Whetstone

For two decades the standard measure of computer speed was named after a Leicestershire village.

Harold Curnow and Brian Wichmann built the benchmark at the British National Physical Laboratory in the early 1970s, basing its instruction mix on statistics gathered from real ALGOL programs. It took its name from the Whetstone ALGOL compiler, written at an English Electric site in Whetstone, near Leicester. Results were quoted in kilo-Whetstone instructions per second, and the later integer benchmark was named Dhrystone as a pun on it.