Buzz
We often assume that, with all the technological innovations and gadgets around us, we're incredibly advanced compared to just a few years ago. However, as you’ll soon learn, many things we take for granted are actually not as recent as we believe. For example, consider…
10. The Story Behind the Term ‘Bug’
In 1947, the renowned computer scientist Grace Hopper discovered a dead moth lodged in a relay of the newly constructed Harvard Mark II electromechanical computer. After finding the moth, it was carefully removed and affixed to a fault logbook, where a note was written mentioning that this was the “first actual case of a bug being found.” This event is often credited as the origin of the term ‘bug’ when referring to problems in computer hardware or software.
However, the term was first associated with technology in the late 19th century. In one example, the renowned inventor (and plagiarist) Thomas Edison wrote in a letter to a friend in 1878, describing bugs as “small faults and difficulties.” A later reference in the 1896 book “Hawkin’s New Catechism of Electricity” used the word to describe “any fault or trouble in the connections or working of electric apparatus.” Clearly, the term was already in use well before the moth incident, as evidenced by a 1945 review in Billboard Magazine, which remarked that (regarding the product under review), “there are still a number of bugs to shake out, but if we were a sponsor, we’d buy it fast.”
9. Tabbed Browsers
To understand what tabbed browsing is, simply look at the top of this page. A tabbed browser lets users have several webpages open simultaneously and navigate between them without constantly minimizing and maximizing windows. This feature became widely popular with the release of Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, a feature that was soon adopted by other browsers. Ironically, in early press releases, Microsoft boldly touted it as a groundbreaking feature of IE7.
The irony stems from the fact that the first use of tabs in a computer program actually took place in 1988, in the Unipress Gosling Emacs text editor. While not exactly the same (for instance, in IE7, tabs are organized by a horizontal bar), the resemblance is striking. The first tabbed web browser debuted in 1994 with the InternetWorks browser, which could display up to four separate pages, arranged in a 2×2 grid. Tabbed browsing became a standard feature until 2003, after which it mysteriously disappeared. That is, until Microsoft ‘reinvented’ the feature three years later, of course.
8. Computer Viruses
It seems almost impossible to go a month without hearing about a computer virus causing significant chaos for thousands of computer users worldwide. Surely, viruses must be a product of the modern age, right? After all, the internet was originally created for scientific and military purposes, fields that don't exactly breed destructive hackers.
Destructive hackers? Not so much. Pranksters? Definitely. In 1971, a virus named Creeper infected the predecessor of the internet, ARPANET. What was its purpose? According to its creator, Bob Thomas, it was designed to show certain high-ranking officials that it was possible to create such a malicious program. Creeper primarily targeted computers running the TENEX operating system, much like the self-replicating viruses we see on the internet today. Once a computer was infected, it displayed the message “I’m the creeper: catch me if you can.” Once the point was made, however, Creeper was removed—thanks to the world’s first antivirus program, known as Reaper.
7. Advertising Spam
It's no exaggeration to say that spam is the scourge of anyone with an email account. After all, one would think that if someone were interested in purchasing fake medicine or a penis enlargement pump, their first choice wouldn’t be an anonymous, poorly-written email from some far-off corner of the world. But apparently, enough people are buying these items for spam to make up almost 78% of all email traffic.
If you're searching for someone to blame for this phenomenon, look no further than Maurice and Arnold Gabriel, two dentists who, in 1864, sent hundreds of unwanted telegrams to people across London advertising their services. The messages, which read “Messrs Gabriel, dentists, Harley-street, Cavendish-square. Until October Messrs Gabriel’s professional attendance at 27, Harley-Street, will be 10 till 5,” angered many politicians and noblemen who received these telegrams in the middle of the night. As ‘revenge,’ they published the message in The Times, which gave the dentists far more publicity than they ever could have imagined.
6. Online Dating
Online dating is without a doubt one of the most popular online activities, with the rise of platforms such as Match.com, eHarmony, and OKCupid. By November 2004, there were 844 dating websites, a remarkable number given that the internet was still not widely available to the majority of people. Besides helping to continue the human race, online dating has also proven to be a lucrative business. Data from 2008 shows that online dating services generated $957 million in revenue, a figure that surged to over £2bn by 2012.
