Technology — Page 6
Innovations and technology
188 facts
In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue computer defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in an official six-game match.
This was the first time a computer defeated a human world champion under standard tournament conditions, marking a…
The first barcoded product to be scanned in a supermarket was a pack of Wrigley's chewing gum, in nineteen seventy-four.
The historic scan occurred at a Marsh supermarket in Ohio, marking the beginning of the automation of cash registers…
The first Apple logo, created in nineteen seventy-six, featured Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree.
This intricate, Victorian-style drawing was quickly replaced by the iconic bitten apple logo, as the original was too…
The first computer mouse was built out of wood.
Invented by Douglas Engelbart in nineteen sixty-four, the first prototype of the computer mouse was a wooden box with…
IBM's first hard drive weighed over a ton and stored only five megabytes.
Released in nineteen fifty-six, the IBM 305 RAMAC was the size of two refrigerators, weighed about a ton, and had a…
The QWERTY keyboard layout was created to prevent typewriter jams.
By separating the most frequently used letter pairs in the English language, inventor Christopher Sholes…
The world's first webcam was invented at the University of Cambridge to monitor a coffee pot.
In 1991, researchers created this system to remotely check if the laboratory coffee pot was full, avoiding…
The first computer mouse, invented by Douglas Engelbart in 1964, was carved out of wood.
This primitive device, called an 'X-Y position indicator for a display system', had a single button and two metal…
The very first domain name ever registered on the internet was symbolics.com, created in March 1985.
This historic milestone on the World Wide Web was registered by Symbolics Computer Corporation, marking the beginning…
The first 1 GB hard drive weighed over 200 kilograms and was made by IBM.
The IBM 3380 model, released in 1980, was the size of two refrigerators and cost tens of thousands of dollars. It was…
The first webcam was created at Cambridge University to monitor a coffee pot.
In 1991, researchers in the computer science department were tired of walking to the break room only to find the pot…
GPS relies on Einstein's theory of relativity to stay accurate.
Since satellites move very fast and are in an area of weaker gravity, time passes differently for them compared to…
The total weight of all the gold ever mined in human history would fit into roughly three Olympic-sized swimming pools.
It is estimated that all mined gold would form a cube about twenty-two meters on each side, which corresponds to the…
The first documented computer bug was a real moth found in a relay.
In nineteen forty-seven, Grace Hopper's team found a moth trapped in a relay of the Harvard Mark II computer. The…
The QWERTY keyboard was originally designed to prevent key jamming.
In early typewriters, adjacent keys used together would jam frequently. The QWERTY layout separated the most common…
The first webcam was invented to monitor a coffee pot at a university.
In nineteen ninety-one, researchers at the University of Cambridge created a camera pointing at the laboratory coffee…
The QWERTY keyboard was designed to prevent mechanical typewriters from jamming.
The QWERTY layout was created to physically separate the most commonly used letter pairs in the English language…
The first computer bug in history was a real moth trapped in a computer in 1947.
Programmer Grace Hopper and her team found a moth trapped in a relay of the Harvard Mark II computer. They taped the…
The barcode was inspired by Morse code.
A graduate student heard his university dean wish for an automated system to read product information and adapted the…
The first documented computer bug was a moth trapped inside a computer in 1947.
Engineers at Harvard University found a moth stuck between the relays of the Mark II computer. They taped the insect…
The first mobile phone weighed almost a kilogram and cost the equivalent of several thousand euros.
The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, launched in 1983, weighed about 790 grams and measured 25 centimetres without the…
The first webcam in the world was created to monitor a coffee pot at the University of Cambridge.
In 1991, scientists at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory connected a camera to the local network so they would not…
The first computer bug was an actual real-life moth found trapped in a computer relay in 1947.
Admiral Grace Hopper and her team found a moth trapped in a relay of the Harvard Mark II computer. They taped the…
The first message sent over the internet was the word LOGIN, but the system crashed after the first two letters.
On October 29, 1969, a student attempted to send the word LOGIN from a computer at UCLA to another at the Stanford…