This Card Could Launch a Rocket
- The Editors at Very Cool Facts
- May 31
- 2 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Once, it took rooms full of whirring machines and elite cryptographers to calculate wartime strategies. Today, the tiny chip in a singing birthday card holds more computing power.
Take a look at a few everyday items that quietly rival history’s most powerful machines:
The Washing Machine
It doesn’t launch rockets, but a smart washer’s onboard processor can out-compute the Apollo lunar lander. More power, fewer stains.
The Birthday Card
The chip inside a singing birthday card can run more calculations per second than all the Allied computers combined during World War II — machines like Colossus and ENIAC that took up entire rooms.
It could also launch the Apollo rocket and outthink the system that got us to the moon!
AI Can Design Chips
In 2021, Google’s AI completed a complex chip layout in under six hours — a task that typically takes expert engineers weeks or even months.
The result? A faster, more efficient processor, created not by a team… but by code.
DNA Can Store Digital Files
Scientists can now write instructions into DNA, turning cells into tiny computers.
These bio-programs can detect diseases, release medicine, and even carry out logic operations — all inside a living organism.
DNA can store over 200 petabytes in just one gram and lasts thousands of years. It may be the future of archival storage — hiding tomorrow’s files in biology’s oldest code.
We’re surrounded by quiet marvels — chips in cards, logic in laundry machines, and code in our very cells. What once required massive teams and machines now hides in everyday objects.
At Very Cool Facts, we love uncovering stories like these — and we’re proud to donate a portion of our net profits to causes that support curiosity, education, and innovation.
Explore more at VeryCoolFacts.com
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