1. QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow down the typing speed
People boast about their writing speed on a typewriter or keyboard. It is even a competitive advantage for some jobs to have faster and more accurate typing skills. But do you know the current layout of the QWERTY keyboards is the outcome of a solution designed to slow down the typing speed? The initial versions of typewriters made in the 1870s had few technical issues. The metal arms, which hold the characters, used to clash and jam if the keys were pressed in rapid succession or if a typist pressed the adjacent keys simultaneously. To avoid the problem and have a better typing experience, Christopher Latham Sholes made many design alterations to the keyboard layout. The current layout of the QWERTY keyboards was finally designed by E. Remington and Sons, which solved the problem of jammed type bars.
2. Water integrator — A computer that runs on water
Vladimir Sergeevich Lukyanov built the world’s first computer in 1936 that solved differential equations in partial derivatives. The amazing fact is that the machine was driven by water. The construction company that Lukyanov worked with was unable to find a solution for the cracks that used to happen in concretes during winter’s sub-zero temperatures. To understand the thermal process better, Lukyanov researched the temperature conditions in concrete masonry. Finally, he built the water integrator machine that could plot graphs and help visualize the thermal process. Manufacturing plants, research organizations, and educational institutes used water computers well into the 1970s. The use of these hydraulic integrators diminished once digital computers became more powerful and convenient to use.
3. The first computer mouse was called the ‘X-Y Position Indicator for Display Systems’
The world’s first computer mouse was invented at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in the 1960s. The equipment was called an “X-Y position indicator for displays”. Douglas Engelbart and Bill English are credited with the invention of the mouse. The story that Xerox APAC invented the mouse is a myth. Engelbart demoed the mouse for the first time in 1968 using the Xerox Alto computer. He termed the demo as the ‘Mother of all demos.”
4. Wikipedia Is Maintained by Thousands of Bots
Most of today’s internet users are aware of what Wikipedia is. It is a vast collection of crowd-sourced information available online. It is common knowledge that the online encyclopedia is created and edited by volunteers. But do you know thousands of bots (automated programs) currently maintain Wikipedia pages? Today, there are 2468 bot tasks approved to carry out maintenance jobs on more than 52 million English Wikipedia pages. Wikipedia bots perform operations such as new page creation, spelling correction, style correction, etc. Bots can also revert the pages to the original version when edits are made due to vandalism. Anyone with programming knowledge can easily create bots for Wikipedia. However, these programs need to be approved by the Bot Approval Group before they can maintain Wikipedia pages. The name ‘Mouse’ was coined for the instrument as the cable sticking out of it reminded Engelbart of a rodent’s tail.
5. You Can Visit the World’s First Webpage Even Today
Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist at CERN, invented the World Wide Web in 1989. It took another two years for the world’s first website to make its appearance. The first webpage went live in 1991 and was hosted on a NeXT system at CERN. The amazing fact is that the first website is still available for you to visit. It serves as a historical archive for everything available online about the World Wide Web. Click here to check it out.
Source: Lokajit Tikayatray
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