100 Random Facts About Technology

1. A red panda is an animal native to the Himalayas and southwestern China. The English word for red panda is ‘Firefox’ which is where the browser gets its name from – so the Firefox logo is actually a red panda, not a fox!
2. Dragon Skin Body Armour is a newer invention that can withstand a grenade explosion at point-blank range.
3. The very first Apple logo featured Sir Isaac Newton sitting underneath a tree, with an apple about to hit his head.
4. Google rents out goats from a company called California Grazing to help cut down the amount of weeds and brush at Google HQ!
5. The founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, was a college drop out.
6. Bill Gates house was designed using a Macintosh Computer.
7. The word robot comes from the Czech “robota“. This translates into forced labour, or work.
8. CD’s, or Compact discs read from the inside to the outside edge, which is the reverse of how records work.
9. A UFO is reported once every three minutes in the world.
10. The average computer user blinks seven times a minute, the normal rate is twenty times per minute.
11. The first ever VCR, which was made in 1956, was the size of a piano!
12. On an average work day, a typist’s fingers travel about 12.6 miles.
13. The first alarm clock could only ring at 4am.
14. The 30th of November is known as “Computer Security Day“.
15. On 1st April 2005, NASA pulled a prank telling the world that they had found water on Mars.
16. The radio took 38 years to reach a market audience of 50 million.
17. The television took 13 years to reach a market audience of 50 million.
18. The iPod took 3 years to reach a market audience of 50 million.
19. If you was to have your picture taken by the very first camera, you’d need to sit still for 8 hours.
20. A dentist named Alfred Southwick invented the electric chair.
21. The creators of the PNG file format wanted it to be pronounced as ‘ping’.
22. Skype is banned from the public in China.

Computer Facts

23. Alaska is the only state in America that can be typed on one row of a traditional English QWERTY keyboard.
24. The Apple II had a hard drive of only 5 megabytes when it was launched.
25. In general, people tend to read as much as 10% slower from a screen than from paper.
26. Ubuntu is one of the more popular distributions of Linux. The word Ubuntu comes from an African word meaning “I am because of you”.
27. The Name “Macintosh” Was Inspired by an Apple with the name “mcintosh”.
28. In 1932 Professor August Dvorak created the Dvorak keyboard, which was made to be superior to the standard QWERTY keyboard.
29. Doug Engelbart created the very first computer mouse from wood in 1964.
30. Christopher Sholes invented the QWERTY keyboard in 1868.
31. The Apple Lisa was the first commercial computer with a graphical user interface (GUI) and a mouse.
32. The Apple Lisa was released in June 1983.
33. In 1822, Charles Babbage created the first computer.
34. 1024 Gigabytes is equal to 1 Terabyte.
35. 1024 Terabytes is equal to 1 Petabyte.
36. 1 Petabyte can hold 13.3 years of HD-TV video.
37. 86% of people try to plug their USB devices upside down.

Internet & Email Facts

38. Email has been around longer the world-wide web!
39. In 2004, the at symbol used in emails (@) became the first new character to be added to Morse code in several decades! The new character, known as the “Commat” consists of the signals for both A (dot-dash), and C (dash-dot-dash-dot) with no space or break in between.
40. The very first domain name registered was www.symbolics.com, on the 15th March, 1985.
41. According to the Message Anti-Abuse Working Group, between 88 and 92% of all emails that were sent in the first half of 2010 were spam!
42. Anthony Greco was the first man ever arrested for sending spam messages in 2005.
43. Marc Andreessen released “Netscape Navigator” in 1994, and during the height of its popularity almost 90% of all internet use was done via this browser!
44. All the letter combinations from aaa.com to zzz.com have already been registered.
45. On eBay, there is an average of $680 worth of transactions every second.
46. It is estimated that spammers only receive 1 reply for every 12 million emails that they send out.
47. The domain name www.YouTube.com was registered 14th February 2005.
48. Amazon now sells more eBooks than it does printed books!
49. Amazon.com was previously known as Cadabra.com.
50. The first ever Internet Service Provider (ISP) was a company named CompuServe.
51. The original URL for Yahoo was http://akebono.stanford.edu
52. The name Yahoo was created by Johnathan Swift for his book Gulliver’s Travels (1726) – which explained a yahoo to be a really ugly person.
53. Up until the 14th of September, 1995, domain registration was free.
54. The first banner advertising was used in 1994.
55. In 1984, the number of internet devices reached 1000.
56. In 1992, the number of internet devices reached 1 million.
57. In 2008, the number of internet devices reached 1 billion!
58. In 1999, PayPal was voted as one of the top ten worst business ideas.
59. 97% of people type in random words on Google, just to see if they spelt it right.
60. There are over 35 billion Google searches every month.
61. An average of 60 billion emails are sent every day, 97% of which are spam.
62. Only 4% of Arab women use the internet.

