I’m normally not as serious as my blog posts might portray. Sometimes I just like learning about random things. I put together 5 of my recent favorites:
It’s Googol silly, not Google.
When the Google Founders were choosing a name they wanted to use the word which meant “a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros”. That’s Googol.. not the misspelled word Google. Read more here.
Man who invented the computer mouse didn’t make a dime.
Douglas Engelbart invented the first mouse while he was at the Stanford Research Institute. He never made any money from royalties on it because his patent ran out before adoption. He called it a mouse because of the tail (cord) coming out the back… in addition the term he used for the on screen cursor was a “bug”. I’m guessing the on screen cursor didn’t work very well. More here.
Social Media started with the phones
Back in the 1950’s phone Phreaking (people who would legally explore the telephone network looking for ways to make free phone calls) started to become popular. Here’s an excerpt taken from A Brief History of Social Media: “early social media explorers built “boxes”… homemade electronic devices that could generate tones allowing them to make free calls and get access to the experimental back end of the telephone system. Phreaks sniffed out telephone company test lines and conference circuits in order to host virtual seminars and discussions.” The first “podcasts” would take place on hacked corporate voice mail systems. Google hangouts seem so much easier now.
Symbolics.com
The first domain name that was ever registered. Think this registration took place in the early 90’s? Nope… 1985 by the now defunct computer manufacturer Symbolics. Want to read more?
George Washington was not the first president of the United States.
Sure he was technically the first one under our current Constitution but the Articles of Confederation were used from 1781 until 1788. Our country was really born on March 1, 1781 when the Articles were adopted. So technically… John Hanson was the first. Funny how history has a way of forgetting certain people.
