ErebusFact library / Trivia
100 technology facts, each paired with a strange little scene and a hook for the hard word.
Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web in 1989 while working at CERN in Switzerland.
Picture it
In 1989, a British scientist at CERN gets tired of hunting for documents on different computers. He spins a spider's web between them, with a note: "Vague but exciting", his boss writes.
Memory hooks
The first message over ARPANET, the internet's ancestor, was sent in 1969 and read just "lo" before the system crashed.
Picture it
In 1969, a student at UCLA tries to type "LOGIN" to a computer at Stanford. He gets as far as L-O and the system crashes. So the first internet message was "lo", as in "lo and behold".
Memory hooks
Ray Tomlinson sent the first network email in 1971 and chose the @ symbol for addresses.
Picture it
In 1971 an engineer needs a symbol to separate a user's name from their computer's. He looks down at his keyboard and picks the one no one uses: @. His name, Tom, is at the link.
Memory hooks
Alan Turing helped break the German Enigma code at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.
Picture it
In a country house in Buckinghamshire, a mathematician builds a whirring machine called the Bombe to crack German Enigma codes. The park is bleached white by searchlights: Bletchley.
Memory hooks
The Turing test, proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, asks whether a machine can chat so well that a person can't tell it from a human.
Picture it
You chat by typewriter with two hidden players, one human, one machine. If you can't tell which is which, the machine passes. The test is named after the man who proposed it in 1950.
Memory hooks
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Colossus, built by engineer Tommy Flowers in 1943–44, was the world's first programmable electronic digital computer.
Picture it
A Post Office engineer fills a room with 2,500 glowing valves to crack Hitler's messages. It's huge, so they call it Colossus, and he brings flowers to the codebreakers.
Memory hooks
In 1947, engineers working with Grace Hopper found a moth in the Harvard Mark II computer and taped it into the log as the "first actual case of bug being found".
Picture it
In 1947, engineers open up the Harvard Mark II computer and find a moth stuck in a relay. They tape it into the logbook: "First actual case of bug being found." Grace Hopper loved telling the story, hopping with glee.
Memory hooks
The transistor was invented at Bell Labs in 1947 by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley.
Picture it
Just before Christmas 1947, three scientists at Bell Labs ring a bell: a tiny crystal switch amplifies a signal without any glowing valve. It's the transistor.
Memory hooks
Moore's law, from Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, predicts that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years.
Picture it
An Intel co-founder draws a graph in 1965: the number of transistors on a chip keeps doubling. He keeps asking for more, more: Moore.
Memory hooks
Apple was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne.
Picture it
In 1976, two Steves build circuit boards in a garage in Los Altos. One sells his VW van and the other his calculator to pay for parts. The quieter one, Wozniak, does the wiring.
Memory hooks
Apple launched the Macintosh in 1984 with a Super Bowl advert directed by Ridley Scott.
Picture it
During the Super Bowl, a woman in red shorts sprints through rows of grey drones and hurls a hammer at a giant screen. It shatters. Apple's Macintosh is coming, in 1984.
Memory hooks
Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1975.
Picture it
Two childhood friends from Seattle drive to Albuquerque in 1975 to write software for a new home computer kit. They name their company after microcomputer software.
Memory hooks
Google, founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, began as a Stanford research project called BackRub.
Picture it
Two Stanford students give each other a back rub while their search engine counts which pages link back to which. Later they rename it after the huge number, a googol.
Memory hooks
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon as an online bookshop, first naming it Cadabra before a lawyer misheard it as "cadaver".
Picture it
A man in a Seattle garage wants to call his online bookshop Cadabra, as in abracadabra. His lawyer hears "cadaver". He picks the world's biggest river instead.
Memory hooks
The first tweet, posted by co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2006, read "just setting up my twttr".
Picture it
A man in a beanie types the first message on a new service in 2006: "just setting up my twttr". The vowels are missing because they couldn't afford the domain with them.
