Facts About Time: The human race has always relied on time and it’s in our nature to measure, track, define, and use it for pretty much everything. From science to everyday tasks involving basic human needs, when do we need to wake up, how much time I got till I start my shift, will I have enough time to complete a task, … it’s incorporated into our brains so we don’t even think about the deeper meaning of it. Could you imagine a life without time as we know it? On the one hand, it would probably be so much more simple, we wouldn’t have to worry about completing a task on exactly a specified time, someone would get to work 2 hours before someone else ( not that they would know how the difference in time ). We can see this in many cultures that live in the wilds, they have their own way of life much more healthy for their inner self, but on the other hand, a lot of things that rely on time would fall apart so we collected these amazing facts about time, that will get you thinking about the time for at least a few seconds.
#1 Nowadays we take as many pictures in two minutes than the whole humanity took in the 1800s.
The left picture represents the first photograph ever taken in the year 1826. Although it isn’t 12 million pixel picture it can be seen as the view from the Window at Le Gras by French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. On the right side is a cat that is taking a selfie for it’s Facebook profile picture (just kidding). Predictions for the year 2015 are that humans will take around 900 billion pictures! Fun fact – 10% of all photos ever taken were made in the last 12 months alone.
# 2 In a period of only 66 years, we went from taking a first successful flight to landing on the moon.
1903 was the year that the Wright brothers first successfully flew a plane for an “astonishing” 59 seconds, only 38 years later from Wright brothers flight in 1941 the Japanese used planes to bomb Pearl Harbour and 28 years later Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969 – all in the span of 66 years.
#3 Woolly mammoths still lived by the time that the first pyramids were built
Most of the mammoths became extinct long before first civilizations appeared, but a small population of them managed to survive until 1650 BC, by that time, Egypt was already halfway through its empire, and the famous Giza pyramids were 1000 years old.
#4 In the same year that Star Wars first premièred, France was still practicing executions of people by guillotines.
The last execution by guillotine in France took place on 10th September 1977, in the same year of 1977 first Star Wars premièred in May.
#5 Difference in winning women’s vault for the Olympic gold in the 56 years.
The left picture shows the performance by Larisa Latinya that won her golden medal in 1956 for USSR and on the right picture is the performance by McKayla Maroney that won Olympic gold in 2012 for US – quite the difference isn’t it.
#6 Sliced bread is younger than actress Betty White.
While bread existed prior to both, pre-sliced bread was invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder in 1928, while Betty White was already 6 years old ( born in 1922 ).
#7 Harvard University is older than the derivation of calculus.
Harvard University is the oldest educational institution in the United States and was formed in 1636 by that time calculus hasn’t even derived as it was represented later in the 17th century with the great work of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz.
#8 We are always living in the past
David Eagleman believes that humans are living around 80 ms in the past and that is due to a fact that our consciousness “lags” behind actual events happen and when you think of and event that event already occurred before your brain had the time to create a cohesive picture of it.
#9 Everything that we can see in this RadioShack ad that was published in 1991, exists nowadays in a single tiny smartphone.
Co-founder of Intel Gordon Moore that is more known for his Moore’s law which states that the number of transistors on circuits will double about every two years. That was held true for over 40 years and he predicted our advancement in technology as we know today quite good.
#10 TI-83 calculator has more processing power, than the computer that was responsible for the successful landing mission of Apollo 11 on the moon.
The computer from the Apollo 11 mission that was used for guidance ran at 1 MHz, that’s about 1/6th of the power that Texas Instruments calculator TI-83 has. One was responsible for the landing Apollo 11 on the moon, while the other is responsible for students playing Tetris on it.
