Dambana, Village of Indigenous People of Sri Lanka

The indigenous settlement of Dambana, a little off Mahinyanganaya and 200 KM away from Colombo prides itself as the most pristine example of the lifestyle of the Veddah’s. On first visit to  this village that is home to 350 families and approximately 1675 persons, one is hoodwinked into believing that one has taken a trip back in time. However, on close inspection it is clear that the modern world is inescapable regardless of the claims one may make. This tribe led by Uruvarige Vannila Aththo, struggles to hold on to their cultural identity in a world that is fast impeding on their existence and proving their traditional methods defunct.

From the climate change that affects their crops and cultivation patterns, to the education they are expected to give their children and the tourists on whom they depend for existence, the outside world plays a larger role in their lives than they prefer. Proving that in this day and age you “can’t go home again” whether it is to your childhood without TV’s or your indigenous ways of inhabitance 37 thousand years ago.

Vedda Chief Uruwarige Wannila Aththo

Children from this village venture out early in life to be educated according to government regulations. Most parents from the settlement don’t oppose this in the hope that their children will have options as they grow older. A vast number of children from the settlement go to the Dambana School and mingle with those from the nearby village. “200 children study at this school over 75 percent of them are the children of the indigenous people, the rest are Sinhalese children from the villages,” Vice Principal of the Dambana School M.K. Shelton Nagasiri told the Daily Mirror.

Although some might hope that this mingling would result in a transferring of culture and tradition from the children of the Veddah’s to the village children, the opposite is true. “The children who come here mix with those from the village and therefore there is no language barrier. The  children are well versed in Sinhalese. They are expected to talk in Sinhalese in order to cope with the school  curriculum. We really have no control over what they speak and we can’t expect them to use their Veddhi dialect in the hope that this will be transferred to the village children,” a teacher at the Dambana SchoolT.M. Dharmaratne told the Daily Mirror.

Children of the Veddah’s tend to emulate the ways of the many tourists that visit the village. “When outsiders visit the children, the kids try to imitate their ways,” Nagasiri said. The Daily Mirror witnessed this first hand when children outside the school were interacting with a group of foreigners greeting them with lively “Good Mornings and how are you?” they seemed rather eager to entertain and amuse the tourists with their mastering of English.

The teachers themselves however are confident that despite this constant interaction with the outside world these  children will not attempt to transform their lives or the ways of their people. “My brother was Dambana Gunerwardene the first indigenous person to go to University. Just because he was educated doesn’t mean that he came back here and tried to change our community or our people,” Dharmaratne said.

Conversely Dharmaratne sees education as a means of improving their world and holding on to their heritage. “I went to the University and studied and now I teach here in order to better educate our children and give them more opportunities to develop themselves in every area including that of our culture,” Dharmaratne.

A greater part of the burden with regard to protecting their culture is in the hands of the leaders of the tribe. The son of the present Vannila Aththo and the next in line to take on leadership of the tribe is Uruvarige Gunabandila Aththo, who sees the acute responsibility in passing down the traditional ways of his people. “I have three little girls and we never  let the girls out of the house in the old days but now things are different. The young people have ventured out, so many things have changed. However we try to educate our children about our culture and hope that they will carry it forward to the generations to come,” he said.

Dotted around the compounds and homes of these people are intricately created ornaments, made according to traditional methods. Although these are for sale to the number of tourists that visit, Gunabandila Aththo takes pride in the fact that his children tend to  speedily catch onto these crafts and meticulously remember the stories of their ancestry. “When the children are at home for the school holidays we talk to them about our ancestry and traditions and teach them various crafts. They catch on to these very fast and when we teach them once or twice they are able to do it all by themselves,” he explains.

