Curated playlist
Dutch inventions
- Wi-FiWi-Fi does not stand for Wireless Fidelity. A brand firm picked the name partly because it sounds like Hi-Fi.
- Blu-rayBlu-ray discs look just like DVDs but hold about five times the data per layer.
- DVDFive computer companies threatened in 1995 to boycott both rival DVD formats. The threat forced the two camps to merge.
- Python (programming language)The Python programming language is named after a British comedy group, not a snake.
- SubmarineAmerican submarines were about two percent of the US Navy but sank over sixty percent of Japan's merchant fleet.
- Optical microscopeNobody knows who invented the optical microscope. Several Dutch and Italian names have been credited over the years.
- ElectrocardiographyTen small electrodes on the skin give twelve views of the heart. Doctors read them to spot a blocked artery.
- Refracting telescopeA lens can only be held at its edge, so big refracting telescopes sag in the middle. Size tops out near 1 meter.
- TelescopeThe word telescope did not exist until 1611. Galileo had called his own device a perspicillum.
- GinGin is the distilled, juniper-flavoured spirit at the heart of William Hogarth's 1751 engravings Beer Street and Gin Lane. The BBC described the pair as "arguably the most potent anti-drug poster ever conceived." Hogarth was attacking a…