These numbers explain why people have turned to machines to help navigate their love lives since as early as 1957. That year, renowned relationship psychologist George Crane founded the ‘Scientific Marriage Foundation’, a matchmaking service. During the application process, both male and female candidates were required to fill out forms detailing their physical traits, profession, and political or religious views. They were also asked to provide two letters of recommendation from prominent members of society (like doctors or ministers) to attest to their character. Crane then fed this information into an IBM sorting machine, which matched prospective couples. According to the Foundation, this system led to 5,000 marriages over the span of three years.
5. ‘Nigerian Prince’ Scams
When it comes to spam, few types are as well-known—and unfortunately, as successful—as the infamous ‘Nigerian Prince’ scam. If you’ve managed to avoid encountering one, here's how it works: the recipient gets an email from someone claiming to be a member of a foreign royal family, often from Nigeria, who needs help moving a large fortune out of the country. In exchange for the recipient’s assistance, they are promised a generous cut of the money, provided they send their bank account details. You can probably guess how the story unfolds.
If it helps at all, scams like this have been tricking people since the 16th century. This particular scheme, called the ‘Spanish Prisoner Letter Scam,’ would see wealthy individuals receiving letters from distant (and supposedly affluent) relatives, asking for money to help with their bail. In exchange, the victim was promised a share of the wealth the prisoner supposedly had. Anyone who fell for this would continue receiving more letters, each asking for more money, until the victim was eventually financially ruined. In fact, it became so widespread that the United States Postal Service had to issue specific guidelines to postmasters on how to identify these fraudulent letters, in order to prevent the scam from sweeping across the nation.
4. Text Speak
If you're unfamiliar with text speak, this sentence might seem nearly impossible to comprehend. If you are familiar, congratulations! Text speak emerged with the rise of cellphones as a way for people, especially young ones, to send longer messages more quickly, albeit in a form that was harder to read. As texting slowly fades from popularity, text speak has found a lasting place in internet slang.
However, before this modern phenomenon, a very similar shorthand language was already in use by telegram operators in the 1890s. For example, if an operator wanted to ask, ‘How are you this morning?’, they would write, ‘How r u ts mng,’ and the response might be, ‘I’m pty wl, hw r u,’ meaning ‘I’m plenty well, how are you?’ Instead of typing LOL to show laughter, they would use ‘ha [long pause] ha [long pause] ha’. What a peculiar form of communication, indeed!
3. DDOS Attacks
If you thought DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks had taken over the role of protests, petitions, and strongly-worded letters for the discontented and oppressed, you'd be right in some ways. A DDOS attack’s primary goal is to bombard a target website with an overwhelming flood of traffic, causing the site to crash from the strain. Notable victims of such attacks have included North Korea, the Tunisian government, the US Department of Justice, the Motion Picture Association of America (along with other anti-piracy organizations), the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, and News International. Recently, the hacker collective Anonymous even called for the White House to recognize DDoS attacks as a legitimate form of protest.
However, the earliest version of this—known as ‘black faxing’—was far less about political activism and more about mischief. Pranksters would send a fax made up entirely of black paper to their victims, often telemarketers, whose machines would then waste vast amounts of expensive black ink and paper in printing out the pages. Not only was this wasteful, but the targeted fax machine’s phone lines would be tied up during the process, rendering them temporarily useless.
2. Social Networking
1. Gmail
When you type ‘gmail.com’ into your browser, you're almost certainly going to be directed to Google Mail, more commonly known as Gmail. Launched in 2004, and made available to the public in 2007, Gmail has since emerged as the world’s largest email service, boasting over 425 million users worldwide—surpassing Hotmail’s 360 million. Fun fact: Gmail was first introduced on April 1, 2004, and, unsurprisingly, many thought it was an April Fool’s prank, especially since Google claimed to offer 1GB of email storage, an amount unimaginable at the time (for comparison, Yahoo only offered 4MB, and Hotmail provided 2MB).
Before 2004, if you searched for ‘gmail.com’, you wouldn’t have found the Gmail we know today. Instead, from 1995 to 2004, the domain was owned by the company behind Garfield, which used it for their own email service, Garfield Mail (hence the name Gmail). Sadly, no screenshots of the original service exist, but reports suggest it was a basic email platform, adorned with images of Garfield scattered throughout.
