Technology History & Computing Trivia

The Georgia typeface was commissioned by Microsoft in 1996 as a serif font that would display well on computer screens. It was named after a tabloid headline 'Alien heads found in Georgia' that the typeface designers saw, which they found amusing and memorable. Georgia is one of the core web fonts and was designed by Matthew Carter. Vermont, Montana, and Hawaii are US states but are not the names of this famous Microsoft typeface.

Prince of Persia, created by Jordan Mechner in 1989, featured animations based on photographs of Mechner's brother David running and jumping. This technique gave the game its remarkably fluid and realistic character animations for the time. Dangerous Dave, Pong, and Pac-Man did not use this motion-capture method.

Oracle was named after a CIA project code name that its founder Larry Ellison worked on before starting the company. Siebel was named after founder Thomas Siebel. Peoplesoft was founded by David Duffield and Ken Morris. Amazon was named after the Amazon River.

A 'mickey' is the smallest detectable movement of a computer mouse, named after Mickey Mouse. One mickey is typically about 0.005 inches (0.127mm). The unit name comes from the famous Disney cartoon character. Donald, Mortimer, and Daisy are also Disney characters but not associated with this measurement.

Ada Byron (Ada Lovelace) is featured on the watermark of Microsoft's Certificate of Authenticity. She was a mathematician and writer known for her work on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine and is often regarded as the first computer programmer. Melinda Gates is Bill Gates' wife, while Ella Fischer and Anna Jones are not historical figures associated with computing.

Creeper was indeed the first computer virus, detected on ARPANET in the early 1970s. It moved between PDP-10 systems running the TENEX operating system and displayed the message 'I'M THE CREEPER. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.' The program was created by Bob Thomas as an experiment in self-replicating code.

Firefox's first logo was a phoenix, created when the browser was still called Phoenix and later Firebird. The logo featured a red/orange phoenix bird with wings spread. The other options - Safari, Netscape Navigator, and Opera - had different logos for their initial releases.