Here are 50 facts from FunFact's “Technology” topic, all checked. Each one cites its source (npr.org, wired.com, pcworld.com…) and the date it was checked. This topic is part of FunFact Premium.
If you feel like you get a lot of junk mail, know that this is a problem affecting the whole world.
Experts estimate that spam makes up at least 45% of all email traffic worldwide. Our computers and internet service providers spend a huge amount of energy sorting and hiding this mountain of messages.
Source: Statista — Global Spam Email Volume · Checked on October 24, 2026
It's pure linguistic coincidence that the word looks so much like “emotion” or “emoticon” in Western countries.
Coined in Japan, the term is simply a blend of the Japanese words “e” (meaning picture) and “moji” (meaning letter or character).
Source: Oxford English Dictionary — Emoji · Checked on October 24, 2026
Before becoming world-famous, the founders' project was called “BackRub,” as in a back massage.
They chose this odd name because their program analyzed the links pointing “back” to a web page to judge its importance.
Source: Google — Our Story · Checked on October 24, 2026
The famous “Konami Code” (Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A) often makes you invincible or gives you extra lives.
It was quietly programmed by Kazuhisa Hashimoto while he was porting Gradius to the NES console, released in 1986. He found the game far too difficult to test and wanted a hidden way to finish it easily.
Source: PC Gamer — A Konami code variant in Castlevania has been discovered after a quarter of a century · Checked on October 24, 2026
When you type a question into Google and press the “Enter” key, the result appears almost instantly.
To make that happen, your request is split up and sent to a network of about 1,000 giant computers that all search for the answer at the same time, so it can be sent back to you in a fraction of a second.
Source: Google — How Search Works · Checked on October 24, 2026
Only a tiny fraction of the world's wealth exists as real paper bills or metal coins you can touch.
The vast majority of our money is entirely digital: just lines of code stored on banks' computers.
Source: Harvard Business Review — How Much Money is in the World? · Checked on October 24, 2026
Long before MySpace, Facebook or Instagram appeared, the internet saw its first true social network, called SixDegrees.com.
For the very first time, it let people create a profile, list their friends and see their friends' friends. The site shut down quickly because the internet wasn't popular enough yet.
Source: CBS News — The History of Social Networking · Checked on October 24, 2026
Nintendo's brilliant designer Gunpei Yokoi was riding a train when he got the idea for the handheld console.
He saw a Japanese businessman so bored that he amused himself by pressing the keys of his little electronic calculator at random.
Source: Nintendo Life — Gunpei Yokoi and the Game Boy · Checked on October 24, 2026
O'Reilly adapted Edison's electric pen, invented in 1876 to duplicate documents, to inject ink into the skin.
Edison had designed his rotary pen to make printing stencils. O'Reilly kept that mechanism and added needles and an ink reservoir. Other tattoo artists were already tinkering with machines before him.
Source: Google Patents — US464801A Tattooing-Machine (S. F. O'Reilly) · Checked on October 26, 2026
We've all tried plugging in a USB plug upside down before flipping it over.
Its inventor, Ajay Bhatt, knew it would be annoying. He didn't make it reversible right away because that would have doubled its manufacturing cost at the time.
Source: NPR — USB Inventor Unplugged · Checked on October 24, 2026
When Steve Jobs unveiled his magical phone to the whole world in 2007, there was a big legal problem.
The computer company Cisco had already been selling office phones under the “iPhone” trademark for almost ten years. Apple had to pay for a secret agreement to be allowed to keep the name.
Source: Wired — Cisco Sues Apple Over iPhone Name · Checked on October 24, 2026
Under open sky, a smartphone is accurate within a 4.9 m (16 ft) radius; accuracy degrades near buildings, bridges and trees.
The United States commits to keeping at least 24 satellites operational 95% of the time, but has flown about thirty for over ten years. In cities, buildings block or reflect the signal, causing larger errors.
