1. The world's first computer programmer was a woman named Ada Lovelace. She wrote the first algorithm for the Analytical Engine, a mechanical general-purpose computer designed by Charles Babbage in the 1800s.
2. The QWERTY keyboard layout, which is still widely used today, was designed to prevent mechanical typewriter jams. It became the standard layout for computer keyboards as well.
3. The "Save" icon in most software applications depicts a floppy disk, even though many of today's users have never used or seen one.
4. The term "bug" to describe a computer glitch originated in 1947 when an actual moth got trapped in a relay of the Harvard Mark II computer. The bug was literally removed from the system.
5. The first hard disk drive introduced in 1956 by IBM stored only 5 megabytes of data and was the size of two refrigerators. Now, a typical USB flash drive can hold hundreds of times more data in a tiny form factor.
6. The world's first computer mouse was made of wood. It was invented by Douglas Engelbart in 1964 and had only one button.
7. The Apollo 11 moon landing computer had less computing power than today's average smartphone. It operated at 0.043 MHz (megahertz) and had 2K memory.
8. The first website, created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991, is still online and can be accessed at its original URL: info.cern.ch.
9. The world's first computer virus, called the "Creeper," was created in 1971 by Bob Thomas. It was intended to demonstrate the ability of a computer to spread a program between computers.
10. The first commercial text message was sent in December 1992, from a computer to a mobile phone, with the simple message: "Merry Christmas."
11. The concept of email predates the World Wide Web. The first email was sent in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, who used the @ symbol to separate the user name from the computer network.
12. The average person generates around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day, and it is estimated that 90% of the world's data was created in the last two years.
13. The first computer to defeat a human chess champion was IBM's Deep Blue, which defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997.
14. The first computer-generated animated feature film was "Toy Story," released by Pixar in 1995.
15. The term "byte" was coined by computer scientist Werner Buchholz in 1956 as a unit of digital information. It represents a group of 8 bits.
16. Google's search engine was originally called "Backrub" before it was renamed. The name "Google" is derived from the mathematical term "googol," which means the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.
17. The first computer mouse sold commercially, known as the Xerox 8010, was priced at $400 in 1981.
18. The term "Wi-Fi" doesn't stand for anything. It was coined as a catchier alternative to "Wireless Fidelity."
19. The average person spends more than 6 hours per day interacting with digital devices and consumes over 100,000 words of information every day.
20. The concept of a touch screen was first proposed in a research paper published in 1965, long before its practical implementation in modern devices.
21. The term "bug" is often used to describe a software glitch, but it originally referred to a hardware problem.
22. The first graphic user interface (GUI) was developed by Xerox PARC in the 1970s, setting the foundation for the visual interface of modern operating systems.
23. The term "spam" for unsolicited email originated from a Monty Python sketch in which the word was repeated excessively.
24. The world's first electronic digital computer, called the ENIAC, weighed approximately 30 tons and occupied a space of 1,800 square feet.
25. The internet's first banner ad was implemented in 1994 and appeared on HotWired.com. It promoted AT&T and had a click-through rate of 44%.
26. The computer industry has its own version of Moore's Law, known as Kryder's Law, which states that the storage capacity of hard disk drives doubles approximately every 13 months.
27. The shortest known computer program consists of only two instructions: "comment" and "end." It was written by Wladimir Labeikovsky in 1971.
28. The first computer-based emoticon, the smiley face, was invented by Scott Fahlman in 1982. He proposed using :-) and :-( to represent different emotions in textual communication.
29. The world's fastest supercomputer, as of 2021, is Japan's Fugaku. It can perform over 442 quadrillion calculations per second, making it approximately 2.8 million times faster than a high-end laptop.
30. Computers rely on binary code, which uses a system of ones and zeros, to represent and process information. This binary system is the foundation of all digital computing.
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