55 Interesting Computer Facts That Will Blow Your Mind

There are a whole lot of interesting computer facts that are still dug down deep inside. However, for the present situation, we still have a good number of interesting facts about a computer that you probably did not know before.

In general, you can also consider these as one of the most interesting facts about technology (not exactly computer facts). Though we have come far ahead and now have a variety of good computers or good laptop brands still, numerous fun facts about computers do exist. Unfortunately, the facts that amuse you aren’t necessarily the truth.

So, we bring you a filtered list of the most interesting computer facts that you probably did not know before.

 The History of Computers

Charles Babbage in 1833 invented all the parts that are now used for the modern computer. But the first ‘modern’ computer was invented only 120 years later.

The Z1 was the first fully operational digital computer developed by Konrad Zuse in 1936. In 1939, he created the Z2 as the first electro-mechanical computer in the world. While Charles Babbage is being considered as the “father of the computer”, Zuse can be considered as the inventor of the “modern computer”.

The first hard drives available were even bigger than a commercial fridge – another computer facts by which you will get amazed.

Alan Turing is the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. In addition, the “Turing Machine” which is a mathematical model of computation was invented by him.

The first disk drive to use removable media was the IBM 1311. You may not believe, but as you can see in the image below, it resembles the look of a washing machine. It was quite big, yet it had a storage capacity of fewer than 5 megabytes.

Ada Lovelace (of course, a lovely lady!), an English mathematician and a writer, is considered as the first computer programmer. She is known for her work on the “Analytical Engine” (Charles Babbage’s early mechanical general-purpose computer). Her notes on the engine served as the first algorithm to be carried out by a machine.

Interesting Computer Facts

With the standard QWERTY keyboard, the longest word one can write is “Typewriter”.

Douglas Engelbart introduced the first computer mouse to the world. It is now one of the most necessary computer peripheral. To our surprise, the body (or the base) was made of wood with metal wheels supporting to roll back and forth. Only it had a cord connected to it, which was interpreted as the tail of a mouse (the small cute rodent). Hence, it was termed as the “Mouse” for a computer.

A normal human being blinks around 20 times a minute. But, when compared to a computer user, they blink just 7 times a minute on an average. Simply, we tend to concentrate more on the screen, so we usually blink a lot less in front of a computer than we do normally.

Microsoft’s project to develop a new operating system was code-named “Interface Manager”. However, they found the term “Windows” more appealing, so they decided to name it – “Windows” but not “Interface Manager”.

Amazon.com did not start as a complete e-commerce business but just as an online bookstore.

Have you heard about the computer who can tell whether the smile is fake or real? Trust me, it is not a rumor. It is true, and a computer system developed at MIT can do that.

On an average at least 6000 viruses are created every month. Scared? Simply switching to Linux OS should do the work because technically they do not get affected by viruses (almost).

Did you know that with the help of USB flash drive you can brick a computer in seconds? All you need is the “USB Killer 2.0”. Check out some other Computer Tips that could be helpful to you.

John Lasseter, who is now the Chief Creative Officer of Pixar was fired from Disney for promoting computer animation.

The architects who were responsible for building Bill Gates’ private mansion claim that it was designed using a Mac program (obviously running on a Mac system). There might not be any evidence to give shape to this as a rock solid fact but it is still something interesting to discuss.

The first 1 GB hard drive was announced by IBM in 1980 which had a price tag of $40,000!

The US is at the highest risk of Virus attack followed by Russia Federation.

The 12 engineers who made IBM PC were named as “The Dirty Dozen”.

The first microprocessor 4004 which literally set the path for the modern computing era was developed by Intel. Surprisingly, it was meant to be used for a calculator. And, then it evolved.

You will not be affected by viruses just by opening an email. It is only activated when you click a link or access an attachment.

According to various statistical analysis, it is a fact that more than 80% emails sent are spam!

ILOVEYOU is considered to be the most dangerous virus ever created in the form of a worm. It has the ability to replicate itself and crash the system. It arrived through e-mail messages as a love letter from a secret admirer. When a user opens the email and clicks on the attachment available, the virus starts its magic. ILOVEYOU, being potentially the most dangerous virus, did not do much damage as compared to the one which was the fastest spread virus program.

