Skip to main content
search
Tag

Alan Turing

Did You Know? (Part 6 – Technology)

By Technology, The WebNo Comments
did-you-know

Did You Know?

 This is the sixth and final in a series of Did You Know? blog posts. Each blog post gives fascinating facts on a particular topic. In part 1 the topic was science. In part 2 the topic was history. In part 3 the topic was geography. In part 4 the topics were art & music. In part 5 the topic was animals.

Today, I give you ten facts about Technology:

1. The first mobile phone call was made by Martin Cooper in 1973.

2. The first iPhone was released in the UK in 2007. Today there are more than 682m iPhones in the world.

3. Alan Turing is most well-known for being an excellent code-breaker in World War 2. He happened to be gay and was castrated by the UK state for his sexuality. But he also proposed founding theories about how to make computers work and computer science.

4. The World Wide Web (WWW) was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. Today £1.7trillion is spent online in a year, 3m emails are sent every second (mostly SPAM) and there is countless amounts of data on the internet.

5. The X-ray was invented by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen in 1895. The idea for the CT (Computed Tomography) scanner was first imagined by Godfrey Hounsfield in 1969. Hounsfield presented his idea to Dr. James Ambrose and they worked together to make his idea a reality. The MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanner was developed by a number of people. The X-ray, CT scanner and MRI scanner have all revolutionised medicine, by allowing doctors insight to what it going on in a patient’s body, without the need for invasive surgery.

6. Google deals with 1 billion searches a day.

7. Someone using a computer will blink 7 times a minute, rather than the normal 20 times a minute. This is because they are concentrating more on the screen.

8. Technology of Sci-Fi TV shows and films is now becoming a reality. For example, in Star Trek computers respond to verbal commands and its responses were relatively intelligent. Today we have Siri (Apple), Alexa (Amazon), Contina (Windows) and Android Voice Commands (Google/Android).

9. The operating system Linux is huge across servers, computers, tablets and smartphones. The chances are you use it without even realising. Linux is on every Android device, along with being on most serves (computers that host websites) in the world. Facebook, Google and Pinterest all run on Linux servers.

10. The people at Wired.com were the first to come up with banner advertisements, which are now used on most commercial websites.

Write soon,

Antony

References
Know Your Mobile – The History of Mobile Phones From 1973 To 2008: The Handsets That Made It ALL Happen
BBC News – Apple iPhone debuts in UK stores
{Life} Buzz – 25 Things You Didn’t Know About Technology… Almost No One Knows About #7.
Alan Turing: The Enigma
The Daily Beast – The Castration of Alan Turing, Britain’s Code-Breaking WWII Hero
Computer Hope – When was the first computer invented?
World Wide Web Foundation – History of the Web
Sunday Express – Top ten facts about…the internet
How Stuff Works – Science – Who invented the X-ray?
Eureka – When Hounsfield Met Ambrose, The Invention of Computed Tomography
Thought Co. – Magnetic Resonance Imaging MRI
Did you know? Technology fast facts
Techlila – 32 Computer Facts and Interesting Facts About Technology
The Guardian – Technology – Voice Recognition
WIRED – Linux Took Over The Web. Now, It’s Taking Over The World

mental-health-wisdom-banner



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


Share on Social Media:
Monday 21 August 2017

A man named Alan Turning

By Gay, History, Political, Thinking2 Comments

There was once a man named Alan Turning. He is now seen as a hero for helping to break German Enigma code in World War two. However this wasn’t always the case.

As a gay man living in these times he was convicted of homosexuality in the heterosexual world he lived in. He had a choice to under go chemical castration or go to prison. He choose to under go the chemical castration and later committed suicide.

Looking back now he is seen as a brilliant and intelligent man. Think what he could have achieved in his life, if he hadn’t cut it short as a result of British law at the time.

Gordon Brown according to Pink News apologised for his treatment after a petition signed by over thirty thousand people. There has been some debate on Gordon Brown’s apology amongst the gay community. Peter Tatchell said to Pink News:

Peter Tatchell called the apology “welcome and commendable” but said an apology was also due to the estimated 100,000 British men convicted of similar offences.

He said: “Singling out Turing just because he is famous is wrong. Unlike Turing, many thousands of ordinary gay and bisexual men were never given the option of hormone treatment. They were sent to prison.

“All these men were criminalised for behaviour that was not a crime between heterosexual men and women.”
(Pink News, last accessed: 12th September 09)

However Zefrog said:

And this brings the next question, that of the worth of an apology. This is not a new debate. It is a particularly heated one, for example, in the black community around the issue of slavery, where it is complicated by the question of financial reparations.

An apology is, of course, a potent symbol…
(Zefrog, Last accessed: 12th September 09)

My opinion is that Gordon Brown could of better used his time and political influence to change the laws against homosexuality that still exist in the world. There are still places in the world were gay men (and sometimes lesbian women) are hung, shot or killed in some other way because of their sexuality. Because they have relationships and or sex with the same sex. You only need to look this world map below (provided by Wikipedia) to see how far spread homophobia still is in terms of governments laws against it.


(Click on the map for full size readable version)

Blog politically again soon,

Antony x



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


Share on Social Media:
Saturday 12 September 2009
×