By the Numbers
It’s been called the Information Age, the Computer Age, and the Digital Age, but whatever the name, the last few decades have brought a whirlwind of change. Computers combined with the internet and technology offer unprecedented access to the world.
Check out these facts and figures that barely begin to tell the story.
2,000 | The number of pounds—equaling one ton—that five megabytes weighed in 1956. |
That was the year IBM launched Random Access Method of Accounting & Control (RAMAC), the first computer with a hard drive remotely similar to what we use today. The entire cabinet weighed more than 2,200 pounds, and the five megabytes of data was spread over fifty huge aluminum disks.
Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com
1936 | The year the first binary programmable computer began development. |
German inventor Konrad Zuse built the Z1 in his parents’ living room. The machine is considered the first truly functional modern computer. Today, 73 percent of Americans own a desktop or laptop computer.
Sources: computerhope.com and statista.com/statistics/756054/united-states-adults-desktop-laptop-ownership
1.67 billion | The number of websites available on the internet in October 2018. |
More than 550 new sites are created every minute, although a majority of those receive few or no visitors. An estimated 4.2 billion people worldwide use the internet. BYU Marriott hosts forty-plus sites for programs, departments, and centers.
Sources: statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide and news.netcraft.com
90 | The percent of market share that Google has in the mobile search world. |
Although the company hasn’t released official numbers since 2012, reliable estimates say that Google now processes more than 40,000 search queries every second, which adds up to more than 3.4 billion searches a day and 1.2 trillion searches a year.
Source: BusinessInsider.com
1 | The number of petabytes of data that BYU exchanges over the internet every week. |
A petabyte is one thousand terabytes, and a terabyte is one thousand gigabytes. The Tanner Building alone exchanges about 174.6 terabytes of data every week. Almost 114,000 unique client devices connect to the BYU Wi-Fi network during a twenty-four-hour period, generating more than 2,468,000 sessions.
155,000 | The number of feet of network cable running through the Tanner Building. |
Those cables connect at least 2,184 devices throughout the building. BYU Marriott web and systems and support teams have opened and resolved more than 25,000 IT-support incidents since June 2008.
