Fun Facts About the IT Industry
In the world of computing and technology we throw around the acronym “IT” A LOT. I bet there are a handful of people who have no idea what IT even stands for, or that it stood for anything! TacoBloga here to give you some fun facts about the high tech world we live in, and how it became what it is today! (And if you’re still wondering what IT stands for, I won’t keep you waiting long: Information Technology…Information Technology? Really?)
Internet facts
- Email came before the World Wide Web (WWW). You had to use a computer and a rotary telephone to connect to a service called Micronet. This was pre-WWW, so there were no URLs, just numbered webpages. For emails, the webpage number was 7776.
- The first electronic computer ENIAC weighed more than 27 tons and took up 1800 square feet.
- Doug Engelbart invented the first computer mouse in 1964 which was made of wood.
- An average person normally blinks 20 times a minute, but when using a computer he/she blinks only 7 times a minute.
- The QWERTY layout was actually developed to slow down typing speed, since typewriters would jam if adjacent letters were hit in succession too quickly (QWERTY was created in the 1800s). There are plenty of other layouts available if you’re willing to learn: Dvorak, Colemak, AZERTY, QWERTZ, and MALTRON.
Dvorak - The internet accrued 50 million users in just 5 years. It took TV 13 years to do that.
- You could fit the whole Internet on just 200 million Blu-Ray disks.
- The International Space Station has faster Internet than Australia.
- “Pigeon Beats Internet in Race” – In 2010 in the UK, a race was set between 10 carrier pigeons and the Internet. The carrier or homing pigeons were released with a USB data stick attached to them that contained a video file. That same video file was set to upload to a website the moment the pigeons took off. The birds flew 120km to their destination in Skegness, arriving an hour and a quarter later while the website had only uploaded 24% of the 300MB video file.
Microsoft facts
- Bill Gates initially wrote the company name as Micro-soft, which made sense considering it’s a portmanteau of “microcomputer” and “software”.
- Microsoft’s first piece of hardware was the Microsoft Mouse in 1983.
- On October 25 2001, Microsoft launched Windows XP – its best-selling product ever. Windows XP was compiled from 45 million lines of code.
- Some Windows versions which reportedly couldn’t get released were: Windows Nashville, Windows Cairo, and Windows Neptune.
- Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen designed the company’s first logo in less than a day. The funky “O” was called the “blibbet.”
- Microsoft employees are expected to bring M&Ms to the office to share on their work anniversaries – the tradition is one pound for every year they’ve been with the company.
- Microsoft holds 48,313 patents, including one for its funky futuristic “HoloLens” headset.
Bob - In 1995, Microsoft released Bob, a custom version of Windows that was aimed at making it easier for new users to get around their computer by making it look like a “house” with “rooms.” It was just weird and got killed swiftly.
Apple facts
- Every Apple iPhone ad displays the time as 9:41 AM, the time Steve Jobs unveiled it in 2007.
- Apple is the world’s largest IT company by revenue and total assets, and the world’s second-largest mobile phone manufacturer.
- You have a better chance of getting accepted to Harvard University than getting a job at the Apple Store.
- When the first prototype of Apple’s iPod was shown to Steve Jobs, he dropped it in an aquarium and used the air bubbles to prove there was empty space and it could be made smaller.
Apple-1 - The battery of an Apple Macbook could save you from a gunshot: it’s bulletproof.
- A rare Apple-1 computer built in Steve Jobs’ garage in the summer of 1976 was sold at an auction in 2014 for US$905,000.
Linux facts
- Linux is not an OS, but it is the kernel; GNU Linux is the OS and it comes in several hundred flavors.
- A Standard Linux kernel of today has over 10 Million lines of code and it grows at the rate of 10% every year. About 4,500 lines of codes are added and 1,500 lines of code are changed everyday. Initially in 1991, Linux kernel version 0.01 was released with 10,239 lines of code.
- The 3.18 Linux kernel was produced in 63 days, the second shortest time between two kernels on record.
- The Linux kernel’s official mascot is a penguin named Tux, abbreviation of tuxedo.
- As of June 2014, 97% of the world’s fastest computers are using GNU/Linux. The top ten supercomputers all use Linux.
- 33.8% of the world runs on Linux servers compared to 7.3% running Microsoft Windows operating system.
- Users of Linux include: U.S. Department of Defense; U.S. Navy Submarine Fleet; Federal Aviation Administration; Japan’s bullet trains; traffic control of San Francisco; the New York Stock Exchange; CERN; Russia, Brazil and Venezuela for interoperable management, cost efficiency, and technological independence; Google; Cisco; Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Toyota; TiVo; the server hosting the website of the White House (Drupal); and the federal government of Brazil.
- The Oscar-winning visual effects in the movie “Titanic” by James Cameron came from machines with Linux, and Avatar was the last movie completely developed in 3D applications on the Linux platform using Foss Software.
- In 2000, Steve Jobs at Apple Inc. tried to hire Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux) to have him drop Linux development and instead work on “Unix for the biggest user base,” which was OS X back then. Linus declined the offer.
- Linux kernels have weird and funny code names. For example, the code name for kernel 4.0 is “Hurr durr I’ma sheep.” These code names are authored by Linus Torvalds himself, and included in the Makefile of their source trees.
Fact Sources
Factslides
fossbytes
Mashable
networkworld
InformationWeek
Tecmint
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