Source: GPS.gov · Checked on October 24, 2026
We're always told to turn off our phones in flight so they don't disrupt the pilot's screens.
In reality, airplane mode mainly protects the antennas on the ground. A phone in flight would try to connect to dozens of antennas at once, switching very quickly, which would overload the entire phone network below.
Source: Business Insider — Why you have to put your phone on airplane mode · Checked on October 24, 2026
Known for the Genesis (Mega Drive) console and Sonic the Hedgehog, this giant of Japanese video games wasn't born in Japan.
Originally, the company was American: it started in Hawaii and supplied slot machines and other coin-operated games to entertain soldiers on military bases. The name “Sega” is short for “Service Games.”
Source: IGN — IGN Presents the History of SEGA · Checked on October 24, 2026
95 m² (1,023 sq ft) built by a robotic arm: two layers of polyurethane foam surrounding a layer of concrete, using the BatiPrint3D process.
Inaugurated in March 2018, it welcomed a family with three children. Its designers announced a cost about 30% lower, a figure to treat with caution as it has not been independently confirmed.
Source: 3DNatives / Caisse des Dépôts · Checked on October 24, 2026
The image of beautiful green hills under a blue sky (“Bliss”) was seen by billions of people on their old computers.
You might think it was computer-generated, but it's a real photo taken in California by a photographer who had simply stopped at the side of the road.
Source: PCWorld — The Story Behind the Windows XP Wallpaper · Checked on October 24, 2026
In ordinary text, the most frequent character isn't a letter: it's the space.
Since it separates almost every word, the space bar comes up more often than any letter: in English, almost twice as often as “e.” It is estimated at roughly 15 to 18% of keystrokes.
Source: Wikipédia (Letter frequency) · Checked on October 24, 2026
This paper is coated with bisphenol (BPA or BPS). When recycled, it can contaminate the paper pulp and other paper products.
“Phenol-free” versions exist, based on urea compounds or vitamin C, but they cost more. Sorting rules vary by country: check with your local authorities.
Source: ScienceDaily — Thermal cash register receipts contaminate recycled paper products · Checked on October 26, 2026
Its creator, Jim Reekes, wanted a sound that was pleasant to hear at every startup.
So musician Jim Reekes made a soft musical chord (C major) to immediately reassure the user that the system was going to start up fine.
Source: CNBC — The Story Behind the Mac Startup Chime · Checked on October 24, 2026
You might think planes use the most modern and fastest technology for their onboard computers.
Yet some older Boeing 747-400 aircraft still load their onboard computers' navigation databases, renewed every 28 days, using 3.5-inch floppy disks inserted by technicians.
Source: The Verge — Boeing 747 Floppy Disks · Checked on October 24, 2026
Today, billions of people use WhatsApp to chat. But when it was created, you couldn't write text messages in it.
It was just an address book that let you display a status next to your name, to let your friends know you were “at the gym” or had “low battery.”
Source: Forbes — The Story of WhatsApp · Checked on October 24, 2026
The computer that let astronauts land on the Moon in 1969 was a marvel for its time, but it was very basic.
Today, the phone in your pocket can calculate infinitely more complex operations in a fraction of a second.
Source: NASA — Apollo 11 Guidance Computer · Checked on October 24, 2026
From time to time, Google replaces its logo with a nice cartoon called a “Doodle.”
In 1998, the very first Doodle was a simple stick figure. The site's creators put it there to let users know they had gone off to party in the desert at the Burning Man festival.
Source: Google Doodles — Burning Man Festival · Checked on October 24, 2026
On July 16, 1984, Alain Le Méhauté, Olivier de Witte and Jean-Claude André filed a stereolithography patent.
Their employers, CGE and the CILAS laser consortium, dropped the application for lack of commercial prospects. Chuck Hull filed his patent about three weeks later, then founded 3D Systems: he went down in history as the inventor.
