The start of the twenty first century has been a time when we are surrounded by vast amounts of computing power that we take for granted. There are obvious computers in our lives, the laptops we use or the desktops we'll find at work, but also the unobvious ones that we use every day like mobile phones, car navigation systems and set top boxes. In the 1960s things were very different, computers usually filled entire rooms, even the calculator was a bit of a cutting edge invention. Despite this the challenge had been set by President John F.