Memory hooks
The first YouTube video, "Me at the zoo", was uploaded in 2005 by co-founder Jawed Karim and shows elephants.
Picture it
A young man stands in front of the elephants at San Diego Zoo for 19 seconds and says their trunks are "really, really, really long". That's the first video on YouTube, 2005.
Memory hooks
Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger; "wiki" comes from the Hawaiian for "quick".
Picture it
In 2001, two men start a free encyclopedia anyone can edit. They call it wiki, Hawaiian for "quick", after the airport shuttle bus in Honolulu: the Wiki Wiki.
Memory hooks
Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone in 2007.
Picture it
On stage in a black turtleneck in 2007, Steve Jobs announces three products, then reveals they're all one device: the iPhone.
Memory hooks
Linus Torvalds released the Linux kernel in 1991; its mascot is a penguin named Tux.
Picture it
A Finnish student posts in 1991: "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big)." A penguin called Tux waddles across his desk, and Thor's valds thunder: Torvalds.
Memory hooks
The Python programming language, created by Guido van Rossum, is named after Monty Python, not the snake.
Picture it
A Dutch programmer reads Monty Python scripts over Christmas 1989 and names his new programming language Python. No snakes involved. He's Guido, the guide.
Memory hooks
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The Java programming language, created by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems, was first called Oak.
Picture it
A Canadian programmer at Sun looks out of his office window at an oak tree and names his new language after it. The name's taken, so over coffee they rename it Java.
Memory hooks
Brendan Eich created JavaScript in about ten days at Netscape in 1995.
Picture it
In May 1995, a programmer at Netscape is given ten days to build a scripting language for the browser. He finishes in time. It's still everywhere: JavaScript.
Memory hooks
Dennis Ritchie created the C programming language at Bell Labs and co-created Unix with Ken Thompson.
Picture it
At Bell Labs in the early 1970s, a bearded programmer writes a language called C, then uses it to rewrite an operating system called Unix. His name is rich: Ritchie.
Memory hooks
Douglas Engelbart invented the computer mouse, a wooden block on wheels, and showed it off in 1968's "Mother of All Demos".
Picture it
In 1968, an engineer demonstrates a block of wood with two wheels and a cord trailing like a tail. It moves a dot on a screen. It's a mouse, and the show is called the Mother of All Demos.
Memory hooks
The QWERTY keyboard layout comes from Christopher Latham Sholes's typewriter of the 1870s.
Picture it
A newspaper man in 1870s Milwaukee keeps jamming his typewriter's keys. He shuffles the letters until the top row spells QWERTY, and shoals of typists follow: Sholes.
Memory hooks
Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876; his first words on it were to his assistant, Thomas Watson.
Picture it
In 1876, an inventor spills acid on his trousers and shouts into his new contraption: "Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you!" In the next room, Watson hears it through the wire. A bell rings.
Memory hooks
Samuel Morse sent the first long-distance telegraph message, "What hath God wrought", in 1844.
Picture it
A portrait painter turned inventor taps dots and dashes on a key in Washington in 1844. Forty miles away in Baltimore, a clerk writes: "What hath God wrought". The painter's moose taps along: Morse.
Memory hooks
Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio signal, the Morse letter S, in 1901.
Picture it
In 1901, an Italian flies a kite with an aerial on it above a hill in Newfoundland. Through his earpiece he hears three faint clicks: the letter S, sent from Cornwall. A macaroni sits on his hat: Marconi.
Memory hooks
Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of television in London in 1926.
Picture it
In a Soho attic in 1926, a Scottish inventor uses a spinning disc, a bicycle lamp and darning needles to send a flickering face across the room. The face is a ventriloquist's dummy with a beard: Baird.
Memory hooks
Thomas Edison, "the Wizard of Menlo Park", invented the phonograph in 1877; the first words recorded were "Mary had a little lamb".
Picture it
In 1877, an inventor shouts "Mary had a little lamb" into a horn and turns a crank. The tinfoil cylinder plays his voice back. Reporters call him the Wizard of Menlo Park.
