10 Mind-Blowing Tech Facts You Probably Didn't Know
The First Computer “Bug” Was a Real Bug: In 1947, engineers at Harvard found an actual moth stuck inside their computer causing it to malfunction. They taped it into their logbook and wrote “First actual case of a bug being found.” That’s where the term “bug” in technology comes from.
2. The First SMS Ever Sent Said “Merry Christmas” :On December 3rd, 1992, the very first text message was sent by engineer Neil Papworth. It simply said “Merry Christmas.” Today, over 23 billion texts are sent every single day.
3. Your Smartphone Is Millions of Times More Powerful Than Apollo 11: The computer that landed humans on the moon in 1969 had less processing power than a modern calculator. Your ₦100,000 Tecno phone would have been considered a supercomputer in the 1980s.
4.Google Rents Goats to Mow Their Lawn: Google’s headquarters in California regularly rents a herd of goats to graze and cut the grass around their campus. Cheaper and more eco-friendly than lawnmowers.
5. The Average Person Unlocks Their Phone 150 Times a Day:Studies show that the average smartphone user picks up and unlocks their phone roughly 150 times every single day. That’s once every 6 minutes if you’re awake for 16 hours.
6. Nintendo Is Older Than Most Countries: Nintendo was founded in 1889, originally as a playing card company in Japan. It didn’t make video games until the 1970s. The company is over 130 years old.
7. The Internet Weighs About 50 Grams: Scientists have calculated that if you weighed all the electrons moving across the internet at any given moment, it would be about the weight of a strawberry, roughly 50 grams.
8. More People Have Mobile Phones Than Toilets. According to UN data, more people on earth have access to a mobile phone than to a proper toilet. Technology is spreading faster than basic sanitation in many parts of the world, including Africa.
9. The First Webcam Was Used to Watch a Coffee Pot: Scientists at Cambridge University in 1991 set up the world’s first webcam not for video calls or surveillance but to watch a coffee pot in another room so they wouldn’t walk all the way there for an empty pot.
10. QWERTY Was Designed to Slow You Down: The QWERTY keyboard layout you use every day was originally designed in the 1870s to slow typists down, because early typewriters jammed when people typed too fast. We’re still using that layout today, over 150 years later.
