How the numbers came to be...

It's all about angles !

No. 1 has one angle.

No. 2 has two angles.

No. 3 has three angles. etc.

and "0" has no angles.

This we owe it to the ingenuity of the Phoenicians.

The Legend of Jack o' Lantern

Stingy Jack was a miserable, old drunk who liked to play tricks on everyone: family, friends, his mother and even the Devil himself. One day, he tricked the Devil into climbing up an apple tree. As soon as he did, Stingy Jack Placed crosses around the trunk of the tree. Unable to get down the tree, Stingy Jack made the Devil promise him not to take his soul when he died.

When Jack finally died, he went to the pearly gates of Heaven and was told he was too mean and too cruel and had led a miserable and worthless life on earth. He was not allowed to enter heaven. He then went down to Hell and the Devil. The Devil kept his promise and would not allow him to enter Hell. Now Jack was scared and had nowhere to go but to wander about foerever in the darkenss between heaven and hell. He asked the Devil how he could leave as tehre ws no light. The Devil tossed him an ember from the flames of Hell to help him light his way. Jack placed the ember in a hollowed out Turnip, one of his favortie foods which he always carried around with him whenever he could steal one. For that day on, Stingy Jack roamed the earth without a resting place.

On all Hallow's eve, the Irish hollowed out Turnips, rutabagas, gourds, potatoes and beets and placed a light in them to ward off evil spirits and keep Stingy Jack away. These were the original Jack O'Lanterns. In the 1800's a couple of waves of Irish immigrants came to America. The Irish immigrants quickly discovered that Pumpkins were bigger and easier to carve out. So they used pumpkins for Jack O'Lanterns.

Happy Halloween!

All about fireworks

Let's open the new year with a bang...

The first fireworks were provbably made in China 2000 years ago. They are used to celebrate weddings, religious festivals and keep evil spirits away. It is believed that gunpowder was discovered accidentally by a Chinese alchemist who mixed sulphur and salt peter (potassium nitrate) over a fire. The Chinese name for gunpowder is "huo yao" (fire chemical).

Placing gun powder into bamboo stalks and then throwing them onto a fire to be ignited produced a louder and more powerful bang; hence the firecracker was born. Fireworks were soon applied to warfare by attaching them to arrows. The first such use, circa 1200 A.D., involved placing powder into paper tubes with a fuse or a trail of gunpowder wrapped in tissue paper that was attached to the arrows.

The first recorded fireworks in England were at the wedding of King henry VII in 1486. Fireworks became very popular in Great Britain during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. William Shakespeare mentions fireworks in his works, and fireworks were so much enjoyed by the Queen herself that she created a "Fire Master of England." King James II was so pleased with the fireworks display that celebrated his coronation that he knighted his Fire Master.

The first fireworks recorded in America were set off by an Englishman, capt. john Smith, famous int he story of Pocahiontas.in Jamestown in 1608

The world's largest single firework was set off at a festival in Japan in 1988. The shell weighed half-a-ton and the burst was over a kilometer across. The biggest fireworks event in the world is held in Madeira, Portugal at the New Years' Eve celebrations, as referred in the Guinness World Records.
In 1996, a string of firecrackers were lit that lasted 22 hours for the Chinese New Year in Hong Kong.

An aerial shell has 2 fuses. The user lights the external fuse, and a second, internal fuse burns as the shell flies up igniting the burst or break.

The first Independence Day fireworks celebration was in 1776, and was memorialized by then future President John Adams as follows: "The day (Independence Day) will be the most memorable in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival...it ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade...bonfires and illuminations (fireworks) from one end of this continent to the other, from this day forward forevermore."

Static electricity in synthetic clothing can ignite fireworks. Those who make fireworks wear cotton all the way down to their underwear.

The most dangerous fireworks-related tragedy in the world occurred on May 16, 1770, during the marriage of King Louis XVI to Maria Antoinette. After the celebratory fireworks show, there was a stampede where approximately 800 people where killed.

The earliest recorded use of gunpowder in England, and probably the western world, is by the Franciscan monk Roger Bacon.

Early fireworks were enjoyed more for the sound than the show—in its simplest forms gunpowder explodes quickly, leaving a terrific bang but not much to see other than a rather brief golden glow. Over time people discovered that using chemical compounds with greater amounts of oxygen made the explosives burn brighter and longer.

The multi-hued displays we know now began in the 1830s, when Italians added trace amounts of metals that burn at high temperatures, creating beautiful colors. Other additives also produced interesting effects. For example, calcium deepens colors, titanium makes sparks, and zinc creates smoke clouds.