Memory hooks
The Wright brothers made the first powered aeroplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903; it lasted 12 seconds.
Picture it
On a windy beach in North Carolina in 1903, a bicycle maker lies flat on a wooden flyer and lifts off for 12 seconds. A kitty chases a hawk across the sand below.
Memory hooks
James Watt greatly improved the steam engine in the 1760s with his separate condenser; the unit of power, the watt, is named after him.
Picture it
A Scottish instrument maker is fixing a model steam engine at Glasgow University when he has an idea on a Sunday walk: cool the steam in a separate box. Energy in watts pours out.
Memory hooks
George and Robert Stephenson's locomotive Rocket won the Rainhill trials in 1829.
Picture it
In 1829, steam locomotives race along a track at Rainhill near Liverpool. A yellow engine called Rocket whooshes past the rest at nearly 30 mph and wins.
Memory hooks
Karl Benz patented the first practical petrol car, the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, in 1886; his wife Bertha made the first long-distance drive in 1888.
Picture it
In 1888, a woman takes her husband's three-wheeled motor car without telling him and drives 100 km with her two sons to see her mother, buying fuel at a chemist's on the way. She's Bertha Benz.
Memory hooks
Henry Ford introduced the moving assembly line in 1913 to build the Model T.
Picture it
In 1913, a car factory in Detroit sets its chassis moving along a rope and workers stay in place. A car that took 12 hours to build now takes 93 minutes. Every one is black: the Model T.
Memory hooks
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RAF officer Frank Whittle patented the turbojet engine in 1930.
Picture it
A young RAF officer whittles a stick by the fire and dreams of a plane with no propeller, pushed by a jet of hot air. He patents the jet engine in 1930.
Memory hooks
Swiss engineer George de Mestral invented Velcro after studying burrs that stuck to his dog's fur.
Picture it
A Swiss engineer comes home from a walk in the Alps with his dog covered in burrs. Under a microscope he sees tiny hooks. He invents Velcro, from velvet and crochet.
Memory hooks
Percy Spencer invented the microwave oven after a chocolate bar melted in his pocket near a radar magnetron.
Picture it
An engineer stands next to a radar machine in 1945 and feels something warm. The chocolate bar in his pocket has melted. He points the radar at popcorn kernels next. Spencer spends the afternoon snacking.
Memory hooks
The first product scanned with a barcode, in 1974, was a packet of Wrigley's chewing gum.
Picture it
At 8:01 one morning in 1974, a cashier in an Ohio supermarket slides a packet of chewing gum over a red laser. *Beep.* The first product ever scanned.
Memory hooks
Bluetooth is named after Harald Bluetooth, a 10th-century king who united Denmark and Norway; its logo combines his initials in runes.
Picture it
A Viking king with a dead, blue tooth unites the tribes of Denmark and Norway. A thousand years later, his name unites phones and headphones. The logo is his initials in runes.
Memory hooks
The QR code was invented in Japan in 1994 by Denso Wave to track car parts; QR stands for "Quick Response".
Picture it
In 1994, a Japanese engineer playing the board game Go looks at the black and white stones and gets an idea: a square code for tracking car parts in a Toyota factory.
Memory hooks
The first widely used emoji set was designed by Shigetaka Kurita for a Japanese mobile network in 1999.
Picture it
In 1999, a Japanese designer draws 176 tiny 12-by-12 pixel pictures for mobile phones: a heart, a sun, an umbrella. The word joins e (picture) and moji (character).
Memory hooks
Junk email is called spam after a Monty Python sketch in which Vikings drown out conversation by singing about the tinned meat.
Picture it
In a greasy café, Vikings sing "Spam, spam, spam, spam!" so loudly no one else can talk. That's why junk email drowning out real messages is called spam.
Memory hooks
One byte is made of eight bits.
Picture it
A tiny row of eight light switches, each on or off, together spell one letter. A bite of data: a byte.
Memory hooks
IBM's Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a match in 1997.
