Technology
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Technology
Engineers at IBM created the very first smartphone all the way back in 1992, unleashing a massive black brick called the Simon Personal Communicator that cost nearly eleven…
Engineers at IBM created the very first smartphone all the way back in 1992, unleashing a massive black brick called the Simon Personal Communicator that cost…
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One keyboard character can outnumber every letter: the space.
One keyboard character can outnumber every letter: the space. In a text-entry study using a large British English corpus, spaces made up about 18% of the…
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Jawed Karim uploaded the very first video to YouTube on April 23, 2005, an incredibly mundane eighteen-second clip titled 'Me at the zoo' featuring him standing in front of some…
Jawed Karim uploaded the very first video to YouTube on April 23, 2005, an incredibly mundane eighteen-second clip titled 'Me at the zoo' featuring him…
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C got its name because it followed B.
C got its name because it followed B. Dennis Ritchie developed the language at Bell Labs in the early 1970s, building on the earlier B language. C then helped…
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A pack of gum helped launch the barcode checkout era.
A pack of gum helped launch the barcode checkout era. On June 26, 1974, a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, scanned a pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit in the…
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The first public handheld cellphone call went to a rival.
The first public handheld cellphone call went to a rival. On April 3, 1973, Motorola's Martin Cooper called Bell Labs' Joel Engel from a portable prototype on…
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Some Tamagotchi owners gave their digital pets real funerals.
Some Tamagotchi owners gave their digital pets real funerals. Reports from the 1990s documented burials and memorials for the little electronic pets. Owners…
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An early banner ad reportedly got a 44% click rate.
An early banner ad reportedly got a 44% click rate. AT&T's 1994 HotWired banner invited people to try clicking it. Web advertising was novel enough that the…
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Samsung began in 1938 trading groceries, including dried fish and noodles.
Samsung began in 1938 trading groceries, including dried fish and noodles. The company expanded into businesses such as sugar refining and textiles before…
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Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” became a demanding test for MP3 compression.
Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” became a demanding test for MP3 compression. Its exposed, unaccompanied voice made unwanted distortion easy to hear, with no busy…
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Russell Seitz, a physicist, calculated that the physical weight of all the moving electrons that make up the entire internet is roughly fifty grams, which is approximately the same mass as a single strawberry.
Russell Seitz, a physicist, calculated that the physical weight of all the moving electrons that make up the entire internet is roughly fifty grams, which is…
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Ajay Bhatt led the team at Intel that invented the Universal Serial Bus in the 1990s, fundamentally solving the nightmare of plugging massive, pin-heavy cables into the back of…
Ajay Bhatt led the team at Intel that invented the Universal Serial Bus in the 1990s, fundamentally solving the nightmare of plugging massive, pin-heavy…
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Phil Belanger, a founding member of the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance, admitted that the term Wi-Fi doesn't actually stand for "Wireless Fidelity" or anything else at…
Phil Belanger, a founding member of the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance, admitted that the term Wi-Fi doesn't actually stand for "Wireless Fidelity"…
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Japan got a smaller Xbox controller at launch.
Japan got a smaller Xbox controller at launch. Microsoft's bulky original controller became known as the Duke. The more compact Controller S launched with the…
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Jeff Bezos originally intended to name his online bookstore 'Cadabra' as a reference to the magical incantation abracadabra, hoping to imply that the shopping experience was pure magic.
Jeff Bezos originally intended to name his online bookstore 'Cadabra' as a reference to the magical incantation abracadabra, hoping to imply that the shopping…
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Apollo's fixed software was manufactured into woven memory.
Apollo's fixed software was manufactured into woven memory. Engineers including Margaret Hamilton developed the programs, and production workers assembled…
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Christopher Latham Sholes designed the ubiquitous QWERTY keyboard layout in the early 1870s specifically to separate commonly paired letters and prevent mechanical typewriters from jamming.
Christopher Latham Sholes designed the ubiquitous QWERTY keyboard layout in the early 1870s specifically to separate commonly paired letters and prevent…
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Scottish inventor Alexander Bain patented the first electric printing telegraph in 1843, making the fundamental technology behind the fax machine exactly thirty-three years older than the invention of the telephone.
Scottish inventor Alexander Bain patented the first electric printing telegraph in 1843, making the fundamental technology behind the fax machine exactly…
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High-speed trading makes physical distance a financial cost.
High-speed trading makes physical distance a financial cost. Firms place servers near exchanges and invest in fast connections because even a tiny delay can…
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Machine learning models do not actually know anything in the traditional sense, but merely predict the next statistically likely word based on vast oceans of stolen internet…
Machine learning models do not actually know anything in the traditional sense, but merely predict the next statistically likely word based on vast oceans of…
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Apple's first logo put Newton under a tree.
Apple's first logo put Newton under a tree. Ronald Wayne drew the elaborate 1976 illustration before the company adopted its much simpler apple symbol. Wayne…
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Software engineer Jim Reekes created the iconic Apple Macintosh trash can crunch sound by recording the noise of his own messy real-life garbage being aggressively packed down.
Software engineer Jim Reekes created the iconic Apple Macintosh trash can crunch sound by recording the noise of his own messy real-life garbage being…
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Wikipedia's helpful bots have spent years undoing one another's work.
Wikipedia's helpful bots have spent years undoing one another's work. Researchers studying edits from 2001 to 2010 found automated accounts repeatedly…
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A computer mouse has its own 'mickey'.
A computer mouse has its own 'mickey'. A mickey is a unit used for a mouse's reported movement. How far the mouse must travel to generate one depends on its…
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