units

Just finishing up Jacquard's Web, a book about the history of computers (I first typed that as computars. Sounds like something Godzilla would fight. Com-pu-taaaaar!) as they developed from the punch-card programmed weaving loom made by Jacquard. At the end of the book the author talks about how things on modern computers, namely sizes of windows and whatnot, are traceable back to the standards set by punchcards. This reminded me of Ryan telling me about how measurements on the space shuttle are traceable to horse and buggies, which determined the widths of train tracks, and the measurements propagated all the way through to spacecraft. I'm now curious to know what other standards have been set arbitrarily by now obsolete technology. There's something almost adorable about the ways we resist reinventing the wheel.