Technology
Short articles about technology, one idea in each.
- The first webcam watched a coffee pot in CambridgeIn 1991, researchers at Cambridge's Computer Laboratory were tired of walking to an empty coffee pot. The camera they set up to check it became a landmark of the early web.
- GPS satellites run their clocks slow on purposeThe atomic clocks on GPS satellites would gain 38 microseconds a day on clocks on the ground. Left alone, that tiny slip would push positions off by around ten kilometres a day.
- The fax machine is older than the telephoneA Scottish clockmaker patented a way to send images down a wire in 1843, and a commercial service sent handwriting between Paris and Lyon a decade before the first phone call.