Video Game Facts

63. The last game for the Sega Mega Drive was released in 2010 and was so popular it sold out before release.
64. Since 2008, video games have outsold DVD’s each year.
65. Microsoft’s third Xbox console is the Xbox One and was released on 22nd November 2013.
66. The average age of gamers in the United States is 35.
67. In 2010, the United States Air Force used 1,760 Playstation 3’s to build a supercomputer for the Department of Defense. They used PS3’s because it was more cost efficient and “green”.
68. The Sega Dreamcast was the first 128-bit console in the market.
69. The Dreamcast was the first console which allowed real-time online play feature.
70. Surgeons who grew up playing video games make 37% fewer mistakes.
71. Nintendo was started in 1889 as a playing card company.
72. The Xbox 360 was first released on 22nd November 2005 and is Microsoft’s second video games console.
73. In January 2007, the PS3 DualShock controller won an Emmy Award for ‘Peripheral Development and Technological Impact of Video Game Controllers’ by The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
74. In Japan, the Nintendo Wii2 has been nicknamed the “Weenie” (Wii-ni) because the Japanese number for two is ‘ni’.
75. The Sony Playstation 4 was released on 29th November 2013 in Europe & Australia – two weeks after it lauched in North America.
76. The Atari 2600 was originally called “Atari Video Computer System”, or “VCS”.

Mobile Phone Facts

77. Phantom Vibration Syndrome is the name given when someone thinks their phone is vibrating but isn’t.
78. Headphones have magnets in them.
79. Only 25% of people can text well without looking at their keyboard.
80. Using your phone while it is on charge can damage the battery, this is why the leads for the chargers are so short.
81. In 1973, the very first mobile phone call was made by Martin Cooper, who was an employee of Motorola. The call was made from the streets of New York City.
82. Nokia was founded in 1865 and its primary business was manufacturing paper.
83. Nokia’s first mobile phones were released in the 1980s.
84. The first commercial text message was sent in December 1992.
85. Today, the number of text messages sent and received everyday, is more than the total population of the planet.
86. Almost half the world’s population have never made a phone call.
87. There are Braille accessories for smart phones.
88. The most expensive number ever sold was a mobile phone number, 666-6666, which was put up for auction and sold for $2.7 million!
89. Originally, the design for the first iPhone was literally the shape of an apple.

Social Networking Facts

90. Facebook has a blue colour scheme because the creator, Mark Zuckerberg cannot see the colours red & green.
91. Around 20% of all YouTube videos are music related.
92. If you find a security bug in Facebook’s code, they are willing to pay from $500 for you to tell them about it!
93. It is estimated that one in every eight couples in the US who went on to marry each other met online.
94. Someone on Twitter who has a million or more followers is known as a “Twillionaire”.
95. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are banned in China.
96. Google’s first ever Tweet on Twitter was in February 2009, and reads”I’m 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010.” Translating from binary into English, this tweet says “I’m feeling lucky.”
97. Google+ was developed under the code name ‘Emerald Sea’.
98. Remember MySpace? Well it has over 200 million registered users.
99. Facebook took 2 years to reach a market audience of 50 million.
100. 60% of LinkedIn members have clicked one of their adverts.