Picture it
In 1997, the world chess champion pushes back his chair and storms off. A refrigerator-sized IBM computer has beaten him. Its name is as cold as the sea: Deep Blue.
Memory hooks
In 2016, DeepMind's AlphaGo beat Go champion Lee Sedol 4–1.
Picture it
In Seoul in 2016, a computer places a stone on a Go board that no human would ever play: move 37. The champion, Lee Sedol, leaves the room. The program wins 4–1.
Memory hooks
Herman Hollerith's punched-card tabulator processed the 1890 US census; his company later became part of IBM.
Picture it
For the 1890 US census, a young engineer punches holes in cards like a train conductor's ticket and feeds them into a machine that counts them. His company later becomes IBM. He hollers with joy.
Memory hooks
Joseph Marie Jacquard's loom of 1804 used punched cards to weave patterns, an idea later used in early computers.
Picture it
In 1804 Lyon, a weaver hangs a long chain of punched cards on his loom. Where there's a hole, a thread lifts. The pattern weaves itself: a jacket with a guard: Jacquard.
Memory hooks
The Antikythera mechanism, found in a Greek shipwreck in 1901, is an ancient geared device that predicted eclipses and planetary positions.
Picture it
In 1901, sponge divers pull a lump of corroded bronze from a Roman-era shipwreck near a Greek island. Inside are dozens of gears that once predicted eclipses. Anti-kit-hera: an ancient kit for the heavens.
Memory hooks
Most computers count time in seconds since the Unix epoch, midnight on 1 January 1970.
Picture it
Deep inside most computers, a clock has been counting seconds since midnight on 1 January 1970. In 2038 it will overflow the old 32-bit counters, like a car odometer rolling over.
Memory hooks
Atari's Pong (1972), a simple table-tennis game, was one of the first hit arcade video games.
Picture it
In 1972, a bar owner in California calls to say a new arcade machine has stopped working. They open it up: it's jammed full of quarters. The game is Pong, made by Atari.
Memory hooks
Pac-Man (1980) was designed by Toru Iwatani at Namco, who said its shape was inspired by a pizza with a slice missing.
Picture it
A Japanese game designer takes a slice from a pizza and looks at what's left: a yellow circle with a mouth. It chomps through a maze, chased by four ghosts: Pac-Man, 1980.
Memory hooks
Tetris was created in 1984 by Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in Moscow.
Picture it
In 1984, a Soviet scientist at a Moscow computer lab stacks falling shapes made of four squares each, like the four-square tetris pieces. He pas it to his jittery colleagues: Pajitnov.
Memory hooks
Nintendo was founded in Kyoto in 1889 to make hanafuda playing cards.
Picture it
In 1889 Kyoto, a craftsman paints flowers on small cards for a game called hanafuda. More than a century later, his company makes game consoles: Nintendo.
Memory hooks
Mario first appeared in the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong, where he was called Jumpman.
Picture it
In 1981, a little carpenter in red dungarees jumps over barrels thrown by a giant ape. He's called Jumpman. Later he's named after the company's landlord, Mario.
Memory hooks
Nintendo's Game Boy handheld launched in 1989 and was bundled with Tetris in the West.
Picture it
In 1989 a grey brick with a green screen fits in your pocket. Packed in the box: Tetris. Kids play it under the covers with a torch.
Memory hooks
Sony launched the Walkman portable cassette player in 1979.
Picture it
In 1979, a Sony co-founder wants to listen to opera on long flights. Engineers squeeze a cassette player into a blue-and-silver box with headphones. He goes for a walk, man.
Memory hooks
The MP3 audio format was developed largely at Germany's Fraunhofer Society; engineers tuned it using Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner".
Picture it
A German engineer tests his music-squeezing software on Suzanne Vega's a cappella song "Tom's Diner" hundreds of times until her voice sounds right. The MP3 is born at the Fraunhofer institute.
Memory hooks
The first text message, sent in 1992 from a computer to a mobile phone, said "Merry Christmas".
