Page 8 - Technology Facts

A man invented a table saw that stops in less than 1/1000th of a second when it touches human flesh!

10 people every single day lose a finger while cutting a piece of wood using a table saw, an unfortunate statistic that many people accepted as inevitable. Steve Gass, a lifelong wood worker, refused to let that statistic continue.

Instead of standing by doing nothing, Steve Gass, who has a doctorate in Physics, decided to create a table saw that stops whenever it touches human flesh. The type of saw Steve created is known as SawStop , and is a revolutionary piece of equipment that can save woodworker’s fingers around the globe.

Steve Gass believed in his product so much, he actually tested it out using his own fingers! How does SawStop work? Watch the video at the source to find out!

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A single greeting card that plays Happy Birthday has more computer power than the Earth had in 1950!

According to Gordon Moore, the number of transistors that can be arranged to fit on a silicon chip doubles every 18 months. This means that the number of actions a computer is able to do also doubles every 18 months.

If you would like to think about it in practical terms, the number of operations it takes a common greeting card to play Happy Birthday is more than all technology on Earth was capable of in the 1950’s! While this is amazing, scientists believe that the limit of computational power will be reached in the year 2020 because it is physically impossible to reduce the sizes of transistors and further!

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Nokia's ringtone has a hidden message in Morse code!

Nokia phones are nearly indestructible, which is an amazing feat on it's own considering iPhones seem to break if you drop them onto a pillow. Anyway, Nokia not only creates indestructible phones, but they also create their ringtones in clever ways!

For example, the ‘Ascending’ ringtone is actually Morse code for ‘Connecting People’, which is Nokia’s slogan. Similarly, the ‘Standard’ ringtone is Morse code for ‘M’ – which stands for message. It’s nice to see phone developers getting a little bit original with their design.

Side note – In Asia, the digit 4 never appears on a Nokia handset model number. Why? Because ‘4’ is considered an unlucky number in many parts of Southeast/East Asia. To learn even more odd facts about Nokia, you should click the source!

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Damon Baird's Voice from Gears of War is also the voice of Disney characters!

Fred Tatasciore is a prolific voice actor with over 327 voice credits to his name. Most recently, he provides the voice for the cynical, sarcastic and ultra-intelligent protagonist of the upcoming Gears of War: Judgment, Damon Baird. While Baird is tough and intimidating, Tatasciore has worked on projects that are far more warm and fuzzy than Gears of War. In fact, he's well known for providing voices for characters in the Disney classics Tangled, Enchanted and The Princess and the Frog.

The ‘color bars’ TV test pattern won an Emmy in 2001-2002 (for engineering)!

The SMPTE colors bars is a television test pattern used where the NTSC video standard is utilized. Viewers knew it better as the random stripes of color that occasionally popped up on the television for seemingly no reason. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers calls this test pattern “Engineering Guideline EG 1-1990.”.

By comparing this pattern as received to the known standards, engineers are given an indication of how an NTSC video signal has been altered by recording or transmission and what adjustments need to be made to bring it back to specification. Al Goldberg of CBS Laboratories originally created the colors bars in the 1970s.

Over 30 years later in 2001, these bars received an Engineering Emmy. Between their creation and this award, television stations often broadcast the color bars during special “color check” segments. On occasion, viewers would need to adjust their television sets to make sure the colors were “well separated” and matched their descriptions.

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