Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
A US nuclear-command system still used eight-inch floppies in 2016
A government audit identified the disks in a legacy system coordinating operational functions of the nuclear forces. Keeping old equipment running meant…
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Why doctors still use fax machines
Medical professionals still use fax machines to send patient charts, even though digital transfers can be instant.
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Why puncturing a phone battery can make it burn
A puncture can damage a phone battery and trigger a fire. Its reactive materials are kept contained by a thin outer casing.
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Making people change passwords can make the next one predictable
NIST warns against arbitrary periodic password changes because people often make tiny, guessable edits—such as increasing the number at the end. An attacker…
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An ancient earthquake detector pointed with a falling ball
Zhang Heng's second-century Chinese seismoscope used dragons arranged around a vessel, each associated with a direction. A released ball dropping toward a…
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A potato battery gets its electricity from the metals
Two different metals, such as zinc and copper, serve as electrodes while the potato provides a medium for charged particles to move. Chemical reactions drive…
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The first online flame wars were about detergent
On Usenet, university users wrote lengthy, intensely argued essays over the best brand of laundry detergent.
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Sending telegrams using raw voltage
Atmospheric electricity and even lightning could send current through 19th-century telegraph wires, sometimes allowing operators to transmit a message without…
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Mountains of obsolete charging cables
Old charging cables pile up as devices use different connectors over the years, leaving drawers full of wires for gadgets long since replaced.
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The software that never comes out
Vaporware describes heavily promoted software that is promised but never released, often remaining in development limbo.
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Deleting system files to save space
Early system files could look like disposable clutter, so users sometimes deleted them and left expensive computers unable to run.
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Fiber optics run on total internal reflection
Light repeatedly reflects inside the glass, staying within the fiber as it travels.
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When cactus spines replaced record needles
Some record listeners used sharp cactus spines as cheap, disposable replacements for metal needles.
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Commercial faxing briefly overlapped the samurai era
In 1865, Giovanni Caselli’s pantelegraph carried copies of writing and images between Paris and Lyon over telegraph wires. Japan’s samurai class still existed…
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How scraping a stick started a fire
A chemist scraped a dried lump of chemicals from a stirring stick against the floor, and it ignited—an accident that showed friction could light the mixture.
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This thermometer reads temperature by floating and sinking
In a Galileo thermometer, warming changes the surrounding liquid's density. Sealed glass floats with slightly different densities rise or fall as the liquid…
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A modern bank can still speak a language born in 1959
COBOL was designed for business computing and remains embedded in financial systems. The language's age is not the age of every line of code: programs have…
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Unused enterprise software bleeds companies dry
Companies can keep paying for premium licenses their employees never open, leaving a costly digital graveyard.
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Brian Eno made 84 tiny pieces while designing the Windows 95 sound
The brief demanded an inspiring, optimistic, futuristic piece only a few seconds long. Eno recalled enjoying the sharply defined problem after feeling stuck…
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Closing all browser tabs feels like a huge accomplishment
Closing a pile of open tabs can feel like a major accomplishment: all those unread articles disappear, along with the illusion that you were about to read them.
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Why younger people are ditching the laughing emoji
Many younger users treat 😂 as an embarrassing older-generation relic and use 💀 to signal laughter instead.
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Why some computers briefly reverse their fans
High-performance computing rigs briefly reverse their airflow at startup to blow accumulated buildup off their vents.
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Excel kept turning gene names into calendar dates
Identifiers such as SEPT2 could be automatically interpreted as dates when researchers opened spreadsheets. That changed scientific data without an obvious…
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One reply-all can trigger a company-wide email meltdown
One reply-all can set off a cascade: colleagues reply to complain or ask to be removed, flooding the company with even more messages.
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