Picture it
In December 1992, an engineer types a message on a computer and sends it to a director's phone at a Christmas party. It reads "Merry Christmas". The director can't reply: phones couldn't type yet.
Memory hooks
Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first handheld mobile phone call in New York in 1973, calling a rival at Bell Labs.
Picture it
In 1973, a Motorola engineer stands on a New York pavement holding a phone the size of a brick and rings his rival at Bell Labs just to gloat. He's Martin Cooper, as cocky as a cooper's barrel.
Memory hooks
Windows, icons and the mouse-driven desktop were developed on the Alto computer at Xerox PARC, which Steve Jobs visited in 1979.
Picture it
In 1979, Steve Jobs visits a photocopier company's research lab in Palo Alto and sees windows, icons and a mouse on a screen. He rushes back to Apple. The lab is Xerox PARC.
Memory hooks
Nokia began in Finland in 1865 as a paper mill before becoming a giant of mobile phones.
Picture it
In 1865, a Finnish engineer builds a wood-pulp mill on a river. A century later, the company makes rubber boots, cables, and then the world's best-selling mobile phones: Nokia.
Memory hooks
Samsung, which means "three stars" in Korean, began in 1938 as a small trading company selling groceries such as dried fish.
Picture it
In 1938, a small trading shop in Korea sells dried fish and noodles. Its owner names it "three stars", hoping it will shine for ever: Samsung.
Memory hooks
Hewlett-Packard was founded in a Palo Alto garage in 1939; one of its first customers was Disney, for the film Fantasia.
Picture it
In a garage in Palo Alto in 1939, two friends toss a coin to decide whose name goes first. Their first customer is Disney, who buys eight sound oscillators for Fantasia.
Memory hooks
The Raspberry Pi, a credit-card-sized computer for teaching coding, was launched in 2012 by a charity in Cambridge, England.
Picture it
In Cambridge in 2012, a charity sells a bare circuit board the size of a credit card for $35 so children can learn to code. They name it after a fruit dessert and a nod to Python.
Memory hooks
Elisha Otis demonstrated his safety brake for lifts in 1854, making tall buildings practical.
Picture it
At the 1854 New York fair, a man stands on a raised platform and orders the rope cut. The crowd gasps, but the platform stops dead. He doffs his hat: "All safe, gentlemen, all safe!" He's Otis.
Memory hooks
The oldest surviving photograph from a camera, "View from the Window at Le Gras", was made by Nicéphore Niépce around 1826.
Picture it
In about 1826, a Frenchman points a box out of his upstairs window and waits all day. On a pewter plate, a blurry view of rooftops appears. He kneels by his niece: Niépce.
Memory hooks
George Eastman founded Kodak and invented the name because he liked the letter K.
Picture it
In 1888, a man hands you a box camera loaded with 100 shots. You send it back to the factory and get prints and a reloaded camera. He made up the word Kodak because he liked the letter K.
Memory hooks
Film star Hedy Lamarr co-invented a frequency-hopping system in 1942, an idea later used in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Picture it
A Hollywood star sits at a piano with a composer. They design a torpedo control that hops between radio channels like fingers on piano keys, so no one can jam it. Hollywood called her the most beautiful woman in the world: Hedy Lamarr.
Memory hooks
Ethernet, the standard for wired computer networks, was invented at Xerox PARC in 1973 by Bob Metcalfe.
Picture it
In 1973, an engineer at Xerox PARC strings a thick yellow cable between office computers. He names it after the "luminiferous ether" once thought to carry light: Ethernet.
Memory hooks
Netflix was founded in 1997 as a service that rented DVDs by post.
Picture it
In 1997, a man gets a $40 late fee for a video rental and starts a company that posts DVDs to you in red envelopes, with no late fees. Ten years later it starts streaming.
Memory hooks
The music streaming service Spotify was founded in Sweden in 2006.
Picture it
In Stockholm in 2006, two founders start a music app to fight piracy. A green circle with three curved lines spins like a speaker.
