Another fun read is the listing of original developers of Mathematica in the Addison-Wesley "Mathematica" book and what they worked on.
http://omohundro.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/wolfram88_mathe...
http://omohundro.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/wolfram88_mathe...
Plot3D[Abs[Zeta[x + I y]] , {x, -2, 6}, {y, 2, 35}] takes 0.213483 on my laptop :)