Tech Trivia

Tech Trivia

• The first flexible, rolled film for still photographs was introduced only about 4 years before the first motion picture was made.
• The first Harley Davidson motorcycle was built in 1903, and used a tomato can for a carburetor.
• The first manned spacecraft to be launched was the Soviet’s Vostok 1, which left Earth in 1961
• The first parking meter was installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1935.
• “MIDI” stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It is a standard means of sending digitally encoded information about music between electronic devices, often between synthesizers and computers
• Time magazine named the computer its “Man of the Year” in 1982
•  A 1999 survey of 25,500 standard English-language dictionary words found that 93 percent of them have been registered as dot-coms.
• A 2001 study conducted by PC Data and Information Resources Inc. showed that greeting cards, soup, breakfast cereal, and Imodium were among the most popular package goods bought online
• A chest X-ray is comprised of 90,000 to 130,000 electron volts
• A chip of silicon a quarter-inch square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a full city block
• A computer on a chip that today costs $10 is equal in performance to systems costing $100,000 three decades agoA floppy disk drive on a home computer usually doesn’t need to be cleaned more than twice a year. If used too often, cleaning disks can scratch recording heads and throw the disk drive out of adjustment
•  A NUKE InterNETWORK poll found that 52 percent of Internet users have cut back on watching TV in order to spend more time online; 12 percent have cut back on seeing friends.
• A telegram was sent to Eleanor Roosevelt from the 1939 World’s Fair in New York using only the current electric eels
• Actress Sandra Bullock remarked in an interview, “Fame means when your computer modem is broken, the repair guy comes out to your house a little faster.”
• Although home access to the Internet has grown, the percentage of those users who are “active” has been flat at 60 percent. Web companies are concerned that they are missing the mark in providing compelling content.
•  In Echallens, Switzerland in 1998, a 105-year-old retired Swiss teacher was ordered to attend elementary school, thanks to a computer that cut a century off his age. The mix-up happened because a list of local residents had only the last two digits of his birth date. So the man, along with sixty-five 5-year-olds in the town, received a letter ordering him to start school. The matter was taken care of, and the computer system was changed
•  Bill Gates formed a company to sell a computerized traffic counting system to cities, which made $20,000 its first year. Business dropped sharply when customers learned Gates was only 14 years old.
• Bromine, extracted from seawater, helps develop photographs.
• Computer monitors need to stay cool. Unfortunately, they make handy resting places for various items. But if papers, manuals, and other miscellany are piled on top of the monitor, the cooling vents are blocked. Internal heat shortens the life of monitors.
•  In web site addresses on the Internet, “http” stands for “hypertext transfer protocol.”
• Computer viruses are bits of software code that either overwrite or attach themselves to programs and replicate themselves. While some are merely annoying, taking up valuable disk space, others can wipe out an entire hard drive. If the Michelangelo virus is on your computer, it activates on March 6, the artist’s birthday. Viruses were first discovered in the late 1980s, and since that time, IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center has collected more than 10,000. It is estimated that six to nine new viruses are found daily. About 1,200 computer viruses are in circulation.
• Don’t use the on/off switch on your personal computer any more than necessary. There’s a surge of electricity every time the switch is turned on. For fragile computer chips, it’s much like starting the day by jumping into an icy pool. To prolong the life of your home computer, turn it on when you arrive home from work and turn it off again when you go to bed at night.
• The first video game was Pong, introduced in 1972 by Noel Bushnell, who then created Atari.