El Capitan: New supercomputer is the fastest

Fun facts, FFT was discovered back in 1965 based on the urgent necessity of discovering and detecting illegal nuke testing activities, just two years after the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) was signed in 1963 [1].

The first sentence statement in the article mentioning that United States and other nuclear powers committed to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1965 is wrong since the treaty was only signed in 1996 not in 1965 [2].

[1] The Algorithm That Almost Stopped The Development Of Nuclear Weapons:

https://www.iflscience.com/the-algorithm-that-almost-stopped...

[2] The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty:

https://www.ctbto.org/our-mission/the-treaty

Another fun fact, the priority for detecting nuclear testing led to seisometers all over the planet. So the detection the exact position and nature of any disturbance on the planet became radically better. This was quite the boon to anyone interested in earthquakes, not only can the earth quake be detected in 2D, but accurately in 3D. The number and accuracy is enough you can see where on each fault is, the thickness of the crust, and the outline of subduction zones in 3d. Pretty crazy to see enough detail to see where plates enter the mantle and melts.

Said sensors can also track sonic booms from secret supersonic planes, but governments don't like to talk about that.

Cool factoids! If you have any more to share, please do so.

Not OP, but maybe he was referring to https://duckduckgo.com/secret+plane+supersonic+booms+nevada+... leading to https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-04-17-me-607-st... amongst others.

True, but like many modern inventions the discovery of FFT was a rediscovery.

Precursors of FFT have existed in various mathematical works, starting with Gauss, but such algorithms were neglected before the existence of automatic computers that could apply them to problems big enough for the dependence of the solving time on the size of the problem to matter.

The Remarkable Story Behind The Most Important Algorithm Of All Time[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmgFG7PUHfo