Trivia
HardThe First Volunteer Computing Project Was Focused On?

Answer: Finding Prime Numbers
Volunteer computing is a combination of three things: volunteers donating unused computer time, distributed computing software to coordinate the number crunching across thousands of machines, and a problem to solve. Over the years, there have been multiple high profile volunteer-driven distributed computing projects like SETI@home (wherein volunteers use their computers to analyze the huge volume of data generated by the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence institute’s telescopes) and Folding@home (a distributed computing project focused on protein folding).
The original volunteer distributed computing project predates both of the prior examples, however, and takes us back to January 1996. There we find the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, or GIMPS for short, a volunteer computing project that harnessed computers across the world via the internet to help crunch through calculations to determine larger and larger Mersenne prime numbers. Since the project started (it’s still, some decades later, chugging along), it has discovered 17 prime numbers, 15 of which were the largest known prime numbers at the time of their discovery.
The project coordinators keep track of data about the volunteer computers including what processor the computer that runs the final number-discovering-calculation has. Looking over a list of the processors and the size of the prime numbers they discovered is both a stroll through the history of computing and a testament to how much computing power has been invested in the project. The first prime discovered by the project was in November of 1996, has 420,921 digits, and was discovered using a Pentium I (90 MHz) processor. The latest number, as of the publication of this trivia question, was discovered in December of 2018, has 24,862,048 digits, and was discovered using an Intel Core i5-4590T processor.
Trivia
EasyIn The 1930s, It Was A Fad Among College Students to Swallow?
Trivia
HardIf You Want To Survive An Unprotected Spacewalk You’d Better Not?
Trivia
HardIn The 1990s, A Man Sued Pepsi For Their Failure To Award Him Which Of The Following As A Contest Prize?
Trivia
HardDuring World War II, A Hungarian Scientist Hid His Colleagues’ Nobel Prizes In?
Trivia
HardThe Country With The Most Indigenous Languages Is?
Trivia
HardThe Best Selling Vehicle In The World Is The?
Trivia
Very Hard1980s Cult Classic Film Escape From New York Was Actually Filmed Primarily In?
Trivia
EasyWhat Was The First YouTube Video To Reach One Billion Views?
Trivia
HardWhich First Lady Started The White House Tradition Of Themed Christmas Trees?
Trivia
HardWhich Comic Book Artist’s Ashes Were Mixed Into Ink Used To Print Comics?