Latest

New from Make Tech Easier

Clear how-tos, explainers, and tech updates — published as we verify them.

Jun 2 In the early 1980s, a Dutch radio broadcaster figured out how to transmit video games over standard commercial radio… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
Jun 2 In 1988, a graduate student launched an experimental script to measure the size of the internet, and a tiny programming… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
Jun 1 In November 1988, an unmanned Soviet space shuttle called Buran flew a full orbital mission and landed itself in a… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
Jun 1 In 1901, sponge divers off the Greek island of Antikythera pulled a corroded lump of bronze out of a Roman shipwreck… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
Jun 1 When Boeing 747-400 pilots needed to update their navigation database as late as 2020, a technician would walk onto the… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
Jun 1 When the U.S. military finally deployed frequency-hopping spread spectrum on Navy ships during the 1962 Cuban Missile… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
May 31 Toy Story 2 was nearly erased from existence when someone at Pixar accidentally ran a delete command on the film’s… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
May 31 Suzanne Simard sealed paper birch and Douglas fir seedlings inside plastic bags, fed them carbon-14 and carbon-13… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
May 31 A Japanese man named Jiroemon Kimura, who lived to 116, was born in 1897 when Queen Victoria still ruled and died in… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
May 31 The Voyager 1 spacecraft launched in 1977 is now over 15 billion miles from Earth, and a radio signal from NASA takes… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
May 31 The Hollywood sign originally read HOLLYWOODLAND when it was built in 1923 as a real estate advertisement for a housing… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
May 31 In the small hours of 2 September 1859, a telegraph operator in Portland, Maine disconnected his batteries because they… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
May 31 In 1992, a container ship leaving Hong Kong lost 28,800 plastic bath toys overboard in the North Pacific, and… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
May 31 In 1942, Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr and avant-garde composer George Antheil received US Patent 2,292,387 for a… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
May 31 In 1859 a storm on the Sun struck the Earth so hard that telegraph wires threw sparks and operators were shocked at… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
May 31 Almost all of the world's internet traffic does not travel by satellite but through fibre-optic cables lying on the… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
May 31 Every time you book a flight or check a hotel room, your request is routed through a green-screen mainframe system that… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
May 31 In 1997, a team of engineers hid an entire flight simulator inside the code of Microsoft Excel as an unlisted "Easter… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
May 31 A 65-year-old programming language called COBOL still quietly processes over $3 trillion in banking transactions every… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
May 31 In 1979, a Sony engineer named Nobutoshi Kihara built the first Walkman prototype in four days because his boss Masaru… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team