Inventions

Key Points: Built in the 1950s, the SAGE system was the largest computer ever constructed at the time. It spanned 20,000 square feet and comprised 56 IBM AN/FSQ-7 computers. In 2022, Hewlett Packard unveiled Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputer. It can complete at least one quintillion calculations per second, making it the fastest computer […]

In 2020, Tesla announced its newest battery cell, the 4680-type. It featured a massive body (nearly 5x the size of the next type down) and a new internal design that allows it to quickly and safely transfer energy through the battery. Unsurprisingly, this cell made big news, and automakers are scrambling to keep up. Right […]

Key Points: Some crypto wallet options, like the ones provided by major crypto exchanges, are easy to use and don’t require any kind of maintenance or complicated decisions. The different kinds of crypto wallets include: Cold Wallets, Hot Wallets, Paper Wallets, Hardware Wallets, Software Wallets (Desktop, Mobile), and Web Wallets. Hot wallets are connected to […]

Key Points: Water batteries provide a more environmentally clean option. Water loss is a key factor in keeping these batteries operating for a long time. Not requiring any new construction, water batteries reduce resources spent and save money. The Italian scientist, Alessandro Volta, is known for inventing the first electric battery in the world. Technology […]

Key Points Apple Glasses are the rumored smart, wearables glasses that will either work as a standalone device or use Bluetooth technology. The augmented reality (AR) experiences use AI to track specific items and change the digital objects in the surrounding virtual environment. Apple will likely avoid having too many similarities between their glasses and […]

Six Facts About ECRAM ECRAM is designed to mimic human memory synapses as high-speed RAM with low power consumption for nanotechnology systems. Electrochemical Random-Access Memory is designed to be used in Neuromorphic Computing, or computing through technology that mimics human biology, specifically the human brain. Currently, the nanomaterial 2D Titanium Carbide MXene that is used […]

Six Facts About Thunderbolt Ports Thunderbolt ports allow for 10 Gbit/s per channel. Thunderbolt 1 and 2 use the Mini DisplayPort connector. This has often led to confusion about what the Thunderbolt port is capable of. Many believed it to be a display connection. Thunderbolt 3 and 4 use the new USB-C shape connector which […]

Key Points: Solid-state drives store data in cells made of semiconducting material. Although sometimes called solid-state disks, these storage devices do not have moving parts and operate silently. The first enterprise-scale SSD debuted in 1976. The Bulk Core by Dataram had 2MB of memory and cost $9,700. SSD History Data storage has always been a […]

Key Points The Minitel system allowed French citizens to access all kinds of popular online services in the 1980s — long before the internet was in general use. At its zenith in the 1990s, the system offered more than 25,000 different services. This included the ability to purchase products, search the phone directory, and enter […]

Key Points Flash drives are the brainchild of Toshiba engineer Fujio Masuoka, who discovered how to harness the technology they rely on in 1980. Flash drives rely on floating gate transistor technology which has been around for over six decades. The two types of flash memory are NAND and NOR, both produced by the team […]

Key Points The ethernet was first created in 1973 by Robert Metcalf under the auspices of Xerox. It is a technology that permits connectivity to local networks of different kinds. Smart TVs are an example of a device that relies on ethernet technology, and these appliances are ideal for viewers who prefer to stream their […]

Key Points The Apollo Guidance Computer was the first computer ever built whose operation was based entirely on silicon integrated circuits. The drive to create the Apollo Guidance Computer’s software essentially established software engineering as an autonomous field. In fact, Margaret Hamilton, one of the principal software engineers who worked on the project, is credited […]

Key Points MYCIN was advanced for its time and had a competence level comparable to blood infection specialists and greater accuracy than general practitioners. The thought processes that it used were similar to human thought. Researchers wrote this system in Lisp, a set of multiple programming languages designed to work with artificial intelligence. This system […]

Key Points Files transmitted over FTP are not encrypted and more vulnerable to malicious interception. There is no visibility of the transfer process. This means there is no way to tell if a file transfer failed or is interrupted other than checking the status of the transferred files manually. High volume file transmission can’t be […]

Key Points USENET was popular and used before the World Wide Web and internet browsers were easily accessible to the general public and remains the oldest internet communication tool that is still in use today. It was one of the first services to provide for many commonly used internet features, including having the ability to […]

Key Points Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, or SMTP, was one of the first commercially available protocols that determined how electronic messages — including emails and files — were sent.  There are two types of SMTPs. One involves sending the content directly (end-to-end), and one involves storing it for later sending (store-and-forward). End-to-end is used for […]

Key Points RISC is a microprocessor which can simplify the instructions given to the computer in order to accomplish tasks. RISC design philosophy dates back to 1946 with the work of Alan Turing, who is often referred to as the father of modern computer science. Most mainstream modern processor designs are based on RISC architecture. […]

Key Points: ATM cash machines have revolutionized how people access their money. Rather than having to go to a bank during regular hours, the ATM allowed people to access their money at any time. The first ATM cash machine was installed in 1967 by Barclays Bank in North London. It was created by John Shepherd-Barron […]

Key Points: Breaking the Enigma Machine’s code was crucial for defeating the Nazis during World War II and saving millions of lives. The complete story of the Enigma code and the machine that broke it was not revealed until the 1990s. The story of Alan Turing, the man who cracked the Enigma code, was the […]

Key Points: The American physicist designed one of the first video games ever made–the sports video game Tennis for Two. After the initial introduction of the game, it was forgotten until the 1970s when Higinbotham testified in court during lawsuits between Magnavox and Ralph H Baer over video game patents. Ten years prior to Tennis […]

The History of the Cash Register: A Complete Guide The cash register may be part of all of our business experiences, but for its time period, it was actually highly revolutionary. Indeed, the cash register didn’t first come into existence until 1879, when James Ritty, a saloon owner in Dayton, Ohio invented it. Ritty grew […]

4 Facts about the Harvard Mark 1 The Harvard Mark 1 weighed nearly five tons and was over 50 feet long. The Harvard Mark 1 played a key role in the development of nuclear warfare, as it was used to help design the first atomic bombs. The Harvard Mark 1 was the first computer that […]

4 Facts About The Logic Theorist It created better proofs than human mathematicians. Its creation birthed fields of study like Artificial Intelligence and heuristic programming. Its invention necessitated the creation of the Information Processing Language (IPL). The Logic Theorist beat human mathematicians Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell as it offered better and more detailed […]

Key Points Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish mathematician, programmer, and inventor born in 1969. In the 1970s, Linus’ maternal grandmother bought one of the first personal computers, the Commodore Vic 20. Linus soon became bored with the few programs that were available for it, and by the time he was 10, he began creating […]