4 More Interesting Stories About Broadband and the Internet

As you know, the internet is now a fairly-large part of modern life. By fairly-large, we actually mean that it is an integral part of modern society, and without it, civilisation as we know it today would crumble. The internet plays such an important role in so many of today’s tasks that it’s hard to believe that it’s only really been very popular since the mid-1990s. At the time, the internet was considered the stuff of Science Fiction, but if we look back today at how it used to be, it would look decidedly primitive.

The internet can be funny, it can be scary, and it can be downright bizarre. One thing that is for certain however, is the fact that it’s going nowhere anytime soon. Here are 5 more interesting stories about broadband and the internet that you probably hadn’t heard before.

The world’s first webcam

Webcams are used for all kinds of things, but do you know where the first webcam was created and what it was streaming? No, not that, so get your minds out of the gutter. The world’s first webcam was in fact created at Cambridge University back in 1991. The image the webcam was streaming was in fact located next door to the old computer room of the university. The image was of a coffee pot. The idea was that thirsty employees could monitor how much coffee was in the pot and would know when it was full and when it was empty. The stream was sadly retired back in 2001, but it had a very solid ten years and saved countless university employees from going thirsty.

Spam for everyone

Spam isn’t just a questionable “meat” product that is contained in a can. It turns out that spam is also very prominent when it comes to emails. We all receive spam and junk mail in our emails, but did you know that a whopping 70% of all emails sent online are in fact spam. Each minute we send over 200 million emails, so that is a heck of a lot of spam, we’re sure you’ll agree. Thank goodness for spam filters, huh?

Italy isn’t as fond of the internet as others

We’re not sure whether it’s because the weather is so beautiful, the quality of life is better, or because people are simply busy doing other things, but Italy does not use the internet as much as the rest of the world. In China, there are literally camps designed specifically to treat people addicted to the internet. In Italy however, roughly one third of the population has never used the internet before.

All hail the creator

We all know what the World Wide Web is, but do you know who is credited with creating it? Well, you will shortly. The man responsible for creating the web is an English computer scientists and engineer named Tim Berners Lee. It is actually Sir Tim Berners Lee, as back in 2004 he received a Knighthood from Her Majesty the Queen.