather more convenient package.

The link is to a Palm Zire, retailing for a whopping US$99.95.

I just bought a 120 Gb drive on eBay for US$51, less that 50¢ a gigabyte. I paid less that a dollar/GB a year or so back and felt good about that.

[composed and posted with ecto]