The 10 Shocking and Weird Facts About Technology That Everyone Should Know

#1

Ever wondered why the keyboard you use, on your phone or PC, is arranged that way? Why do the keys have to be in a delusional form of the alphabet? There's an explanation for that.

Typewriters, the predecessor to the computer, had letters arranged in alphabetical order and keys usually got jammed due to fast typing. To prevent that from happening, scientists and engineers formulated this tougher way to write and the legacy has carried on since then.

#2

With initiatives like Digital India and other alternatives in developing countries, you may still believe that almost half of the world's population isn't online. What's surprising is that almost all of the world's money is.

It is estimated that currently 92% of all currency in the world is digitally managed, leaving a meagre 8% to be physical. This means that the money you spend, save and transact is just stored on servers and hard drives. All banks and big corporations carry out transactions electronically and thus the great percentage.

#3

In 1995, the Internet was in a very naïve situation and no one could ever imagine that it would go on to become a huge phenomenon. This created a huge opportunity for people to gather free domain names and sell them off for millions to big corporations. After 1995, domain name pricing came into action and the cost was close to $100 per domain.

#4

In 1956, IBM launched their first-ever computer - the RAMAC. It was one of the first devices to incorporate a hard drive, but there was a slight problem. The hard drive, capable of 5MB storage, weighed in at just less than a ton.

Eventually, things evolved and the 5MB of data, spread over 50 aluminum disks, transformed into miniscule thumb drives of today's digital age.

#5

In 1936, no one had even had the slight hint of creating a device that manages all your data, except, well, Russia. The world's biggest country had an innovator, by the name of Vladimir Lukyanov, who developed something similar to a calculating device that ran on water by using a complex system of interconnected tubes filled with water. It was initially called the Water Integrator and is currently available to view at Moscow's Polytechnic Museum.

#6

Wikipedia is one of the most unique services on the Internet due to its aim of providing an amalgamation of information to the world, free of cost. One of its most popular features is that it is mostly crowd-sourced and allows anyone to login and edit the information.

This sometimes creates issues for the website and some negative elements of society may work towards spoiling the changes. This is where their custom computer bots come in. With over 1,941 bots in all, Wikipedia automates the detection and removal of vandalism errors on the site.

#7

Sitting in his room in South Florida, Jonathan James, a 15-year old teenager, in 1999 hacked the servers of Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and accessed all kinds of data related to the company's 3,000 employees. He even managed to obtain the source code for NASA's International Space Station.

While he was arrested and sentenced to jail the next year, it goes on to show how scary the interconnected world of networks really is.

#8

While it may sound absurd, it is true that all computer fonts are not equal, when it comes to the length and thickness of characters. This is based on the fact that if you use lighter fonts with lighter strokes, it will result in lesser printer ink usage when compared to a thicker font.

#9

Yes, that's right, the electronic mail or e-mail was a service even before the internet came into existence. Developed around 1984, e-mail was usually transmitted across various computers that were connected through wired networks. This was before the World Wide Web, so there were no URLs, just numbered webpages.

#10

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, world's biggest software developer, is a college dropout. Apart from being the world's richest man, Bill Gates is regarded as the transformation face of the new technological age.