Source: Primante 3D — Interview d'Alain Le Méhauté, l'un des pères de l'impression 3D · Checked on October 24, 2026
It was called LEO; the company J. Lyons & Co. ran it to calculate the cost of ingredients for bread and cakes.
Lyons was a catering and food company. The first successful job, “Bakery Valuations,” dates from September 5, 1951. The project leader was John Pinkerton.
Source: Science Museum — Meet LEO, the world's first business computer · Checked on October 26, 2026
In 1984, Russian researcher Alexey Pajitnov invented this famous falling-blocks game just for fun on his computer.
Since he worked for the Soviet government at the time, the state took all the rights to the game and collected millions of dollars. Pajitnov had to wait until 1996 to receive his first profits.
Source: BBC News — Tetris: The Soviet 'mind game' · Checked on October 24, 2026
He also used scissors, an old tea chest, sealing wax, and glue.
On January 26, 1926, in London, Baird gave the first public demonstration of television images to members of the Royal Institution and a Times journalist.
Source: Museum of Communication — Television · Checked on October 26, 2026
Look closely at an ad for an analog watch: the hands are never placed at random.
They are very often set to 10:10. This forms a “V” that looks like a smile and leaves room in the middle to show the brand's logo clearly.
Source: New York Times — Why Watches in Ads are Set to 10:10 · Checked on October 24, 2026
Iris recognition exploits complex, unique and stable patterns that can be read from a distance, up to 10 m or from a video stream.
In Daugman's algorithms, the iris image is reduced to 2,048 bits of phase information, which makes the code insensitive to lighting. The principle: test whether two codes are statistically independent.
Source: Pattern Recognition (MSU) — Long range iris recognition: A survey · Checked on October 26, 2026
According to a Seagate presentation to JEDEC (2015), each 5 °C (9 °F) rise halves this retention time.
Flash memory cells slowly lose their electrical charge. This is a minimum required for a worn SSD, not a guaranteed date of data loss. For archives, it is better to keep several copies and plug the drive in from time to time.
Source: PCWorld · Checked on October 24, 2026
Today it is one of the most recognized names on the planet, but its spelling changed over time.
In 1975, the founders chose this name by blending the English words for “microcomputer” and “software.” They kept the hyphen in the middle for a year before deciding to remove it to look more modern.
Source: Microsoft — Company History · Checked on October 24, 2026
Called the “IBM Simon,” it was the size of a brick and weighed nearly half a kilogram (about 1 lb).
There was no internet as we know it, but it already had a touchscreen for drawing, playing games, and sending emails or faxes.
Source: Time — First Smartphone IBM Simon · Checked on October 24, 2026
Built during World War II, ENIAC was a true factory of cables and big glass tubes.
It weighed about 30 metric tons (66,000 lb), filled a 167-square-meter (1,800 sq ft) room, and got so hot that it needed its own massive cooling system.
Source: University of Pennsylvania — ENIAC · Checked on October 24, 2026
Even though AI seems very modern to us, the idea of making a machine think was first named in 1956.
A group of mathematicians gathered over the summer for a workshop. They wanted to figure out how to make a machine use language like a human.
Source: Dartmouth College — Artificial Intelligence Coined at Dartmouth · Checked on October 24, 2026
Anyone with a smartphone can use GPS location for free anywhere in the world.
The service runs on a network of military satellites paid for by the US government, which spends about $2 million a day to keep the system working properly.
Source: Official U.S. Government GPS Information — GPS Funding · Checked on October 24, 2026
Before social media appeared, people shared their lives or passions on personal websites.
In 1997, this was called a “weblog” (the logbook of the web). Later, a user made a joke by splitting the word in two (“we blog”), and the term “blog” was born.
Source: Merriam-Webster — The History of 'Blog' · Checked on October 24, 2026
At the Butte-aux-Cailles pool (13th arrondissement), the start-up Stimergy heats part of the pool water (about 20% according to some sources) using servers immersed in oil.