Gunabandila Aththo accepts that change is inevitable in any culture and takes a “what will be, will be” attitude towards these changes, unlike most, he does not believe  that keeping the outside world is the best way by  which to protect their identity. “When it comes to language we teach our children our language at home there is no special institute for them to learn this from. And when they learn Sinhalese through the government education system they get it mixed up with our language and parts get added and deducted. In future our dialect may change as it has from past generations .However I see no reason  to worry about that now; change will happen when it happens,” he says.  In certain areas venturing out has become a clear necessity rather than a choice or luxury. With regard to healthcare, traditional methods tend to fail as the community mingles with society and their environment inescapably is polluted by disease. When a bear attacked the brother of the present Vannila Aththo there was no choice but to seek the help of western medicine in order to save his life. “A bear attacked me in the woods and my eye and shoulder were injured badly. At this time they took me to the Kandy Hospital where I received treatment. We have medicine and treatment but due to the seriousness of the situation and my eye coming out of the socket I had to go to the hospital,” he said.

Certain changes on the other hand have been accepted with open arms by the community. For instance modern technology and tourism have permeated to a greater extent. The youngsters of the tribe tend to have cell phones with them and use these to take pictures  for entertainment. For these youth the traditional bow and arrow are no longer games, it is the livelihood of their fathers which they wish to avoid.  However the elders avoid the mention of these items and stand fast that they are not used in their village. “We have seen mobile devices and people using them but for us these are of no  use. We have never used them in our community  and even if we did begin using them who are we to talk to?” said  Uruwarige Gunabandiya brother of the Present Vannila-aththo. Yet there is evidence that cannot be hidden , despite their best efforts; the Kohomba shampoo packets around the village well or the Fair and Lovely tube next to a tea cup in the house, as well as the number of cell phones in the hands of the youngsters prove that the outside world has now become inescapable.

Sadly though the youngsters are expected to keep this under-wrap; they are constantly hiding their phones or avoiding the use of Sinhala when speaking, in fear that their elders will reprimand them for this. The elders see a far greater benefit than simple cultural protection by sticking to their traditional ways. To them the more traditional  they seem to be ,the larger the number of tourists who come to see them.  Tourism plays a large role in the economy and everyday lives of these people; they rely on the money that comes in from visitors to sustain them and structure their lives to look perfect to the outside world. The village is mostly empty during  daytime only those dressed in traditional clothing are allowed to linger for long, so long as they adhere to the roles expected of them.

Although invaded by the outside world to such an extent that their lives have now degenerated to role playing, the people of Dambana gave us a glimpse into the lifestyles of our ancestors. Modern technology, climate change, health risks and tourism may intrude on their existence yet it is unable to impede on the pride they have in being part of a tribe that has been in existence for over 37 thousand years.

By Dianne Silva 

August 07, 2009 

World Famous Films In The World 2017

1. Wormwood

Errol Morris’s Wormwood is a groundbreaking hybrid of non-fictional and fictional storytelling modes—although no matter how you classify it, it’s the year’s towering cinematic achievement. The filmmaker’s second release of the year (after the charming The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography) recounts the tangled saga of Frank Olson, a government biochemist whose mysterious 1953 death out a New York City hotel room window was first deemed a suicide, then the byproduct of a CIA mind-control program, and then something more sinister still. With Olson’s sleuthing son Eric as his guide, Morris immerses himself in this thorny true-crime case, using dramatized sequences—starring a phenomenal Peter Sarsgaard, Molly Parker, Tim Blake Nelson, and Bob Balaban—for his 1953-set sequences, and documentary interviews and material for the rest. Wormwood is assembled as a hallucinatory, psychologically penetrating collage and plays like a pulse-pounding thriller, a damning indictment of institutional malfeasance, and a chilling portrait of both self-destructive obsession and the elusiveness of truth. Simultaneously released as both a 241-minute theatrical movie and a six-part Netflix mini-series, it’s a masterpiece that breathes new life into the documentary form, and further confirms Morris’ peerless greatness. Consequently, it’s our pick for the best film of 2017.

