Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
How a seawater-soaked coffee shipment led to decaf
The worst cup of coffee in history aggressively created a multi-million dollar industry. In the early 1900s, a massive shipment of coffee beans was entirely…
Discover more
Peanut butter began as food for toothless patients
Your favorite childhood sandwich filling started as highly aggressive medical nutrition. In the 1890s, physician John Harvey Kellogg desperately needed a…
Discover more
Saccharin was discovered through unwashed hands
Basic lab safety was completely non-existent in the 1870s. A chemist studying coal tar derivatives went home for dinner without washing his hands. He bit into…
Discover more
Why Napoleon III wanted cheaper butter
Wars are incredibly expensive, and armies run entirely on massive amounts of fat. Napoleon III aggressively offered a huge cash prize to anyone who could…
Discover more
Potato chips were invented out of spite
Culinary perfection heavily driven by sheer aggressive pettiness. In 1853, a wealthy restaurant patron kept sending his fried potatoes back to the kitchen,…
Discover more
In 1957, one megabyte cost about $5,000
Be profoundly grateful for your bloated modern web browsers that casually eat gigabytes of RAM for breakfast. Back in 1957, magnetic core memory was the…
Discover more
STACKY FOR IPHONEA bigger world.
One discovery
at a time.
Keep discovering with Stacky. Interesting facts in an app that is always within reach.
Some artificial hearts leave patients without a pulse
A beating heart is apparently an outdated piece of biological hardware. Modern continuous-flow artificial hearts use a spinning rotor to push blood through…
Discover more
Gene editing can spare cattle from dehorning
Removing horns from dairy cows is a bloody, brutal process. To avoid it, geneticists have edited the genome of dairy breeds to include the naturally occurring…
Discover more
Yeast can make human insulin
Historically, keeping diabetics alive required grinding up thousands of pig pancreases. Now, we just force fungi to do the heavy lifting. By slipping the…
Discover more
Sewage plants feed your waste to bacteria
We don't actually filter the sewage out of your toilet water; we just feed it to microbes. Activated sludge treatment plants churn human waste in highly…
Discover more
Could glowing algae replace streetlights
Say goodbye to streetlamps and hello to glowing puddles of slime. Researchers are cultivating specialized bioluminescent algae that absorb sunlight during the…
Discover more
How workers break sewer fatbergs apart
When wet wipes and cooking grease combine in city sewers, they form concrete-hard monstrosities known as fatbergs. Because humans are gross, sanitation…
Discover more
Bidet seats utilize continuous flow ceramic water heaters
Shooting cold tap water at your most sensitive areas is barbaric, but bulky water tanks are outdated. High-end bidets use continuous-flow ceramic core heaters…
Discover more
Breathalyzers calculate alcohol using fuel cell oxidation
Blowing into a plastic tube turns your bad decisions into a chemical reaction. Modern breathalyzers contain a platinum fuel cell that actively oxidizes any…
Discover more
Standard atomic clocks count the vibrations of cesium atoms
Counting one-Mississippi is out; measuring quantum mechanics is in. A standard atomic clock blasts cesium-133 atoms with microwaves until they transition…
Discover more
Radar guns calculate vehicle speed via the Doppler effect
That ticket you got wasn't magic, it was basic wave physics. A police radar gun bounces a radio wave off your moving car; as you drive toward the gun, the…
Discover more
Gene drives force genetic traits through entire species
Mendel's laws of inheritance are cute, but modern genetics prefers absolute dominance. Gene drives bypass natural selection by ensuring a specific modified…
Discover more
Pig hearts can work inside human bodies
Because the human organ donor waiting list is basically a grim lottery, scientists are turning swine into spare parts. By knocking out specific pig genes that…
Discover more
Continuous glucose monitors read interstitial fluid
Despite what you might think, those little patches on a diabetic's arm aren't actually tasting their blood. The tiny sensor needle stops just short of the…
Discover more
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation bypasses the lungs
Breathing is strictly optional if you have a million-dollar machine nearby. ECMO technology physically pumps blood out of your body, runs it across an…
Discover more
Sundials use the Earth's axial tilt to calculate local time
The oldest clock in the world is essentially just a stick casting a shadow. But a sundial's flat face and angled gnomon must be specifically aligned with the…
Discover more
Endotracheal tubes use inflatable cuffs to seal airways
Shoving a plastic pipe down someone's throat is only step one of life support. To ensure the ventilator air actually goes into the lungs and doesn't just leak…
Discover more
CRISPR gene editing originated in bacterial immune systems
Before humans used it to play God with designer biology, CRISPR was just microscopic organisms fighting off cold viruses. This revolutionary gene-splicing…
Discover more
Lactose-free milk is pre-digested in the carton
They don't actually filter the lactose out of milk for sensitive stomachs; they just pre-digest it for you. Dairies simply inject the commercial lactase…
Discover more