Computers
She Was Also Famous for Tennis
February 12, 2001
Jan de Wit sends out an email stating that it is a picture of the famous tennis player Anna Kournikova. Rather than being a picture of the Russian known more for her looks than her play (although she was ranked as high as #8 in the world in singles and #1 in doubles), it was a malicious script that tried to send itself to every address in a user’s address book and e-mail inbox (Windows users only, of course). The malware was so efficient, it was known to be spreading twice as fast as the “Love Bug” virus that devastated corporate networks a year earlier. The moral of the story is that men are easily manipulated.
A Computer Defeats a World Chess Champion
February 10, 1996
World chess champion Garry Kasparov loses a game to the computer Deep Blue during a match set up using standard championship rules. This was the first time a computer defeated a world chess champion using these rules (although chess computers had been kicking my butt since the 1980’s). Kasparov went on to defeat Deep Blue 4-2 during this match. However, he lost to Deep Blue a year later, marking the first time a computer defeated a world chess champion in a match.
A Patent is Filed for the Harvard Mark I
February 8, 1945
A calculator patent is filed for the Automatic Sequence Control Calculator, commonly known as the Harvard Mark I, an early computer. The Mark I was a large electro-mechanical computer that could perform the four basic arithmetic functions and handle 23 decimal places. A multiplication took about five seconds.
Kasparov Redeems Himself … Sort Of
February 7, 2003
After losing a chess match to the computer Deep Blue in 1997, world chess champion Gary Kasparov and the computer Deep Junior battle to a draw.