Memory hooks
Bitcoin was described in 2008 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto; the first known purchase with it was two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins in 2010.
Picture it
In 2010, a programmer in Florida pays 10,000 bitcoins for two Papa John's pizzas. Years later those coins are worth hundreds of millions. The mysterious inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, has vanished.
Memory hooks
CAPTCHA stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart".
Picture it
A website shows you wobbly letters and a grid of traffic lights. Behind it, a long acronym: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart: CAPTCHA.
Memory hooks
Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments built the first integrated circuit in 1958.
Picture it
In the summer of 1958, an engineer at Texas Instruments stays in the lab while everyone's on holiday. He builds a whole circuit on a single sliver of germanium. A kilt blows in the empty office: Kilby.
Memory hooks
ENIAC, completed in 1945 at the University of Pennsylvania, was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer.
Picture it
A machine fills a whole room in Philadelphia with 18,000 glowing vacuum tubes. When it switches on, the city lights are rumoured to dim. Its name sounds like a sneeze: ENIAC.
Memory hooks
The Manchester Baby ran the world's first stored program in 1948.
Picture it
In June 1948, a small computer in Manchester runs a program held in its own memory for the first time. It's so small next to the giants that they call it the Baby.
Memory hooks
Konrad Zuse's Z3, finished in Berlin in 1941, was the first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer.
Picture it
In his parents' Berlin living room, a German engineer builds a calculating machine from old telephone relays. It clicks and clacks through programs on punched film. He names it after himself: Z3, for Zuse.
Memory hooks
Web pages are written in HTML, which stands for HyperText Markup Language.
Picture it
Every web page you visit is secretly written in angle brackets: <p>, <h1>, <a>. The tags are a language called HyperText Markup Language.
Memory hooks
The "millennium bug", or Y2K problem, arose because old programs stored years with two digits, so 2000 could be read as 1900.
Picture it
At midnight on 31 December 1999, programmers around the world hold their breath. Old programs stored years as two digits, so "00" might mean 1900. They spent years fixing it, and very little broke.
Memory hooks
Brain, written in 1986 by two brothers in Lahore, Pakistan, is considered the first virus for IBM PCs.
Picture it
In 1986, two brothers in Lahore write a program to stop people copying their software. It spreads on floppy disks around the world, with their names and phone number inside. It's called Brain.
Memory hooks
The tradition of a first program printing "hello, world" was popularised by Kernighan and Ritchie's 1978 book on the C programming language.
Picture it
A new programmer types their very first program and the screen replies: "hello, world". The tradition comes from a famous book on the C language by Kernighan and Ritchie.
Memory hooks
Christopher Cockerell invented the hovercraft; one first crossed the English Channel in 1959.
Picture it
A British engineer blows air from a vacuum cleaner between two tin cans, one inside the other, and the cans rise off the kitchen scale. A cockerel rides the first hovercraft across the Channel in 1959.
Memory hooks
Percy Shaw from Halifax invented reflective road studs, cat's eyes, in 1934.
Picture it
Driving home in thick Yorkshire fog in the 1930s, a road mender sees two glowing points in the dark: a cat on a fence. He realises he's about to drive off the road. He invents cat's eyes.
Memory hooks
Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod in the 1750s after his experiments with electricity.
Picture it
A man in a storm flies a kite with a key dangling from the string. Sparks jump to his knuckle. He then fixes a pointed iron rod to rooftops so lightning runs safely to the ground: Franklin.
Memory hooks
The first hard disk drive, part of IBM's RAMAC computer in 1956, held about 5 megabytes and was the size of two fridges.
Picture it
In 1956, a forklift lifts a wardrobe-sized cabinet into an office. Inside, fifty spinning platters hold 5 megabytes, about one song's worth today. It's the first hard drive, from IBM.
Memory hooks
The world's first cash machine was opened by Barclays in Enfield, London, in 1967.