2.Lady Macbeth

Hell hath no fury like a woman oppressed, as is shockingly born out by William Oldroyd's phenomenal feature directing debut—an adaptation not of the Bard but, rather, of Nikolai Leskov's 1865 novel Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. In a breakout performance of coiled intensity and ruthless cunning, Florence Pugh is Katherine, a young woman sold into marriage to an older landowner (Paul Hilton), whose nastiness is only surpassed by that of his domineering father (Christopher Fairbank). That union is rife with problems from the start, though despite the film's Shakespeare-referencing title, the path it wends is an original and horrifying one. Suggesting a period piece version of a film noir saga as envisioned by Stanley Kubrick, this twisted feminist drama is rooted in contentious racial- and gender-warfare issues, employing a meticulous formalism to recount its cutthroat story about Katherine's at-any-cost attempts to attain liberation. Like its protagonist, it's a film that's placid and refined on the outside, ferocious and pitiless on the inside.

3. Dunkirk

Christopher Nolan dispenses with the exposition in favor of immersive aesthetics with Dunkirk, a dramatic account of the WWII evacuation of Dunkirk, France's beaches in 1941. Fractured between three interwoven time frames and perspectives (land, sea and air), and shot almost entirely in 70mm IMAX—which stands as the ideal format in which to see this overwhelmingly experiential work—Nolan's wartime tale cares little for character detail or contextual background. Instead, it thrusts viewers into the chaos engulfing a variety of infantrymen (including Fionn Whitehead and Harry Styles), commanders (primarily, Kenneth Branagh), fighter pilots (led by Tom Hardy), and civilian boatman (notably, Mark Rylance), all of whose sacrifice, selfishness, cowardice, and heroism is thrown into sharp relief by Nolan's grand set pieces. Through its towering scale, superb staging, and inventive structure, Dunkirk melds the micro and the macro with a formal daring that's breathtaking, along the way underscoring the unrivaled power of experiencing a truly epic film on a big screen. 

4. Marjorie Prime

The year’s most moving film, Michael Almereyda’s adaptation of Jordan Harrison’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated play takes a Twilight Zone-ish concept into surprisingly profound, poignant territory. At a seaside home, Marjorie (Lois Smith) spends her final days conversing with a holographic projection that resembles her late husband Walter (Jon Hamm), all as her daughter Tess (Geena Davis) and son-in-law Jon (Tim Robbins) cope with her failing health and their own personal and marital issues. In Marjorie and Walter’s conversations—the latter’s personality shaped by information given to it by its human owners/programmers—as well as later chats between other people and holograms, Marjorie Prime plumbs not only complex familial dynamics but also the thorny intricacies of memory: how we prioritize, shape, erase, and warp them to fit more comforting conceptions of ourselves and our lives. It’s a superb, subtle portrait of conscious and unconscious (self-) deception, perpetrated so we might grapple with the pain, disappointment and tragedy of existence—and how, as a result, we create a dialogue that gives birth to a living, breathing new future.

5. Columbus

As strikingly unique as the Indiana buildings its characters visit, Columbus is a boy-meets-girl tale that cares less for romance than for the unlikely, intrinsic ties that bind seemingly disparate souls. Arriving in Columbus to tend to his ailing, and estranged, architect father, Jin (John Cho) falls into a friendship with younger Casey (Haley Lu Richardson), who’s set aside personal dreams in order to stay home and care for her recovering-addict mother (Michelle Forbes). While admiring Haley’s favorite local architectural landmarks, the duo engage in conversations about family, obligation, and ambition in the process locating the beauty—and power—of those deeper ideas, and feelings, lurking beneath familiar surfaces. The feature debut of director Kogonada, it’s a work of astounding formal beauty and precision, one that sees universality even in difference, and which—courtesy of the charming rapport shared by the fantastic Cho and Richardson—is infused with a pitch-perfect air of both melancholy and hope. To borrow a description used by one of its characters, it’s asymmetrical and yet balanced. 

6. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore

Suspenseful and hilarious, despondent and optimistic, I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore is a masterful genre film, one that immerses itself in the small, painful indignities of everyday life, and then casts the battle against those wrongs as a serio-comic odyssey of sleuthing, heavy metal, and nunchakus. After her house is burglarized, nurse Ruth (Melanie Lynsky) partners with her rat-tailed martial-arts-loving neighbor Tony (Elijah Wood) to recover her stolen belongings. Their ensuing black-comedy adventure is grimy, bloody, and ridiculous, as director Macon Blair (best known for his performances in Jeremy Saulnier's Blue Ruin and Green Room) pitches his material as an absurdist neo-noir saga about combatting existential despair. Courtesy of a great Lynsky performance that's equal parts miserable and furious, I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore (which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance before premiering exclusively on Netflix) finds humor and horror in the notion that "everyone is an asshole"—and then locates hope in the closing-note idea that, rather than worrying about them, life is best spent in the company of those precious few who aren't.

7. Okja

Bong Joon Ho's Okja is many things at once: a rollicking kid's fable about the bond between a young South Korean girl (An Seo-hyun) and her genetically enhanced super-pig (named Okja); a satiric critique of the corporate food industry; a wacko comedy about transcending cultural boundaries; and a fantastical adventure full of kidnappings and chases, buoyed by over-the-top performances from Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal, and culminating with a Times Square spectacular and a Holocaust-esque trip to the slaughterhouse. Most of all, however, it's the year's most exhilaratingly idiosyncratic work, indebted to the spirit of both Steven Spielberg and Hayao Miyazaki, and energized by the distinctive signature of its director. Vacillating between mirthful, madcap and morose on a dime, Bong's latest—about the heroine trying to reunite with Okja after the animal is reclaimed by the conglomerate that created her—is both all over the place and yet assuredly coherent. Whether viewed on a big screen or via Netflix (its exclusive distributor), it's a wondrous whatsit unlike anything you've quite seen before.

8. Phantom Thread

It comes as little surprise that Daniel Day-Lewis’ second pairing with his There Will Be Blood director Paul Thomas Anderson is a triumph, but that doesn’t preclude Phantom Thread from upending expectations. An enthralling, rapturous psychodrama set in the world of 1950s London high fashion, the duo’s latest collaboration stars Day-Lewis as Reynolds Woodcock, a celebrated dressmaker who lives by a prim-and-proper daily (and artistic) routine. Such orderliness is toppled by his relationship with a waitress, Alma (newcomer Vicky Krieps), who soon becomes his model and his companion in his house, which he also shares with his severely no-nonsense sister-partner Cyril (a transfixing Lesley Manville). Marked by lithe tracking shots, piercing close-ups, sumptuous transitional fades, and evocative use of Jonny Greenwood’s classical score, Anderson’s film is nothing short of breathtaking, and his leading man’s performance is (as usual) multifaceted and mesmerizing. More captivating still, however, is the script’s canny investigation of the volatile (if well-ordered) interplay of romantic power and desire, which develops in thorny, complex, and always unpredictable ways.

9. The Lost City of Z

Acclaimed American filmmaker James Gray (Two Lovers, The Immigrant) ventures for the first time outside New York City—and into the dark heart of the Amazon—with The Lost City of Z, an adaptation of David Grann's 2009 non-fiction book of the same name. Such a geographic relocation, however, does little to alter Gray's fundamental artistic course, as his latest—about early 20th century British explorer Percy Fawcett's (Charlie Hunnam) repeated efforts to locate a lost South American civilization that he believed to be more advanced than any previously discovered—boasts his usual classical aesthetics and empathetic drama. Energized by a hint of Apocalypse Now's into-the-wild madness, this entrancing period piece is at once a grand adventure, a social critique about class and intolerance, and a nuanced character study about an individual caught between his love for—and desire to escape—his environment. Led by Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, and Sienna Miller, it's also one of the finest-acted dramas of the year.

