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735 facts in Technology. Click any fact to see its full page.
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Geothermal energy taps the heat of Earth's interior — Iceland generates nearly 100% of electricity and heating this way.
The world's largest wind turbine has blades longer than two football fields.
Tidal power has been used since medieval times — millwheels powered by tidal flows operated across Europe.
Wind turbines must be shut down if winds exceed about 90 km/h — to prevent structural damage.
The Hoover Dam generates about 4 billion kilowatt-hours per year — enough for 1.3 million homes.
Solar power has become cheaper than any other energy source in history — costs have dropped 90% since 2010.
Universal basic income is being piloted in Finland, Kenya, Alaska, and other places — results show improved wellbeing with modest work disincentive.
Financial derivatives — instruments whose value derives from an underlying asset — originated in agricultural markets to hedge risk.
Cartels like OPEC coordinate production among competitors to fix prices — normally illegal under antitrust law.
Artificial intelligence is expected to automate 25–30% of current jobs — but will also create new categories of work.
Quantitative easing — central bank asset purchases — was unprecedented before 2008 but became standard practice.
The gig economy has shifted risk from employers to workers — gig workers have no guaranteed income, benefits, or job security.
The 'invisible hand' described by Adam Smith in 1776 explains how self-interest in free markets can produce collective benefit.
Rent control reduces housing availability over time — by disincentivizing new construction and supply expansion.
The first webcam was used at Cambridge University in 1991 to monitor a coffee pot.
The first text message ever sent was 'Merry Christmas' — on December 3, 1992.
The longest echo in a man-made space lasts 112 seconds in a giant oil storage tank in Scotland.
Canned food was invented 50 years before the can opener — it was opened with a hammer and chisel.
The inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, never patented it — he gave it away for free.
The inventor of the Pringles can requested his ashes be buried in one — and they were.
The first product to have its barcode scanned at a checkout was a pack of Wrigley's chewing gum in 1974.
The shortest commercially scheduled flight is 1.5 minutes between two Scottish islands — Westray to Papa Westray.
The first successful cochlear implant was performed in 1961 — allowing profoundly deaf people to hear.
Surgical robots perform operations through tiny incisions — reducing recovery time from weeks to days.
MRI technology was first used clinically in 1977 — a full-body scan then took 5 hours.
SpaceX's Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built — capable of lifting 100–150 tons to low Earth orbit.
The James Webb Space Telescope cost $10 billion and took 30 years to build.
The Apollo program employed 400,000 engineers, scientists, and technicians at its peak.
The sharing economy — Airbnb, Uber — revives pre-industrial patterns of resource sharing disrupted by industrialization.
Autonomous vehicles have driven billions of miles in testing — but haven't achieved the reliability of human drivers in all conditions.
TLS (Transport Layer Security) protects all HTTPS connections — the padlock in your browser.
The longest-running computer game franchise is Oregon Trail — it first ran on teletype machines in 1971.
Public key cryptography — enabling secure internet transactions — was published in 1976 by Diffie and Hellman.
The original Macintosh (1984) had a 9-inch screen, 128KB of RAM, and a 400KB floppy drive.
Server farms consume about 1% of global electricity — this is expected to rise significantly with AI growth.
The first video game ever patented was a cathode ray tube amusement device in 1947.
Password managers are recommended by security experts — reusing passwords is the leading cause of account breaches.
The global e-waste problem generates 53.6 million tons per year — only 17% is formally recycled.
TikTok's algorithm is widely considered the most powerful recommendation engine ever built.
The 'right to be forgotten' allows Europeans to request removal of personal data from search results.
The first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1858 — it allowed a message to cross in minutes instead of weeks.
Augmented reality overlays digital info on the real world — Apple Vision Pro is the most advanced consumer headset.
The first electronic programmable computer in the world was Colossus, built in Britain in 1943 to crack Nazi codes.
Deepfakes — AI-generated synthetic media — are becoming increasingly difficult to detect.
CAPTCHA tests distinguish humans from bots — the distorted text versions also helped digitize books when users typed them.
The average person spends about 6 hours and 37 minutes per day on digital media.
Encrypted messaging apps use end-to-end encryption — only sender and receiver can read the content.
The first hard drive (1956) stored 5 MB on fifty 24-inch disks and weighed over a ton.
Spam email accounts for about 45% of all email traffic globally.
Open source software underpins most of the internet — Linux, Apache, and Python are free and maintained by communities.