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What's something that's taken for granted that occasionally makes you think, wait wtf? (feddit.uk)

submitted 9 hours ago by manicdave@feddit.uk to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

For example, Britain's national mapping organisation's brand is associated in our national consciousness with going to a small shop in a quaint village to get a map showing how to walk up a mountain. It's called Ordnance Survey. If that sounds like Artillery Research to you, that's because the project started because the king wanted to know how to accurately bomb Scotland.

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[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 33 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

4,000 years ago, we were doing trigonometry, but just 200 years ago we were still putting leeches on people and not washing our hands before doing surgery.

Also, we sent people to the moon and got them back using less computing power than a smart watch.

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 20 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Those computers has less memory than a dollar store calculator. The bits in memory were physical magnets woven by hand into a mesh. It’s insane that it left our planet and came back with people alive.

[–] PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 7 points 5 hours ago

Yeah, they even employed weavers to make the memory units, because it was easier than training factory workers to deal with such thin wire.