10. I Called Him Morgan

Lee Morgan was one of the mid-century jazz scene's brightest lights, until his life was cut tragically short when his wife Helen fatally gunned him down in a New York City nightclub on the snowy night of February 18, 1972. Using copious archival footage, newly recorded interviews with friends and collaborators, and, most illuminating of all, a tape-recorded 1996 interview with Helen made one month before her death, Kasper Collin's transfixing documentary I Called Him Morgan recounts this sad real-life saga as two separate stories—Lee's and Helen's—that eventually dovetailed, intertwined, and then combusted in horrific fashion. Abandonment, drug abuse, and betrayal all factor into this sorrowful equation, as Collin assuredly conveys the messy stew of passion, need, ego, loneliness, and fury that eventually begat such a calamity. In doing so, it recognizes the jazzy spirit of Lee and Helen's doomed romance—and, also, the riffing-our-way-forward nature of life itself.

Source: https://www.esquire.com

The History of Christmas Trees

The evergreen fir tree has traditionally been used to celebrate winter festivals (pagan and Christian) for thousands of years. Pagans used branches of it to decorate their homes during the winter solstice, as it made them think of the spring to come. The Romans used Fir Trees to decorate their temples at the festival of Saturnalia. Christians use it as a sign of everlasting life with God.

Nobody is really sure when Fir trees were first used as Christmas trees. It probably began about 1000 years ago in Northern Europe. Many early Christmas Trees seem to have been hung upside down from the ceiling using chains (hung from chandeliers/lighting hooks).

Other early Christmas Trees, across many parts of northern Europe, were cherry or hawthorn plants (or a branch of the plant) that were put into pots and brought inside so they would hopefully flower at Christmas time. If you couldn't afford a real plant, people made pyramids of woods and they were decorated to look like a tree with paper, apples and candles. Sometimes they were carried around from house to house, rather than being displayed in a home.

It's possible that the wooden pyramid trees were meant to be like Paradise Trees. These were used in medieval German Mystery or Miracle Plays that were acted out in front of Churches on Christmas Eve. In early church calendars of saints, 24th December was Adam and Eve's day. The Paradise Tree represented the Garden of Eden. It was often paraded around the town before the play started, as a way of advertising the play. The plays told Bible stories to people who could not read.

The first documented use of a tree at Christmas and New Year celebrations is argued between the cities of Tallinn in Estonia and Riga in Latvia! Both claim that they had the first trees; Tallinn in 1441 and Riga in 1510. Both trees were put up by the 'Brotherhood of Blackheads' which was an association of local unmarried merchants, ship owners, and foreigners in Livonia (what is now Estonia and Latvia).

Little is known about either tree apart from that they were put in the town square, were danced around by the Brotherhood of Blackheads and were then set on fire. This is like the custom of the Yule Log. The word used for the 'tree' could also mean a mast or pole, tree might have been like a 'Paradise Tree' or a tree-shaped wooden candelabra rather than a 'real' tree.

In the town square of Riga, the capital of Latvia, there is a plaque which is engraved with "The First New Year's Tree in Riga in 1510", in eight languages. You can find out more about the Riga Tree from this website: www.firstchristmastree.com

A picture from Germany in 1521 which shows a tree being paraded through the streets with a man riding a horse behind it. The man is dressed a bishop, possibly representing St. Nicholas.

In 1584, the historian Balthasar Russow wrote about a tradition, in Riga, of a decorated fir tree in the market square where the young men “went with a flock of maidens and women, first sang and danced there and then set the tree aflame”. There's a record of a small tree in Breman, Germany from 1570. It is described as a tree decorated with "apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers". It was displayed in a 'guild-house' (the meeting place for a society of business men in the city).

The first person to bring a Christmas Tree into a house, in the way we know it today, may have been the 16th century German preacher Martin Luther. A story is told that, one night before Christmas, he was walking through the forest and looked up to see the stars shining through the tree branches. It was so beautiful, that he went home and told his children that it reminded him of Jesus, who left the stars of heaven to come to earth at Christmas. Some people say this is the same tree as the 'Riga' tree, but it isn't! The Riga tree originally took place a few decades earlier.

