Our British colleagues in The Register have engaged in an amusing historical year-geek: estimate the amount of information contained in the famous Bayeux Tapestry. Quick reminder for those who skipped school history: the embroidery tells the conquest of England by William the Conqueror, which ended with the defeat of Hastings in 1066.
The canvas support for the embroidery is 70 meters long and 50 cm high. The fineness of the embroidery would be about 47 points per inch on a range of 8 colors. Assuming a coding of 1-bit color, the amount of information contained in the embroidery would be to 2.429 Mb A little less than two 3.5 "floppy.
It is estimated that the monks have taken about ten years to make the tapestry. At the rate of 8 hours per day and 350 working days per year, we calculate that the Tapestry was embroidered with about 10.8 bytes per hour. And if we assume that 5 monks embroidered in parallel, we find writing speed by a monk of 2.17 byte per hour.
Just a reminder: a hard disk writing between 50 and 100 million bytes per second. It is therefore understandable why nobody says its data to the monks. It is however an area where it soundly beats the modern technology: sustainability. While you can still see the Bayeux Tapestry 1000 years after its creation, it is very unlikely that we can do that with our hard drives . 
The canvas support for the embroidery is 70 meters long and 50 cm high. The fineness of the embroidery would be about 47 points per inch on a range of 8 colors. Assuming a coding of 1-bit color, the amount of information contained in the embroidery would be to 2.429 Mb A little less than two 3.5 "floppy.
It is estimated that the monks have taken about ten years to make the tapestry. At the rate of 8 hours per day and 350 working days per year, we calculate that the Tapestry was embroidered with about 10.8 bytes per hour. And if we assume that 5 monks embroidered in parallel, we find writing speed by a monk of 2.17 byte per hour.
Just a reminder: a hard disk writing between 50 and 100 million bytes per second. It is therefore understandable why nobody says its data to the monks. It is however an area where it soundly beats the modern technology: sustainability. While you can still see the Bayeux Tapestry 1000 years after its creation, it is very unlikely that we can do that with our hard drives .
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