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The thermos (vacuum flask) was invented by Scottish physicist James Dewar in 1892 and later commercialized.
Solid-state drives (SSDs) use flash memory with no moving parts, making them faster and more durable than hard disk drives.
Kevlar, used in bulletproof vests, was invented accidentally by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont in 1965.
The first programmable digital computer was Z3, built by German engineer Konrad Zuse in 1941.
Gyroscopes maintain their orientation in space and are used in navigation systems for aircraft, ships, and spacecraft.
Hydraulic systems use incompressible fluid to transfer force ā they power everything from car brakes to excavators.
The electric light bulb is often attributed to Edison, but at least 22 inventors worked on incandescent lights before him.
Steel was a rare luxury material in the ancient world ā mass production became possible only in the 19th century.
Blockchain technology underlies cryptocurrencies but is also used for supply chain tracking and secure voting systems.
The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the network of physical devices embedded with sensors and software to exchange data.
Nuclear reactors generate electricity by using the heat from controlled fission chain reactions to boil water and spin turbines.
Solar panels are made from silicon wafers and convert sunlight into electricity through the photovoltaic effect.
The first computer virus, Creeper, spread across ARPANET in 1971 and displayed the message 'I'm the creeper ā catch me if you can!'
Fiber optic cables transmit data as pulses of light and can carry thousands of simultaneous communications.
The concept of a touchscreen dates to 1965; the first commercially successful touchscreen phone was the iPhone in 2007.
Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) work by using electric fields to orient liquid crystal molecules that block or transmit light.
The microwave oven was invented accidentally when Percy Spencer noticed a radar magnetron melted a chocolate bar in his pocket.
Velcro was invented in 1941 by Swiss engineer George de Mestral after he noticed burrs sticking to his dog's fur.
The first programmable electronic general-purpose computer, ENIAC, weighed 27 tons and consumed 150 kilowatts of power.
Moore's Law observed that transistor density on chips doubles approximately every two years ā this held for roughly 50 years.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) uses a minimum of 24 satellites to provide worldwide coverage.
Carbon fiber is 5 times stronger than steel but 5 times lighter, making it revolutionary in aerospace and automotive design.
3D printing (additive manufacturing) was invented in the 1980s ā early machines cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The lithium-ion battery, now powering billions of devices, was developed in the 1970sā80s by researchers including John Goodenough.
The first hard disk drive, released by IBM in 1956, weighed over a ton and stored just 5 MB of data.
The transistor, invented in 1947, made modern computers possible by replacing bulky vacuum tubes.
The World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 while working at CERN in Switzerland.
WiFi was partly developed using technology from radio astronomy research trying to detect exploding black holes.
The first mechanical computer, the Difference Engine, was designed by Charles Babbage in 1822 but never fully built.
The concept of email predates the internet ā early forms existed on mainframe computer networks in the 1960s.
A modern smartphone has more computing power than NASA had during the Apollo moon missions.
The internet was originally called ARPANET and was designed by the US military to survive a nuclear attack.
The first computer bug was a literal bug ā Grace Hopper's team found a moth trapped in a Harvard Mark II relay in 1947.
The first emoji was created in 1999 by Japanese designer Shigetaka Kurita for a mobile internet platform.
Iceland runs almost entirely on geothermal and hydroelectric energy ā it is one of the greenest countries on Earth.
The original name for the search engine Google was 'BackRub.'
Video game revenue surpassed film and music revenue combined for the first time in 2019.
The average person unlocks their phone 80 times per day.
Amazon ships approximately 1.6 million packages per day.
A standard AA battery is enough to power a Wi-Fi router for about 5 hours.
The total amount of data created in the last two years exceeds all data created in previous human history.
Social media platforms have more users than any religion has followers.
The world's first website, created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991, is still live at info.cern.ch.
NASA's Apollo guidance computer had less processing power than a modern USB charger.
The first computer mouse was made of wood ā Douglas Engelbart built it in 1964.
Morse code was originally developed for electric telegraphs, not radio.
The first product to have a barcode scanned at retail was a pack of Wrigley's chewing gum in 1974.
Bubble wrap was originally invented as textured wallpaper before finding its packaging purpose.
A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time ā 1/100th of a second in computing.
The average Google search uses about 0.3 watt-hours of electricity.