21 Fun Technology Facts You Possibly Never Knew

Domain Names were FREE prior to 1995, the US National Science Foundation granted permission for companies to charge for a registration for the first time in that year. Think domain names are expensive? Well they started out at $100 for two years, that’s approximately $180 today accounting for inflation.

A test using pigeons carried out in rural England in 2010 proved pigeons were faster in sending data than the internet. Where it took 90 minutes to download a 4 GB file through a router, a pigeon carrying a 4GB USB stick containing the same file, setting off from the same location as the server…  took 60 minutes to receive and upload to the same spec’d computer, proving the internet speed was 30 minutes slower.

Google was originally to be named Googol which is a number; 10 to the power of 100. But due to a spelling error the name Google was registered, however the founders preferred the name and obviously stuck with it.

If you are a smoker and use Apple products, then you quite likely void your Apple warranties. Yes you really should read the fine print, many customers who have returned their new computers and laptops to the manufacturer for a repair under warranty have been left speechless when told they have been in breach of their warranty and they would have to pay for the repair because they had been smoking while using the device.

Most technology degrees are outdated long before the students graduate. The information surrounding technology doubles pretty much every two years, so by the time someone starts their degree until they finish, they could well be up to 6 years behind in their understanding.

We spend more time reading from a screen than we do from a book or newspaper, and I’m not saying that because we spend more time on a computer and mobile devices. No, in fact on average it takes us 10% longer to read exactly the same content on a screen than on paper, generally due to less distractions.

Think you spend too long in front of a computer? Well the average 21 year old would have already spent at least 5,000 hours, or over 208 days just playing video games.

Hundreds of millions of pounds worth of precious metals such as gold and silver are thrown into landfill each and every year, predominantly contained in the smartphones and devices we no longer use. Sadly even when taken to a recycling centre, if it is too difficult and therefore not cost effective to recycle it will end up in landfill.

Are you doing it wrong? Survey suggests 86% of us are! Come on, own up, how many of you keep trying to plug in your USB devices upside down? Yeah, I thought as much.

More than 1.5 million Americans still use a dial up internet. Even with Elon Musk’s new super fast satellite internet Starlink, many rural places in the states are still stuck on 90s technology to serve their needs. Though there are government plans to close this gap many say they just wouldn’t be able to afford the monthly contracts for the faster internet.

Every conversation you have with yours or your friends Amazon Alexa is stored in the cloud for life. Frightening thought, especially when friends or family are forced into a contract with Amazon they hadn’t read, agreed to or were likely ever made aware of.

The fastest internet in the world is 17,800 times faster than the current standard high speed internet connection, and according to its UK and Japanese based developers it could download the entire Netflix library in under 1 second! The best internet speeds are currently between 500 to 1000+ Mbps whereas this technology transfers data at a world breaking 178 terabits per second.

Between 300k to 400k malware and viruses are found each and every day with upto 90% of emails containing some form of virus.

We all get bombarded with emails, and not all are necessarily scams, much of the dodgy spam is filtered out to the junk/spam folders with the odd phishing email slipping through the net, the vast majority of what we then call spam is usually people or companies trying to sell us stuff which we’re obviously not interested in. However even with that in mind, it still surprises me that for every approximately 12 million emails sent only 1 receives a reply.

More than 30% of divorces occur due to Facebook as more people find ways to start an argument with their partner, or find out their partner is up to no good.

The very first VCR was the size of a church organ keyboard. The Ampex Corporation had been working on a technology that recorded onto magnetic tape as early as 1938, however after many years and vast amounts of money spent the project was about to be shelved until they made one last final attempt which led to their breakthrough. In 1956 the Ampex VRX-1000 was born and it caused a stir, the only thing holding the Ampex back other than its sheer size was it’s astronomical price tag of $50,000, that’s $502,000 in today’s money.

Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft all started out on a shoestring budget out of garages.

Ever wondered why people in photographs from the 1800’s look so miserable, well you would too if you had to sit perfectly still for more than 8 hours. Yep the first images taken in the 1820s required the individual or object to remain stationary for 8 hours, so if you originally thought it was because looking serious was the done thing when taking photos back in the era, then that possibly wasn’t the initial reason as to why, trying to keep a constant smile for more than an hour is far more challenging than making no facial expressions at all.

The fox in the FireFox logo is not a fox but a breed of cat known as the red panda which resembles a bear more than it does a fox.

The Apollo 11 astronauts couldn’t afford life insurance as inevitably the risks were extremely high and no insurer really wanted to take that risk, so instead Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins a Buzz Aldrin signed a whole load of posters, images and other memorabilia before they set flight so that their families had a means to making money if things didn’t go according to plan.