Another 17 Fun Technology Facts You Possibly Never Knew

Thinking about buying Cryptocurrencies? Well you in theory already own a load of it, unless you keep your money under a mattress it’s likely that more than 92% of your money is digital. Only approximately 8% of world currencies are in physical form.

Have you noticed how printer ink cartridges seem to run out quicker than they used to, even though you are not printing anything more than you would ordinarily? You may be thinking this is due to shrinkflation that you’re not actually getting the same amount of ink inside the cartridge as you used to. It is however more than likely that the content of the cartridge has remained the same but you have simply chosen to use a different font type. 

Using a different font can increase printer ink use by up to roughly 20% on average and obviously that can be a lot more… Most businesses notice their printer ink cartridges run out quicker after the company has usually had a redesign and one of those main changes being their font type.

Currently the fastest known fully functioning supercomputers are us, or our brains at least. 

Did you know your brain is capable of computing up to 38 thousand trillion operations per second. Attempting to put that into some form of perspective as it hurts my brain thinking about it, that’s 413 times faster than any supercomputer. 

However, though this is certainly impressive and instils one with confidence, Quantum Computer testing has shown that quantum processors are potentially hundreds of millions of times more powerful.

Prior to the 1960s personal computers were known as Electronic Brains.

There are several interesting facts about your keyboard keys however the two which I find the most amusing are the name QWERTY and why it was created. Many of you would have heard and used the term qwerty keyboard and we know what one is, most of us use one everyday, but did you know that first and foremost it was designed to not help you to type faster but to slow you down. Back in the early days of metal typewriters a common occurrence was keys sticking due to the keys/letters position and speed at which the keys were pressed, so in order to prevent the keys from sticking they were reordered in a means that would avoid the most frequently used consonants and vowels from overlapping and therefore getting stuck when pressed. A happy coincidence was it helped to slow down the typist which created less opportunity for keys to be simultaneously pressed as they spent a fraction longer looking for the right keys to press. The name QWERTY, which will surprise a lot of people as it’s always been staring them in the face, comes from the first 6 letters on the keyboard.

Would you believe that despite only 45% of the Chinese population having access to the internet, there are more people in China using the internet than there are anywhere else in the world, that’s approximately 630 million people.

The most viewed video on YouTube and possibly the whole internet is Gangnam Style by South Korean based Psy, the catchy song which became a global overnight success almost 10 years ago has so far accumulated well in excess of 4 billion views and rising.

Sorry to disappoint you folks but 51% of your website’s visitor traffic is from bots. Other than the likes of Google and Bing bots which are not generally recorded by tracking software like Google Analytics, the largest proportion of visits to your websites are from autonomous programs created by cybercriminals that search networks and websites for doorways in.

It may surprise you to learn that YouTube started life as a dating platform, the idea was people could upload videos of themselves in the hope this would improve their chances of finding love, but as nobody took to the concept or likely knew that’s what YouTube was for, it slowly just evolved into the powerhouse of a video platform that it has become today.

Before Casio became the world leader in electronic calculators, Tadao Kashio had invented and made a fortune from a cigarette device called the Yubiwa pipe. The Yubiwa pipe which is still made today is a ring with a tiny pipe attached that is worn on the finger, the cigarette is slotted into the pipe and smoked from there. The reasons for its invention and popularity was because it freed up the person’s hand so they could get on with their work while smoking and as tobacco and cigarettes were so expensive it allowed people to smoke their unfiltered cigarettes right to the end without burning their fingers.

Something you likely wouldn’t associate Nokia with is toilets and hygiene, however back in 1865 Nokia was nothing more than a pulp mill literally manufacturing pulp for items such as toilet paper.

You will be amazed to learn that the first known form of rail transportation was up and running more than 2,600 years ago in the 6th century in Ancient Greece. A 5 mile track overland from the coast to the Isthmus of Corinth allowed vessels to travel from the sea across land to another section of the sea, avoiding what would have otherwise been dangerous territory to circumnavigate. The track known as Diolkos was in service for more than 650 years.

PayPal was once voted one of the top 10 worst business concepts. Believe it or not back in 1999 PayPal was viewed by many as a crazy idea that would never succeed.

Do you find your eyes are dry and sore at the end of a working day in front of a computer? If so it isn’t necessarily because of the LED monitor itself or the light that it emits, but the fact that we subconsciously blink far less when staring at a screen, 7 times per minute as opposed to 22 times per minute to be precise. So if you are one of those individuals who suffers, remind yourself to blink more often when in front of your computer.

The first known robot known as the Automa cavaliere was created in 1495. Though we cannot be 100% certain who designed and constructed the humanoid automaton, it has been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci due to the discovery of his research on the concept. The Automa could stand, sit, raise its visor and move its arms.

Are you aware Wikipedia is downloadable? Well it is and here is the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download just make sure you have enough memory!