Computer calculations produce heat, which is captured instead of being released into the air. The rest of the heating comes from the city's district heating network. The system has been installed since around 2017.
Source: DatacenterDynamics · Checked on October 24, 2026
In the 1980s, Nintendo's American subsidiary rented a warehouse from a businessman named Mario Segale.
One day, this landlord showed up furious to demand overdue rent. The game's creators, amused by the situation, decided to rename their little character in red overalls in his honor.
Source: NPR — Mario Segale, Inspiration For Nintendo's Hero · Checked on October 24, 2026
His patent describes a memory whose reading and writing are blocked without a secret code: the security principle behind our cards.
The French firm Bull developed a microprocessor on a card in parallel (CP8, 1977 patent). Moreno filed 45 patents in the following years, but they fell into the public domain after twenty years.
Source: Encyclopædia Universalis · Checked on October 24, 2026
Created in 1991 by scientist Tim Berners-Lee, the very first site had no images, no color and no video.
It consisted only of black text on a white background, with instructions teaching other scientists how to use this new invention called the “web.”
Source: CERN — The birth of the web · Checked on October 24, 2026
Australia’s science agency CSIRO collected more than A$430 million in licensing fees, including A$205 million in settlements in 2009 with 14 companies.
In 1992, CSIRO researchers worked out how to handle radio waves bouncing off the walls of a room. Their patent, challenged by major manufacturers, was eventually upheld and earned these sums before it expired, around 2013.
Source: National Museum of Australia · Checked on October 24, 2026
Pixels are the tiny squares of light that make up every image on your phones and TVs.
The word was coined in 1965 by combining “picture” (often shortened to “pix”) and “element.”
Source: Wired — The Origin of the Pixel · Checked on October 24, 2026
Long before it was called a “hashtag” on social media, this symbol was named by telephone engineers.
In the 1960s, they came up with the very fancy word “octothorpe” to give an official name to this new button added to the telephone keypads of the day.
Source: Merriam-Webster — Octothorpe · Checked on October 24, 2026
It's used to prove you're not a robot.
The word actually stands for: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.
Source: Carnegie Mellon University — The CAPTCHA Project · Checked on October 24, 2026
Pressing very hard on your phone's screen is completely pointless if it doesn't respond.
Modern screens work thanks to the very faint natural electricity that runs through our skin. That's why they don't respond at all if you touch them with a fingernail or a wool glove.
Source: Scientific American — How do touchscreens work? · Checked on October 24, 2026
The famous logo that represented the social network for years wasn't just an anonymous bird.
It was officially named “Larry the Bird” by the site's creators, in tribute to the famous American basketball player Larry Bird.
Source: The New York Times — The Origins of the Twitter Bird · Checked on October 24, 2026
On the first typewriters, typing too fast caused the metal bars to jam against each other.
The inventor mainly separated frequently paired letters to avoid these jams: no historical evidence shows he was trying to slow users down.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine — Fact of Fiction? The Legend of the QWERTY Keyboard · Checked on October 24, 2026
The German engineers who invented MP3 needed a very pure voice to test their audio compression system.
They used Suzanne Vega's a cappella song “Tom's Diner,” listening to it thousands of times to make sure the computer didn't ruin her voice.
Source: NPR — The Mother of the MP3 · Checked on October 24, 2026
During the Cold War, the security of America's nuclear missiles was supposed to be extremely strict.
Yet to be able to fire fast in an emergency without forgetting the code, the military simply set it to eight zeros in a row.
Source: HuffPost — Nuclear Missile Code · Checked on October 24, 2026
In 1996, Google's young founders didn't have much money to buy a metal frame for their many hard drives.
So they used colorful toy bricks to assemble a custom box, which they could easily expand as their needs grew.
Source: Stanford University — The Original Google Computer · Checked on October 24, 2026
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