Technology
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A broken clock is always right twice a day. America’s first subway system was built in Boston, Massachusetts in 1897. An aircraft carrier’s catapult system can get a 45,000 pound plane from 0 to 165 mph in 2 seconds. That’s almost 5 times faster than a Lamborghini Diablo VTTT, which can only go 0-60mph in 3.2 seconds. At lift off, US space shuttles weight about 4.5 million pounds. Australia has had stamps that look like gems. They used a special technology to make stamps look like diamonds and opals in 1995 and 1996. Before the air conditioning was invented, people used to cover their furniture with white cotton slipcovers to keep the air cool. Construction workers’ hard hats were invented and used for the first time in 1933 in the construction of the Hoover Dam. Every year some 50million cars are added to the world’s roads. Car making is now the largest manufacturing industry in the world. External tanks on space shuttles are not painted because there are no metal corrosion worries since they are lost after the shuttles’ launch. For the first time since 1996, TV sales in 2006 outpaced PC sales, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. TV revenues generated $20 billion in sales, whereas PC revenue generated $19 billion in 2006. The main reason for this shift is the emergence of HDTV. If all the cars from the U.S. were taken and lined up from bumper to bumper, there would be enough cars to go from Earth to the Moon and back. In 1985, for the first time, more U.S. TV sets were sold with remote controls than without. In Johannesburg, the average car will be involved in an accident once every four years. It takes eight and a half minutes for light to get from the Sun to Earth. Mariner 2 was the first spacecraft to visit Venus (1962). Natural gas doesn’t have any odor. The rotten eggs smell comes from a chemical added by gas companies for the purpose of detecting leaks. One third of the electricity produced on Earth is used to power light bulbs. Radicati Group estimated that for the first quarter of 2006 there were around 171 billion emails sent every day (that’s about 2 millions every second). Out of these, about 70% to 72% (120 to 123 billion) were spam and viruses. Sputnik 1 - the world’s first artificial satellite - was launched by the USSR in 1957. Symbolics.com was the first domain name ever registered (March 15, 1985). The Boeing 747-400 has a total of 6 million parts. The first bicycle that was made in 1817 by Baron von Drais didn’t have any pedals. People walked it along. The first flight of an F-22A occurred on September 7, 1997. The first product Sony came out with was the rice cooker. The most popular car color in North America, in 2002, was silver. The wheelbarrow was invented by the Chinese. The windshield wipers were invented by Mary Anderson in 1903. There are enough paved roads in the United States to circle to Earth over 150 times. Thomas Watson, the chairman of IBM in 1943, predicted that there would probably be a world market for only five computers. Traveling by air is the safest mean of transportation. With a total of 275 stations and 253 miles of track, London’s Underground (which began service on January 10, 1863) is the world’s first subway.
