Fascinating Facts About The Internet Which You May Not Know!
Nowadays we cannot imagine life without the internet considering the amount of information, knowledge, and even entertainment that we can access at any time. It is undoubtedly a huge network of information with which people of all age groups from all over the world are able to connect with each other, stay updated with the latest news, and get answers to their queries or questions on day to day basis.
Interestingly, not everyone knows everything about the Internet, and there are many interesting facts about this invention that still remain unknown to most of its users.
Amazing Facts About The Internet
1. The SPAM Word
When you receive yet another email with the subject line 'Congratulations You Won A Million Dollars', or 'Wow! You Are Our Lucky Winner For A Holiday at some blah blah place', etc, then the first word that comes to mind is "Spam" and then you straightaway mark such emails as Spam.
However, where did this word Spam actually came from? Well, it's quite interesting to note that the word Spam was actually derived from a contraction of spiced canned meat (SPiced hAM).
Though this is where the Spam word came from, however, the reason why people choose to denote this word with the kind of annoying and false emails is that people remembered the aggressive advertising, which the manufacturer of spiced canned meat, did to sell the stocks.
Then in 1986, a certain Dave Rhodes began to promote another financial pyramid, spreading thousands of identical messages in Usenet newsgroups. Users drew an analogy, and since then the word "SPAM" has steadily stuck with the meaning of intrusive, useless information.
2. First Use of a Webcam
Did you know, the first webcam was created to monitor the Trojan Coffee Pot, a coffee machine in a room called the Trojan Room at the University of Cambridge Computer Lab, England in 1991.
3. History of Internet Prediction
In the 1990s Nikola Tesla came up with the idea of a world wireless system. He predicted that one day it would be possible to transmit telephone signals, documents, music, and video around the world using wireless technology.
Tesla's ideas were then followed by Paul Otlet and Vannevar Bush who devised a mechanical searchable book and media storage system in the 1930s and 1940s.
However, it was in the 1960s when JCR Licklider popularized the idea of the Intergalactic Network on computers. After that, many computer scientists developed the concept of Packet Switching, which is a method for transmitting electronic data effectively which later became one of the main building blocks of the internet we use today.
4. Hard Drive Discovery
We take the use of the huge amount of phone storage that is in GBs for granted. However, do you know that the first storage device's capacity was only 5 MB, not only this, the size of this storage was equal to two refrigerators and was insanely expensive.
It was IBM who popularized the word's first hard drive in 1956.
5. Why "Surfing the Internet" and not 'Using the Internet' or etc?
Why people say Surfing the internet, is the internet related to the sea? It turns out that this term first appeared in 1992 by Jean Armor Polly. She developed the phrase “surfing the net” for an article she was writing at the time.
6. First Browser Not Internet Explorer
Many may think that Internet Explorer is the first browser, well normally because this is what many normal users saw on their home Windows computer. However, it's interesting to know that Mosaic is the predecessor browser before internet explorer and even Netscape.
So these were some of the interesting facts that are closely related to the history and development of the internet in the world. Pretty interesting isn't it?
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