It proved that you could compress data effectively without knowing its statistical properties beforehand. This eventually led to the LZMA algorithm used in 7-Zip , which achieves the high ratios often seen in archives like "Stanislav.7z".
In some advanced mathematics and computer science circles, archives named after Eastern European researchers often contain papers on or Asymptotic Geometric Analysis . A classic "interesting" paper often cited in these collections is: Stanislav.7z
by Jacob Ziv and Abraham Lempel (1977). This paper introduced LZ77 , the bedrock of modern compression. It proved that you could compress data effectively