Tag: history
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History of the 160 Character Text Message
I’ve never given much thought to this, and maybe that’s a sign of how well it was designed and implemented: the history and (high-level) technical development of text messaging. Would the 160-character maximum be enough space to prove a useful form of communication? Having zero market research, [the research commitee] based their initial assumptions on…
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UK Bank Holidays
Today is the May Day Bank Holiday here in the UK, so I thought I would look at the history of why we have these public holidays. I was sure that the commonly held belief of why ‘bank holidays’ are so called was incorrect, and it appears that Wikipedians confirm this assumption: “Bank holidays are often assumed to…
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The Evolution of Language
Bartleby, the free (as in beer) ‘Internet publisher’, has available a fascinating graphic depicting the evolution of language (all those stemming from the single Proto-Indo-European language, anyway). Now I know the historic route of my native tongue (as opposed to my cradle tongue), Welsh: it’s closest ‘relatives’ are Cornish and Breton (in that order) as…