Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
Discord began as a failed game's chat tool
The dominant chat app for gamers only exists because the founders made a terrible multiplayer arena game nobody wanted to play. However, the voice…
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When organizing work feels like doing it
By allowing users to endlessly drag colorful digital cards from one column to another, it perfectly simulates the feeling of getting things done. Entire…
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GTA V's map dwarfs Manhattan and San Francisco
Why go outside when you can explore a digital wasteland that dwarfs actual major cities? The sprawling fictional state of San Andreas in the fifth installment…
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Why Clippy became everyone's least favorite helper
Nothing was quite as infuriating as trying to write a serious resignation letter while a hyperactive animated paperclip repeatedly interrupted to offer…
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How Newgrounds shaped 2000s internet animation
It was the wild west of digital content, a place where aspiring animators could upload unhinged, copyright-infringing cartoons directly to the masses. It…
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Google Wave: the email replacement nobody understood
Heralded as the ultimate futuristic collaboration tool, it combined chat, documents, and messaging into one impossibly confusing mess. The hype was…
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Miniclip was every bored student’s escape
If you attended a school with a computer lab in the early 2000s, you absolutely spent your educational time playing poorly optimized dirt bike simulators…
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Why Ask Jeeves dropped Jeeves
In a desperate bid to compete with a rising minimalist competitor, the quirky search engine violently fired its iconic cartoon butler. They dropped the…
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The 1968 demo that predicted the modern office
In 1968, one guy essentially predicted the entire modern office environment in a single 90-minute presentation. Douglas Engelbart stood on stage and publicly…
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A gigabyte once cost half a million dollars
Your phone currently holds 256 gigabytes of blurry concert photos and unused food delivery apps, which would have made you a billionaire hardware baron in…
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Continuously variable transmissions use belts sliding between cones instead of fixed gears
Instead of violently clunking between preset fixed gears, a continuously variable transmission uses a thick belt squeezed between two adjustable metal cones.…
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How compressed air turns into jackhammer force
A pneumatic jackhammer uses absolutely no explosive fuel. Instead, incredibly high-pressure air continuously flips an internal valve back and forth. This…
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Why machine tools need a constant coolant spray
Milling chunks of solid steel generates horrifying friction. Without massive hoses blasting milky synthetic coolant directly onto the cutting tool, the drill…
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Hammering giant poles into mud supports tall skyscrapers
You cannot construct a towering high-rise building on soft, squishy dirt. Construction crews use brutal pile drivers to violently hammer massive concrete…
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Why asphalt can flow under a parked truck
That solid black road you drive on isn't truly solid. Asphalt is a highly viscous non-Newtonian material. While it feels like rock to a fast-moving car, if…
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Concrete can harden underwater
Most people assume wet concrete dries out to become hard. It doesn't. Concrete undergoes a violent, heat-generating chemical reaction called hydration. The…
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How a vibrating pipe weighs the fluid inside
Measuring exactly how much fluid flows through a pipe is difficult when temperatures constantly change its volume. Coriolis meters aggressively vibrate a…
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Straight gears translate endless spinning into pushing
Steering a car relies on turning a flat circle into a straight shove. A rack and pinion setup meshes a normal circular gear directly into a completely flat,…
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Ramming air into forward tubes measures fluid speed
Determining how fast a commercial jet is moving relies on an incredibly crude concept. Pitot tubes are literally just hollow metal spikes pointing straight…
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Choking narrow pipes forces fluids to drastically speed up
When an open pipe suddenly narrows, the water doesn't back up; it panics. The Venturi effect dictates that to get the exact same amount of liquid through the…
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How hot metal becomes a long rail
Creating long, complex metal rails from a single solid block seems incredibly difficult. Extrusion drastically simplifies this by utilizing massive hydraulic…
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Chemicals make suspended dirt sticky enough to sink fast
Microscopic clay particles suspended in dirty water possess identical electrical charges, meaning they aggressively repel each other and never settle to the…
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These cone-shaped washers work like powerful springs
Sometimes a normal coiled spring is too weak and bulky. Belleville washers are simply metal discs stamped into a slight cone shape. When stacked heavily…
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Baking raw plastic thread creates rigid structures
Carbon fiber starts out looking exactly like heavy black yarn. To make it stronger than steel, engineers wrap it in sticky resin and bake it inside massive…
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