Sunday, May 03, 2009

What ever happened to the Jiffy?

Back in the 70's when I first started to use computers we were told that computer time was measured in Jiffys (a 60th of a second back then). It was still a commonly used term when I started at university in the 80's (I even ran into it in physics). But since then it seems to have vanished from everyday use, at least in my field.

2 comments:

Gervas Douglas said...

"I'll be back in Jiffy" could either indicate a return an exaggeratedly short space of time or else the intention of returning in a padded paper bag.

Steve Ross-Talbot said...

Perhaps we should add this to WS-Policy for SLA's measured in jiffys. Then we could have "I'd like the Pricing Service that can delivery prices in a jiffy" :-)