Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
Early home computer systems in the 1980s actively utilized standard analog audio cassette tapes to store and load video games, turning the simple act of booting up a program into an agonizing test of human patience.
Early home computer systems in the 1980s actively utilized standard analog audio cassette tapes to store and load video games, turning the simple act of…
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Shigetaka Kurita, an interface designer for a Japanese mobile provider, created the original set of one hundred and seventy-six emojis in 1999 on a grid of merely twelve by…
Shigetaka Kurita, an interface designer for a Japanese mobile provider, created the original set of one hundred and seventy-six emojis in 1999 on a grid of…
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Bots outnumbered human visits in Imperva's 2024 traffic analysis.
Bots outnumbered human visits in Imperva's 2024 traffic analysis. Its 2025 report attributed 51 percent of measured web traffic to automated activity,…
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Engineers at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center actually invented the graphical user interface, featuring windows, icons, and a mouse, way back in the 1970s.
Engineers at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center actually invented the graphical user interface, featuring windows, icons, and a mouse, way back in the 1970s.…
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Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician born in 1815, is widely recognized as the world's first computer programmer because she wrote an algorithm for Charles Babbage's…
Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician born in 1815, is widely recognized as the world's first computer programmer because she wrote an algorithm for Charles…
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Nokia's legendary default ringtone, which dominated the soundscape of the early 2000s and haunted theaters and restaurants globally, is actually a tiny snippet of a classical…
Nokia's legendary default ringtone, which dominated the soundscape of the early 2000s and haunted theaters and restaurants globally, is actually a tiny…
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Jack Dorsey published the very first message on the platform that would become Twitter in 2006, simply typing the phrase just setting up my twttr into the digital void.
Jack Dorsey published the very first message on the platform that would become Twitter in 2006, simply typing the phrase just setting up my twttr into the…
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Consumer electronics manufacturers in the 1980s made the programming interface for video cassette recorders so unnecessarily complicated that a blinking twelve o'clock became a global symbol of technological defeat.
Consumer electronics manufacturers in the 1980s made the programming interface for video cassette recorders so unnecessarily complicated that a blinking…
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The space station's data takes a detour through a much higher orbit.
The space station's data takes a detour through a much higher orbit. The ISS circles roughly 400 kilometers above Earth, but much of its communication passes…
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Silicon Valley got its nickname in 1971 from a journalist named Don Hoefler, who was simply writing a series of articles about the region's semiconductor industry.
Silicon Valley got its nickname in 1971 from a journalist named Don Hoefler, who was simply writing a series of articles about the region's semiconductor…
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The mouse ball disappeared, taking a cleaning chore with it.
The mouse ball disappeared, taking a cleaning chore with it. Mechanical mice tracked motion through a rolling ball and internal rollers that collected grime.…
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An early PC virus came with its creators' contact details.
An early PC virus came with its creators' contact details. The 1986 Brain virus carried the names and address of its creators in Pakistan inside its code.…
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A nun was among America's first computer-science PhDs.
A nun was among America's first computer-science PhDs. Sister Mary Kenneth Keller earned her doctorate in 1965, becoming the first woman in the United States…
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Users spotted Bill Gates’ mugshot silhouette in Outlook 2010’s generic avatar.
Users spotted Bill Gates’ mugshot silhouette in Outlook 2010’s generic avatar. The outline of the hair and shoulders closely matched the famous photograph…
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Apple originally designed the iconic trash can icon on the early Macintosh operating systems to actually bulge outward when it contained deleted files, visually indicating that the bin was full of garbage.
Apple originally designed the iconic trash can icon on the early Macintosh operating systems to actually bulge outward when it contained deleted files,…
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The earliest widely recognized spam email advertised computers.
The earliest widely recognized spam email advertised computers. In 1978, DEC marketer Gary Thuerk sent an unsolicited product-event announcement to hundreds…
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Iomega Zip drives in the late nineties became infamous for a catastrophic hardware failure known as the "click of death," where the drive would repeatedly emit a terrifying…
Iomega Zip drives in the late nineties became infamous for a catastrophic hardware failure known as the "click of death," where the drive would repeatedly…
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Falcon 9 flies with Linux under the hood.
Falcon 9 flies with Linux under the hood. SpaceX engineers have described flight computers running Linux with custom flight software and redundant processors.…
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Polaroid's inspiration was a child's very reasonable question.
Polaroid's inspiration was a child's very reasonable question. In 1943, Edwin Land's three-year-old daughter asked why she couldn't see the photograph he had…
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Google legitimately uses a rented herd of around two hundred goats to mow the massive lawns at their global corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California.
Google legitimately uses a rented herd of around two hundred goats to mow the massive lawns at their global corporate headquarters in Mountain View,…
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Some 1990s Sony camcorders revealed more through thin fabric than their designers intended.
Some 1990s Sony camcorders revealed more through thin fabric than their designers intended. NightShot detected near-infrared light, which passes through…
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Agbogbloshie in Ghana became one of the largest electronic waste dumps on the entire planet, taking in millions of tons of discarded appliances, smartphones, and computers from wealthier nations.
Agbogbloshie in Ghana became one of the largest electronic waste dumps on the entire planet, taking in millions of tons of discarded appliances, smartphones,…
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Vizio paid millions over TVs that reported what people watched.
Vizio paid millions over TVs that reported what people watched. In 2017, Vizio agreed to a $2.2 million settlement after regulators alleged it collected…
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Your bank account is part of the deep web.
Your bank account is part of the deep web. The term includes web content search engines do not index, such as private account pages and restricted databases.…
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