MyDoom was the fastest-spreading virus ever created. The total damage done by MyDoom is a whopping $38 billion.

If Xerox Alto (the first computer to support an Operating System based on a Graphical User Interface) would not have been designed, Apple Macintosh probably would have never existed.

In 1936, the Russians made a computer that ran on water.

QWERTY keyboard is not the most efficient keyboard layout. Instead, Dvorak keyboard is.

Computer programming is the fastest growing job role than any other at present. In contrast, this job delivers the most eye strains you have ever got.

9 out of 10 of the world’s supercomputers run on Linux. So, now, don’t you think, Linux is appealing enough to be tried out at least once by every consumer present.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon are all powered by Linux. Yes, Linux is not among the most popular OS for the general consumers. But, Linux leads the Industry.

It is widely considered that Open Source is better than proprietary. Well, you can definitely argue with the fact saying “proprietary” does come with benefits that Open source projects do not have. However, the number of advantages that come with an Open Source project is very high compared to what benefits one gets with the proprietary program.

HotWired, now known as Wired.com, invented the web banner advertisement concept.

Launch code for US nukes was 00000000 (eight 0’s). Is that for real? Well, yes, so we should feel that we were lucky enough that no “terrorist” did try launching the nuclear missiles,  one of the interesting technology facts you will not find anywhere on the Internet.

Interesting computer technology facts about web browsers is – The first web browser was invented in 1990 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. It was called as the “WorldWideWeb” (not to be confused with WWW). Later, it was renamed as the “Nexus“.

The first website that went online was “info.cern.ch“, which was also created by Tim Berners-Lee at the research lab CERN 1990.

To make users familiar with the graphical user interface (newly introduced then), Microsoft packed in the Solitaire game along with the operating system to let the users learn about controlling the movements and operations that can be done a mouse while utilizing the cursor to drag and drop the cards.

Toy 2 Story movie file was accidentally deleted from the official workstations. However, an employee – a lady (Susman) – helped recover the movie from the files that she had on her personal computer.

The first word to be transmitted over the Internet (when ARPANET existed) was “lo”. It was meant to denote – “login” but the system crashed before transmitting the complete message.

You can operate a computer without an Operating System. It sure is an interesting computer fact – only if you know how to do it.

The term “GPU” became more popular when NVIDIA released GeForce 256 in the year 1999.

The world’s first commercial water-cooled PC was Apple’s Power Mac G5, that’s really one of the amazing computer facts

When Apple’s power adapter (of a MacBook) had a teardown. It was found that the microcontroller used inside it was as powerful as the one used in the Macintosh computer (the first generation).

INTERLAC was developed as an experiment to test the boundaries of a programming language. It includes a modifier – “PLEASE” – if not sufficiently used – the compiler treats it as an error. Other statements were like – “READ OUT”, “FORGET”, and “IGNORE”.

UNIVAC I was the first commercial computer to be sold in the United States. The company (Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation) behind it was built by the same people who invented ENIAC.

Whirlwind I was among the first vacuum-tube computer which operated in real-time and was meant to be used as a flight simulator for US Army.

Programma 101 or P101 was the first commercial “desktop computer” invented by Pier Giorgio Perotto.

The first computer (which was in essence – a mechanical computer) had no RAM.

Intel 4004 was the first commercially available microprocessor with a maximum clock rate of 740 kHz.

Williams tube was the first form of Random-access storage device.

The trackball (which was later utilized for a mouse) was invented in 1946 by Ralph Benjamin for a fire control radar plotting system.

Xerox PARC was the first computer to demonstrate the GUI (Graphical User Interface)

Micral N was the first commercially available microprocessor-based computer.

In the year 1969, 1 KB RAM was the largest memory chip by Intel.

Scroll Lock key is the least utilized key on a keyboard. Many believe that it’s completely useless.

One of the last facts about computers is about the popular Pixar movie – “Monsters University” – implemented technology ahead of its time that it took 29 hours to render a single frame.

Interesting Computer Facts – Conclusion

We have finally known about 32 of the best interesting computer facts that you have ever come across. We are sure that there remains a lot of interesting technology facts that are not mentioned in any of the articles considering various publications, but probably someone old enough knows more than we do at present.