The custom of having Christmas trees could well have travelled along the Baltic sea, from Latvia to Germany. In the 1400s and 1500s, the countries which are now Germany and Latvia were them part of two larger empires which were neighbors.

Another story says that St. Boniface of Crediton (a village in Devon, UK) left England and traveled to Germany to preach to the pagan German tribes and convert them to Christianity. He is said to have come across a group of pagans about to sacrifice a young boy while worshipping an oak tree. In anger, and to stop the sacrifice, St. Boniface is said to have cut down the oak tree and, to his amazement, a young fir tree sprang up from the roots of the oak tree. St. Boniface took this as a sign of the Christian faith and his followers decorated the tree with candles so that St. Boniface could preach to the pagans at night.

There is another legend, from Germany, about how the Christmas Tree came into being, it goes:

Once on a cold Christmas Eve night, a forester and his family were in their cottage gathered round the fire to keep warm. Suddenly there was a knock on the door. When the forester opened the door, he found a poor little boy standing on the door step, lost and alone. The forester welcomed him into his house and the family fed and washed him and put him to bed in the youngest sons own bed (he had to share with his brother that night!). The next morning, Christmas Morning, the family were woken up by a choir of angels, and the poor little boy had turned into Jesus, the Christ Child. The Christ Child went into the front garden of the cottage and broke a branch off a Fir tree and gave it to the family as a present to say thank you for looking after him. So ever since them, people have remembered that night by bringing a Christmas Tree into their homes!

In Germany, the first Christmas Trees were decorated with edible things, such as gingerbread and gold covered apples. Then glass makers made special small ornaments similar to some of the decorations used today. In 1605 an unknown German wrote: "At Christmas they set up fir trees in the parlours of Strasbourg and hang thereon roses cut out of many-colored paper, apples, wafers, gold foil, sweets, etc."

At first, a figure of the Baby Jesus was put on the top of the tree. Over time it changed to an angel/fairy that told the shepherds about Jesus, or a star like the Wise Men saw.

The first Christmas Trees came to Britain sometime in the 1830s. They became very popular in 1841, when Prince Albert (Queen Victoria's German husband) had a Christmas Tree set up in Windsor Castle. In 1848, drawing of "The Queen's Christmas tree at Windsor Castle" was published in the Illustrated London News. The drawing was republished in Godey's Lady's Book, Philadelphia in December 1850 (but they removed the Queen's crown and Prince Albert's moustache to make it look 'American'!).

The publication of the drawing helped Christmas Trees become popular in the UK and USA.

In Victorian times, the tree would have been decorated with candles to represent stars. In many parts of Europe, candles are still used to decorate Christmas trees.

World First Computer

First Computers

The first substantial computer was the giant ENIAC machine by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator) used a word of 10 decimal digits instead of binary ones like previous automated calculators/computers. ENIAC was also the first machine to use more than 2,000 vacuum tubes, using nearly 18,000 vacuum tubes. Storage of all those vacuum tubes and the machinery required to keep the cool took up over 167 square meters (1800 square feet) of floor space. Nonetheless, it had punched-card input and output and arithmetically had 1 multiplier, 1 divider-square rooter, and 20 adders employing decimal "ring counters," which served as adders and also as quick-access (0.0002 seconds) read-write register storage.

The executable instructions composing a program were embodied in the separate units of ENIAC, which were plugged together to form a route through the machine for the flow of computations. These connections had to be redone for each different problem, together with presetting function tables and switches. This "wire-your-own" instruction technique was inconvenient, and only with some license could ENIAC be considered programmable; it was, however, efficient in handling the particular programs for which it had been designed. ENIAC is generally acknowledged to be the first successful high-speed electronic digital computer (EDC) and was productively used from 1946 to 1955. A controversy developed in 1971, however, over the patentability of ENIAC's basic digital concepts, the claim being made that another U.S. physicist, John V. Atanasoff, had already used the same ideas in a simpler vacuum-tube device he built in the 1930s while at Iowa State College. In 1973, the court found in favor of the company using Atanasoff claim and Atanasoff received the acclaim he rightly deserved.

