Electric speed
Up until 1902, every fastest car in the world was electric.
Worst tank
In World War II, New Zealand wanted a tank, but none of their allies had any to spare. So they made their own, with a tractor, corrugated iron, a mattress, and a postcard.
Creeper vs. reaper
The first computer programme to replicate itself over the proto-Internet was made in 1971. And the second one was made to destroy it.
Plastic-eating bacteria
In 2016, Japanese scientists discovered a new and unique type of bacteria outside a recycling factory in Sakai. It can eat plastic.
Tractor beaming
The idea of the tractor beam first appeared in fiction in 1931. Since then, scientists have worked to make it a reality… and they’ve actually had some success.
Oldest winery and shoe
The Areni-1 cave in southern Armenia is the site of the oldest shoe, and also the oldest winery, in the world.
Ultimate technobabble
In 1944 a graduate student wrote a parody of technical writing that has entered engineering folklore: the turboencabulator.
Spacedust buster
The portable vacuum cleaner Dustbuster was built on the back of technology for the moon landings.
The first spaghetti junction
What do you get when you cross three motorways, two railway lines, three canals, and two rivers? The first junction to be called spaghetti.
Camera pill
There’s a pill you can swallow with a little camera inside. It’s great for identifying gastrointestinal damage, and usually comes out the other end in a day or two. Usually.
Can’t opener
The first tin cans of food were manufactured around 1813. The first can openers arrived more than thirty years later.
Light bulb conspiracy
In 1925, staff from Osram, General Electric, Philips, and others met in Switzerland to artificially fix the life expectancy of light bulbs worldwide. For the next 14 years, the Phoebus cartel controlled the world supply of light.
Smelly code
In computer programming, how do you know when a program is going bad? First, it begins to smell.
Metric martians
The Mars Climate Orbiter space probe cost 327 million US dollars – and it crashed because of a mix-up between the metric and imperial systems.
Tiniest car
The Peel P50, manufactured in the Isle of Man, is the smallest car ever to go into mass production. It’s really, really small.