Pangrams

Are you familiar with the phrase "A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog?" It's a sentence which contains all the letters of the alphabet. This is called a Pangram from the Greek words "pan gramma", every letter. Pangrams are used to display typefaces and test equipments. For example, the pangram The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog was utilized by Western Union to test Telex/TWX data communication equipment for accuracy and reliability. It actually is the most well known pangram. Those phrases which contain all the letters of the alphabet exactly once are called perfect pangrams. Forming these type of pangrams are very difficult to achieve.

In the 1980s Michael Jones submitted two pangrams to Guinness: "Veldt jynx grimps waqf zho buck" and "Qursh gowf veldt jynx zimb pack." Guinness chose the first one. Michael writes that the second pangram "describes a scene where some Arabian coins are striking a group of flies gathered on that woodpecker. The two pangrams are formed using the alphabets only once, and without proper nouns, acronyms and abbreviations.

Here are examples of the other type of perfect pangrams which uses proper nouns, punctuation symbols and abbreviations.

Blowzy night-frumps vex'd Jack Q.
Glum Schwartzkopf vex'd by NJ IQ.
New job: fix Mr. Gluck's hazy TV, PDQ!
Frowzy things plumb vex'd Jack Q.
J. Q. Vandz struck my big fox whelp.

Here are other examples of pangrams:

Quit beer," vows dizzy, puking, Michael J. Fox (by Idris Mercer)
A large fawn jumped quickly over white zinc boxes.
A mad boxer shot a quick, gloved jab to the jaw of his dizzy opponent.
A popular belief is that fornication would be a quick fix for some overzealously judicious governments.
A quart jar of oil mixed with zinc oxide makes a very bright paint.
A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
A quick movement of the enemy will jeopardize six gunboats.
A very bad quack might jinx zippy fowls. 32
About sixty codfish eggs will make a quarter pound of very fizzy jelly.
Alfredo just must bring very exciting news to the plaza quickly.
All questions asked by five watch experts amazed the judge.
Amazingly few discotheques provide jukeboxes (40)
An inspired calligrapher can create pages of beauty using stick ink, quill, brush, pick-axe, buzz saw, or even strawberry jam.
Anxious Paul waved back his pa from the zinc quarry just sighted.
As we explored the gulf of Zanzibar, we quickly moved closer to the jutting rocks.
Astronaut Quincy B. Zack defies gravity with six jet fuel pumps.
Back in June we delivered oxygen equipment of the same size.
Back in my quaint garden, jaunty zinnias vie with flaunting phlox.
Ban foul, toxic smogs which quickly jeopardize lives.
Barkeep! A flaming tequila swizzle and a vodka and Ajax, hold the cherry.
Baroque? Hell, just mix a dozen wacky pi fonts & you've got it.
Bawds jog, flick quartz, vex nymph. 27 (by Sir Jeremy Morse)
Big July earthquakes confound zany experimental vow.
Blowzy frights vex, and jump quick. (28)
Blowzy night-frumps vex'd Jack Q. 26
Blowzy red vixens fight for a quick jump.
Boy, Max felt hazy during his quick weaving jumps!
Boys of quartz duck phlegm, vow jinx. (29)
Brawny gods just flocked up to quiz and vex him.
Breezily jingling $3,416,857,209, wise advertiser ambles to the bank, his exchequer amplified.
Brick quiz whangs jumpy veldt fox.
By Jove, my quick study of lexicography won a prize.
Campus TV quiz: just why is gold buried at Fort Knox? [Games For Insomniacs (1966) by John G. Fuller]
Cozy lummox gives smart squid who asks for job pen. (41)
Cozy sphinx waves quart jug of bad milk. (32)
Crazy Fredericka bought many very exquisite opal jewels. 48
Crux: Why joking TV blazes FM PDQ? (26) (by Toby Gottfried, 2005)
Cwm kvutza qoph jynx fled brigs. (by Greg and Peter Maggs)
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz 26 (by Dmitri Borgmann)
Dangerously frozen, he quickly judged his extremities to be waterproof.
Doxy with charming buzz quaffs vodka julep.
Dr. Jekyll vows to finish zapping quixotic bum (by Idris Mercer)
Dub waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex. 28
Dumpy kibitzer jingles as exchequer overflows.
Ebenezer unexpectedly bagged two tranquil aardvarks with his jiffy vacuum cleaner.
Emily Q. Jung-Schwartzkopf XV, B.D. (26)
Exquisite farm wench gives body jolt to prize stinker.
Exquisite wizard flock behaving jumpy (by Idris Mercer)
Fabled reader with jaded, roving eye seized by quickened impulse to expand budget.
Few quips galvanized the mock jury box. (32)
Five big quacking zephyrs jolt my wax bed.
Five jumbo oxen graze quietly with packs of dogs.
Five or six big jet planes zoomed quickly by the tower.
Five wine experts jokingly quizzed chablis sample.
Fjord-buck zags whelm qvint pyx. (26) (by Dmitri Borgmann)

Great Blunders 2!

