We study the behavior of the smallest possible constants d(a, b) and dn in Hardy's inequalities b a 1 x x a f (t)dt 2 dx ≤ d(a, b) b a f 2 (x)dx and n k=1 1 k k j=1 a j 2 ≤ dn n k=1 a 2 k .The exact constant d(a, b) and the exact rate of convergence of dn are established and the extremal function and the "almost extremal" sequence are found.