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The First Webcam Was Invented to Watch a Coffee Pot
In 1991, researchers at the University of Cambridge set up a camera pointed at a coffee pot in the Trojan Room so they could check if coffee was ready without walking downstairs. It later became the first live image streamed on the web in 1993.
Why It’s Fascinating
The entire webcam industry — which now powers video conferencing, security systems, and streaming — was born from sheer laziness about checking a coffee pot. The pot itself was sold on eBay for 3,350 pounds in 2001 after the camera was decommissioned.
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There Are More Possible Internet Addresses in IPv6 Than Atoms on Earth
IPv6 supports 340 undecillion unique addresses (3.4 x 10^38). Earth contains roughly 10^50 atoms, but the number of IPv6 addresses per square meter of Earth's surface is still about 6.7 x 10^23 — Avogadro's number.
The First Computer Bug Was an Actual Bug
In 1947, engineers working on the Harvard Mark II computer found a moth trapped in a relay, causing a malfunction. Grace Hopper taped the moth into the logbook with the note 'First actual case of bug being found,' popularizing the term 'debugging.'
The Entire Text of Wikipedia Is Only About 22 Gigabytes
All of English Wikipedia's article text, compressed, fits in roughly 22 gigabytes — small enough to fit on a basic USB drive. The full database with edit histories and metadata is much larger, but the sum of all human knowledge on Wikipedia is surprisingly compact.
Over 90 Percent of the World's Data Was Created in the Last Two Years
Humanity generates approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. The explosion of smartphones, IoT devices, social media, and cloud computing means the vast majority of all data ever created is less than two years old.
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