Picture it
In 1967, outside a Barclays bank in Enfield, north London, a comedy actor from On the Buses feeds a voucher into a wall and money comes out.
Memory hooks
London's Savoy Theatre, built for Gilbert and Sullivan's operas, was the first public building lit entirely by electricity, in 1881.
Picture it
In 1881, a theatre manager walks on stage, smashes a glowing light bulb to show it's safe, and the whole Savoy Theatre lights up, the first public building lit entirely by electricity. Gilbert and Sullivan's operas play there.
Memory hooks
Charles Goodyear discovered vulcanisation, heating rubber with sulphur to make it tough, in 1839.
Picture it
An American inventor spills rubber mixed with sulphur onto a hot stove. Instead of melting, it toughens. He calls the process vulcanisation, after the god of fire, and has a very good year.
Memory hooks
Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, vanished from a ferry crossing the English Channel in 1913.
Picture it
In 1913, a German engineer boards a night ferry across the Channel, folds his coat on deck and is never seen again. His engine, which ignites fuel by squeezing air until it's hot, carries his name: Diesel.
Memory hooks
The Hindenburg airship, filled with hydrogen, caught fire while landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937.
Picture it
In 1937, a giant silver airship comes in to dock at Lakehurst, New Jersey, and bursts into flames. A radio reporter cries "Oh, the humanity!" It was filled with hydrogen.
Memory hooks
Concorde, the Anglo-French supersonic airliner, first flew in 1969 and was retired in 2003.
Picture it
A white needle-nosed jet droops its nose and screams off the runway. Passengers sip champagne at twice the speed of sound. It's a British-French concord: Concorde, retired in 2003.
Memory hooks
The Channel Tunnel between England and France opened in 1994 and has the longest undersea section of any tunnel.
Picture it
In 1994, the Queen and President Mitterrand ride a train under the sea between Folkestone and Calais. The tunnel's undersea section is the longest in the world: a chunnel.
Memory hooks
The Tamagotchi, a digital pet in an egg-shaped case, was launched by Bandai in Japan in 1996.
Picture it
In 1996, children in Japan carry a little plastic egg on a keyring. Inside lives a pixel pet that needs feeding and cleaning, or it dies. Schools ban it.
Memory hooks
The Rubik's Cube was invented in 1974 by Ernő Rubik, an architecture lecturer from Hungary.
Picture it
In 1974, a Hungarian architecture lecturer builds a twisting cube from wooden blocks and rubber bands to teach his students about 3D. He scrambles it and takes a month to solve it.
Memory hooks
LEGO comes from the Danish "leg godt", meaning "play well"; the company was founded in Denmark in 1932.
Picture it
In 1932, a Danish carpenter makes wooden toys in a village workshop. He joins two Danish words, leg godt, "play well", into one: LEGO. In 1958 the bricks get their stud-and-tube grip.
Memory hooks
The IBM Simon, released in 1994, is widely considered the first smartphone.
Picture it
In 1994, a black brick of a phone has a touchscreen, a calendar, email and a stylus. Simon says: "I'm a smartphone." It's the IBM Simon.
Memory hooks
IBM engineer David Bradley created the Ctrl+Alt+Delete shortcut in 1981.
Picture it
An IBM engineer needs a quick way to restart a test PC without switching it off. He picks three keys too awkward to hit by accident: Ctrl, Alt and Delete. His name: David Bradley.
Memory hooks
Computer scientist Larry Tesler invented cut, copy and paste while at Xerox PARC in the 1970s.
Picture it
At Xerox PARC in the 1970s, a computer scientist hates switching between modes. He invents the idea of cutting, copying and pasting text, and puts "NO MODES" on his licence plate. Tess lurches between docs: Tesler.
Memory hooks
Amazon's voice assistant Alexa was named partly in honour of the ancient Library of Alexandria.
Picture it
A cylinder on your kitchen counter answers questions about anything. Its makers named its voice after the greatest library of the ancient world, in Alexandria, which held all known knowledge.
Memory hooks