Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
The phone that brought iTunes before the iPhone
The 2005 Motorola ROKR E1 could play iTunes songs before the iPhone existed, but it held just 100 tracks and was widely considered clunky.
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The hidden bar that keeps your spacebar level
A stabilizer bar under the spacebar links its ends, keeping one side from popping up when you press the other.
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Kodak's 1975 digital camera saved its pictures to cassette
Steve Sasson's prototype weighed about eight pounds and needed roughly 23 seconds to record a 100-by-100-pixel image. The picture then had to be played back…
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Astronauts drink recycled urine
Space stations distill and filter wastewater—including urine, sweat, and moisture from breath—because hauling water into orbit is expensive.
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Trackballs stay perfectly still while you spin a sphere
Because the device stays put, it takes up little desk space; you move the cursor by rolling the ball with your thumb.
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Zipline cables are strung with a distinct downward slant
A slight downhill slope lets gravity carry the rider: too little can leave them stalled, while too much can send them into the platform too fast.
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Tarballs are literally just glued-together files
Unlike a ZIP archive, a tarball bundles files end to end without compressing them, so it doesn't necessarily reduce their size.
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Crypto Airdrops Can Turn Your Wallet Into a Junk Drawer
Some crypto projects send unsolicited tokens to random wallets to inflate their user numbers. Getting rid of them can require a transaction fee—like paying to…
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Scissors apply severe shear force to separate materials
As the blades pass tightly together, they trap the material between them and shear it apart.
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The tiny garage where HP got its start
Hewlett and Packard started the company in a 12-by-18-foot Palo Alto shed with $538 in startup capital.
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Early typewriter ribbons were literally soaked in wet ink
Early typewriters used a fabric ribbon soaked in ink that had to be threaded through the machine—and could leave typists’ fingers stained.
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FM radio signals die immediately behind obstacles
FM signals generally travel by line of sight, so hills and buildings can weaken or block reception. They don't simply disappear the moment an obstacle gets in…
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Why Instagram photos were once square
The square format was meant to evoke old-school instant cameras. Instagram kept it until 2015, when it began allowing other image shapes.
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How vending machines know your snack really fell
A beam across the pickup tray checks whether the item actually dropped; if the beam remains unbroken, the machine may turn the coil again.
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When downloading a game meant waiting for a satellite
Games arrived by satellite broadcast and were available only during scheduled hours, so players had to tune in at specific times rather than play on demand.
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Desktop icons are visual shortcuts to hidden files
They point to the programs stored elsewhere on your computer, so deleting a desktop icon removes the shortcut—not the application itself.
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How speedrunners make inputs humans can’t match
Tool-assisted speedrunners use emulators to script inputs frame by frame, performing sequences with timing a human couldn’t reliably match.
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Frequency division creates distinct transmission lanes
Each signal gets its own frequency band, so receivers can tune in to one stream while filtering out others sharing the same medium.
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Why some display cables have unused wires
Some display cables include dedicated conductors for network signals, but few devices use that feature, leaving the wires idle.
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Mozilla's name hides a browser rivalry and a movie monster
The name combined the ambition to be a Mosaic killer with Godzilla. That helps explain the dinosaur identity associated with the early project: it was a…
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How chipmakers polish silicon perfectly flat
Chipmakers use chemical-mechanical polishing: a wafer presses against a rotating pad covered in an abrasive chemical slurry, smoothing uneven layers before…
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Zero-day exploits are stockpiled by secretive governments
Intelligence agencies may keep zero-day flaws secret instead of alerting software makers, preserving them for espionage. Until a flaw is patched, affected…
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Rotating propeller blades maintain peak flight efficiency
A propeller's blades work like rotating wings, so their angle determines how much air they bite. Adjustable-pitch blades change angle in flight to suit…
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When a computer beat every person for Time's top honor
Time named the personal computer “Machine of the Year,” rather than “Person of the Year.” The magazine's choice anticipated computers' growing role in tasks…
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