Progression of Hardware

In the 1950's two devices would be invented that would improve the computer field and set in motion the beginning of the computer revolution. The first of these two devices was the transistor. Invented in 1947 by William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain of Bell Labs, the transistor was fated to oust the days of vacuum tubes in computers, radios, and other electronics.

The vacuum tube, used up to this time in almost all the computers and calculating machines, had been invented by American physicist Lee De Forest in 1906. The vacuum tube, which is about the size of a human thumb, worked by using large amounts of electricity to heat a filament inside the tube until it was cherry red. One result of heating this filament up was the release of electrons into the tube, which could be controlled by other elements within the tube. De Forest's original device was a triode, which could control the flow of electrons to a positively charged plate inside the tube. A zero could then be represented by the absence of an electron current to the plate; the presence of a small but detectable current to the plate represented a one.

Vacuum tubes were highly inefficient, required a great deal of space, and needed to be replaced often. Computers of the 1940s and 50s had 18,000 tubes in them and housing all these tubes and cooling the rooms from the heat produced by 18,000 tubes was not cheap. The transistor promised to solve all of these problems and it did so. Transistors, however, had their problems too. The main problem was that transistors, like other electronic components, needed to be soldered together. As a result, the more complex the circuits became, the more complicated and numerous the connections between the individual transistors and the likelihood of faulty wiring increased.

In 1958, this problem too was solved by Jack St. Clair Kilby of Texas Instruments. He manufactured the first integrated circuit or chip. A chip is really a collection of tiny transistors which are connected together when the transistor is manufactured. Thus, the need for soldering together large numbers of transistors was practically nullified; now only connections were needed to other electronic components. In addition to saving space, the speed of the machine was now increased since there was a diminished distance that the electrons had to follow.

Mainframes to PCs

The 1960s saw large mainframe computers become much more common in large industries and with the US military and space program. IBM became the unquestioned market leader in selling these large, expensive, error-prone, and very hard to use machines.

A veritable explosion of personal computers occurred in the early 1970s, starting with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak exhibiting the first Apple II at the First West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco. The Apple II boasted built-in BASIC programming language, color graphics, and a 4100 character memory for only $1298. Programs and data could be stored on an everyday audio-cassette recorder. Before the end of the fair, Wozniak and Jobs had secured 300 orders for the Apple II and from there Apple just took off.

Also introduced in 1977 was the TRS-80. This was a home computer manufactured by Tandy Radio Shack. In its second incarnation, the TRS-80 Model II, came complete with a 64,000 character memory and a disk drive to store programs and data on. At this time, only Apple and TRS had machines with disk drives. With the introduction of the disk drive, personal computer applications took off as a floppy disk was a most convenient publishing medium for distribution of software.

IBM, which up to this time had been producing mainframes and minicomputers for medium to large-sized businesses, decided that it had to get into the act and started working on the Acorn, which would later be called the IBM PC. The PC was the first computer designed for the home market which would feature modular design so that pieces could easily be added to the architecture. Most of the components, surprisingly, came from outside of IBM, since building it with IBM parts would have cost too much for the home computer market. When it was introduced, the PC came with a 16,000 character memory, keyboard from an IBM electric typewriter, and a connection for tape cassette player for $1265.

By 1984, Apple and IBM had come out with new models. Apple released the first generation Macintosh, which was the first computer to come with a graphical user interface(GUI) and a mouse. The GUI made the machine much more attractive to home computer users because it was easy to use. Sales of the Macintosh soared like nothing ever seen before. IBM was hot on Apple's tail and released the 286-AT, which with applications like Lotus 1-2-3, a spreadsheet, and Microsoft Word, quickly became the favourite of business concerns.

That brings us up to about ten years ago. Now people have their own personal graphics workstations and powerful home computers. The average computer a person might have in their home is more powerful by several orders of magnitude than a machine like ENIAC. The computer revolution has been the fastest growing technology in man's history.

