Christmas 2024 – tech facts

Fairy on Christmas tree

Tech facts that are probably true.

Just a few trivial tech facts (or factoids, maybe)

Cats looking at screen showing cats looking at screen showing cats - ad infinitum According to PureStorage there are about 6.5 billion (6,500,000,000) cat pictures on the internet (Aug 2023)

Robert Cornelius (definitely not him on the right) created the first selfie (in 1839) – or did he?

Marina Amaral disagrees

There are some wonderful very early selfies on her site (including the real Robert Cornelius).

Photo-realistic image of man dressed for 1840, but taking selfie on mobile phone. Background is street of London town houses.
Photo-realistic image of lady dressed for 1840, but taking selfie on mobile phone. Background is street of London town houses. Ada Lovelace was probably the first computer programmer (and that’s not her on the left).

Unexpectedly, this was nearly 200 years ago.

Even more unexpectedly, she was the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron – “mad, bad and dangerous to know”.

Check her out at the Computer History Museum.

The first time a keyboard was used to create input for a computer was in 1951 – for the Whirlpool Project at MIT

______________

The longest English words you can type using just the top row of the  keyboard are “typewriter”, “repertoire”, “proprietor”, and “perpetuity”.

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The smallest detectable movement of a mouse cursor goes by the name of a “Mickey” – really.

Keyboard and real mouse
Wild-eyed woman looking at computer screen We normally blink around 15 times per minute, but when we’re looking at a computer screen it slows down to around 7 times per minute.

Source

The word “robot” comes from the Czech word “robota”, meaning “forced labour”.

Depending on who you believe, it was invented either by Karel Capek or by his brother, Josef.

Source

Photo-realistic image of a Robot in Prague - 1920. Hradcany castle in Prague in background. Lots of people dressed for 1920.
Satellites encircling globe GPS is free for everyone around the world to use, but it costs $2 million per day to run.

Thank you, US taxpayers!

Source

We’ve all heard, at least vaguely, about the dark web. It definitely exists.

Are you curious?

See this link

Hooded person at computer in candlelit room
Santa in sunglasses, with headphones, on a skateboard with sack of presents Father Christmas gets cool (maybe)
 

Hell’s Elf

Elf on Harley-Davidson, piled high with presents

For the proper stuff, start at https://www.davidleonard.london/


Post icon (featured image) and all other images designed by David Leonard with Microsoft Designer