Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
Wikipedia literally has a physical monument dedicated to its anonymous contributors, located in the small town of Słubice, Poland, featuring four statues holding up a giant jigsaw puzzle globe.
Wikipedia literally has a physical monument dedicated to its anonymous contributors, located in the small town of Słubice, Poland, featuring four statues…
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English textile workers known as the Luddites violently smashed automated weaving machinery in the early nineteenth century not because they were stupid or hated progress, but…
English textile workers known as the Luddites violently smashed automated weaving machinery in the early nineteenth century not because they were stupid or…
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Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies by Douglas Hofstadter was the very first book ever sold by Amazon in 1995 to a customer who was completely unaware they were funding the…
Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies by Douglas Hofstadter was the very first book ever sold by Amazon in 1995 to a customer who was completely unaware they…
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Larry Page and Sergey Brin explicitly offered to sell their nascent search engine algorithm to Yahoo for a shockingly low one million dollars in 1998, but Yahoo executives firmly…
Larry Page and Sergey Brin explicitly offered to sell their nascent search engine algorithm to Yahoo for a shockingly low one million dollars in 1998, but…
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Almost every single modern microwave manufactured in the last two decades has a hidden mute function that completely disables those obnoxious, piercing beeps, usually activated…
Almost every single modern microwave manufactured in the last two decades has a hidden mute function that completely disables those obnoxious, piercing beeps,…
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Ampex Corporation introduced the first commercial video tape recorder in 1956, and this monstrous piece of technology known as the VRX-1000 was literally the size of a piano and…
Ampex Corporation introduced the first commercial video tape recorder in 1956, and this monstrous piece of technology known as the VRX-1000 was literally the…
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Engineers in the 1950s programmed early computers using punch cards, which were literal pieces of stiff paper with holes painstakingly punched in them to represent binary data.
Engineers in the 1950s programmed early computers using punch cards, which were literal pieces of stiff paper with holes painstakingly punched in them to…
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NASA engineers explicitly programmed the Curiosity rover to hum the Happy Birthday song to itself entirely alone on the freezing surface of Mars to celebrate its first year of operation.
NASA engineers explicitly programmed the Curiosity rover to hum the Happy Birthday song to itself entirely alone on the freezing surface of Mars to celebrate…
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Computer algorithms are technically named after Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a brilliant ninth-century Persian mathematician whose groundbreaking work fundamentally established the foundation of modern algebra.
Computer algorithms are technically named after Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a brilliant ninth-century Persian mathematician whose groundbreaking work…
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Private browsing features like Google Chrome's incognito mode were designed strictly to keep your web history hidden from other people who physically use the exact same device,…
Private browsing features like Google Chrome's incognito mode were designed strictly to keep your web history hidden from other people who physically use the…
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Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working at CERN in Switzerland, primarily as a tool for scientists to easily share academic research documents across different institutional computers.
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working at CERN in Switzerland, primarily as a tool for scientists to easily share academic research…
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Steve Jobs notoriously drove an unregistered silver Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG for years by actively exploiting a bizarre California legal loophole that gave him six months to attach a license plate.
Steve Jobs notoriously drove an unregistered silver Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG for years by actively exploiting a bizarre California legal loophole that gave him…
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More people on the planet currently have access to a mobile phone than have regular access to a safely managed, working indoor toilet.
More people on the planet currently have access to a mobile phone than have regular access to a safely managed, working indoor toilet. The United Nations has…
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Nintendo quietly programmed creepy hidden faces into the original Game Boy Camera accessory that would randomly appear and traumatize children in 1998.
Nintendo quietly programmed creepy hidden faces into the original Game Boy Camera accessory that would randomly appear and traumatize children in 1998. If a…
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Ethan Zuckerman wrote the original code for the internet's very first pop-up advertisement in the late nineties while working for Tripod, specifically designing a way for an ad…
Ethan Zuckerman wrote the original code for the internet's very first pop-up advertisement in the late nineties while working for Tripod, specifically…
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Jimmy Wales officially launched Wikipedia on January 15, 2001, and christened the entirely blank database by typing the standard programmer greeting "Hello, World!" as the very first edit in the site's vast history.
Jimmy Wales officially launched Wikipedia on January 15, 2001, and christened the entirely blank database by typing the standard programmer greeting "Hello,…
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Optical Character Recognition technology was heavily accelerated in the 1960s because the United States Postal Service was desperately trying to stop humans from manually reading…
Optical Character Recognition technology was heavily accelerated in the 1960s because the United States Postal Service was desperately trying to stop humans…
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Tinder originally utilized a modified version of the Elo rating system—the exact same mathematical formula used to rank professional chess players—to secretly score the physical attractiveness of its users.
Tinder originally utilized a modified version of the Elo rating system—the exact same mathematical formula used to rank professional chess players—to secretly…
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Winamp was the absolute king of MP3 players in the late nineties, famous for its customizable skins and the iconic audio greeting declaring that it really whips the llama's ass.
Winamp was the absolute king of MP3 players in the late nineties, famous for its customizable skins and the iconic audio greeting declaring that it really…
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SpaceX launched a giant wheel of Le Brouere cheese into low Earth orbit during the maiden flight of their Dragon spacecraft in 2010.
SpaceX launched a giant wheel of Le Brouere cheese into low Earth orbit during the maiden flight of their Dragon spacecraft in 2010. Elon Musk and his…
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Billions of dollars were spent globally in the late nineties to update computer systems in preparation for the Y2K bug, driven by the panic that software using two-digit years…
Billions of dollars were spent globally in the late nineties to update computer systems in preparation for the Y2K bug, driven by the panic that software…
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Antarctica had its very first official Tinder match in 2014 when an American research scientist boldly booted up the dating app and discovered another lonely researcher stationed…
Antarctica had its very first official Tinder match in 2014 when an American research scientist boldly booted up the dating app and discovered another lonely…
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Neil Armstrong's famous first words when stepping onto the lunar surface in 1969 were transmitted back to Earth using a radio transponder built by Motorola.
Neil Armstrong's famous first words when stepping onto the lunar surface in 1969 were transmitted back to Earth using a radio transponder built by Motorola.…
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Eric Michelman co-invented the mouse scroll wheel in 1995 specifically to make zooming in and out of Excel spreadsheets less annoying for accountants and business professionals;…
Eric Michelman co-invented the mouse scroll wheel in 1995 specifically to make zooming in and out of Excel spreadsheets less annoying for accountants and…
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