Source: https://homepage.cs.uri.edu

Top 10 Vehicles Cemeteries

Chittagong Ship Breaking Yard

At this expansive ship yard in Bangladesh, hundreds of ships are left to rot and eventually be cultivated for scrap metal. The yard employs thousands of Bangladeshi citizens but is notorious for its unsafe working environment and poor health records (the yard is full of lead, arsenic and toxic mud). One estimate claims that one fifth of the world's discarded ships end up here. The yard is such a desolate and strange sight that they even shot a scene for the "Avengers: Age of Ultron" movie there.

Arizona Bone Yard

Found in the middle of the Arizona desert is one of the largest aircraft storage locations in the world. With more than 4,200 aircrafts (valued at around $35 billion) left out in the desert elements, the Arizona Boneyard has become famous for its eerie sights — you can even take a tour of the grounds!

New York Motorcycle Graveyard

Once upon a time in Lockport, New York, an abandoned warehouse was filled to the brim with old motorcycles. A man only known as Kohl cultivated a huge collection of the vehicles before selling them all in 1997 and passing away in 2002. After that, the warehouse was condemned by the authorities and many of the bikes were sent away to be used for scrap metal and spare parts — but not before photographs of the collection went viral and allowed many motorcycle fans to seek out the collection and buy some antique spare parts.

RAF Folkingham

RAF Folkingham is a former Royal Air Force station located about 120 miles north of London. It's utilized today to store hundreds of vehicles that are used to source spare parts. Some of the vehicles here date all the way back to the days of World War II — caterpillar bulldozers, fuel bowsers, cranes, tractors lorries and armored vehicles among them. One of the DUKW amphibious vehicles on the site was even used in the D-Day landings.

Chernobyl Vehicle Graveyard

Due to radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986, many unusable vehicles have been sitting abandoned in huge vehicle graveyards for years. Rassokha is the name of the largest vehicle cemetery found in the Ukraine.

Barry Scrapyard

In the year 1955, the British Railways decided to dispose of a large portion of old vehicles they owned. With around 650,000 wagons and 16,000 steam locomotives on the way out, many of the trains were sold to private scrapyards just to get rid of them quickly. One of these small yards was the Woodham Brothers scrapyard in South Wales. Many of the steam locomotives here were left out in the open and eventually became a tourist destination due to its strange sights. Individuals interested in antique steam trains began coming from all over to witness and preserve the vehicles. Many still remain at the scrapyard.

Nouadhibou Abandoned Shipyard

Nouadhibou is the second-largest city in the very poor country of Mauritania. Although the country is struggling financially, the port of the city is still one of the best places for fishermen in the world. Starting back in the 1980s, local citizens used to leave their unwanted vessels in the shallow area of the bay. Over the course of time, larger ships from all over the world would appear in the dumping grounds, too. The biggest ship found here is the United Malika, which was washed ashore in 2003. The government has said that they're planning to use the abandoned ships to create an artificial reef in farther out waters, but the country has yet to witness any actual action from these talk

Soviet Submarines On The Kola Peninsula

In the northern part of Russia in the Nezametnaya Cove sits abandoned Soviet military submarines from as far back as the early 1970s. The Soviet shipyards didn't actually disassemble old submarines, instead choosing to leave them in the Kola Peninsula.

Chatillon Forest Car Graveyard

Although this location was cleared back in 2010, it still merits a spot on this list because of just how spooky it was. This small Belgian town was home to over 500 vehicles covered in the decaying elements. Most believe that the cars originated back to World War II when American soldiers left their cars instead of paying to ship them back to America upon the war's end

Train Graveyard in Bolivia

The Salar de Uyuni located in the stretch of Andes in Bolivia is the largest salt plain in the world. Over a century ago, a railway network was built to accommodate the growing mining industry. Decades later, though, the railroads became unused after the mining economy collapsed. Abandoned steam trains still exist, sitting out to rot in the sun and heat of the desert.

Source: https://www.odometer.com