In 1894, the president of the Royal Society, Lord Kelvin, predicted that radio had no future. The first radio factory was opened five years later. He also predicted that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible. Today, there are more than one billion radio sets in the world, tuned to more than 33 000 radio stations around the world. The Wright Brother's first flight covered a distance equal to only half the length of the wingspan of a Boeing 747.

In the 6th century BC Greek mathematician Pythagoras said that earth is round - but few agreed with him. Greek astronomer Aristarchos said in the 3rd century BC that earth revolves around the sun - but the idea was not accepted. In the 2nd century BC Greek astronomer Erastosthenes accurately measured the distance around the earth at about 40,000 km (24,860 miles) - but nobody believed him. In the 2nd century AD Greek astronomer Ptolemy stated that earth was the centre of the universe - most people believed him for the next 1,400 years.

In the early 20th century a world market for only 4 million automobiles was made because "the world would run out of chauffeurs." Shortly after the end of World War II (1945), the whole of Volkswagen, factory and patents, was offered free to Henry Ford II. He dismissed the Volkswagen Beetle as a bad design. Today, more than 70 million motorcars are produced every year. The Beetle became one of the best-selling vehicles of all time.

The telephone was not widely appreciated for the first 15 years because people did not see a use for it. In fact, in the British parliament it was mentioned there was no need for telephones because "we have enough messengers here." Western Union believed that it could never replace the telegraph. In 1876, an internal memo read: "This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication." Even Mark Twain, upon being invited by Alexander Graham Bell to invest $5 000 in the new invention, could not see a future in the telephone.

Irish scientist, Dr. Dionysius Lardner (1793 - 1859) didn't believe that trains could contribute much in speedy transport. He wrote: "Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers ' would die of asphyxia' [suffocation]." Today, trains reach speeds of 500 km/h.

In 1943, Thomas Watson, the chairman of IBM forecast a world market for "maybe only five computers." Years before IBM launched the personal computer in 1981, Xerox had already successfully designed and used PCs internally... but decided to concentrate on the production of photocopiers.

After the invention of the transistor in 1947, several US electronics companies rejected the idea of a portable radio. Apparently it was thought nobody would want to carry a radio around. When Bell put the transistor on the market in 1952 they had few takers apart from a small japanese start-up called Sony. They introduced the transistor radio in 1954.

In 1894, A.A. Michelson, who with E.W. Morley seven years earlier experimentally demonstrated the constancy of the speed of light, said that the future of science would consist of "adding a few decimal places to the results already obtained."

Perhaps the guy who got it wrong most was the commissioner of the US Office of Patents: in 1899, Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, assured President McKinley that "everything that can be invented has been invented."

The Origin of Humpty Dumpty

"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again!"

Do you ever wonder where this popular nursery rhyme ever came from? Well it's your lucky day!

Humpty Dumpty was a powerful cannon during the English Civil War (1642-49). It was mounted on top of the St. Mary's at the Wall Church in Colchester defending the city against siege in the summer of 1648. (Although Colchester was a Parliamentarian stronghold, it was captured by the Royalists who held it for 11 weeks.) The church tower was hit by the enemy and the top of the tower was blown off, sending "Humpty" tumbling to the ground. Naturally the King's men* tried to mend him but in vain.
* The "men" would have been infantry, and "horses" the cavalry troops.
- From the East Anglia Tourist Board in England

Company Names - how they came to be.

ABN AMRO- In the 1960s, the Nederlandse Handelmaatschappij (Dutch Trading Society; 1824) and the Twentsche Bank merged to form the Algemene Bank Nederland ( ABN; General Bank of the Netherlands). In 1966, the Amsterdamsche Bank and the Rotterdamsche Bank merged to form the Amro Bank. In 1991, ABN and Amro Bank merged to form ABN AMRO.

********

Accenture- Accent on the Future. Greater-than 'accent' over the logo's t points forward towards the future. The name Accenture was proposed by a company employee in Norwayas part of a internal name finding process (BrandStorming). Prior to January 1, 2001 the company was called Andersen Consulting.

********

Adidas- from the name of the founder Adolf (Adi) Dassler.

********

Adobe- came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the houses of founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke .

********

AltaVista- Spanish for "high view".

********

AMD- Advanced Micro Devices.

********

Apache- The name was chosen from respect for the Native American Indian tribe of Apache (Indé), well-known for their superior skills in warfare strategy and their inexhaustible endurance. Secondarily, and more popularly (though incorrectly) accepted, it's considered a cute name that stuck: its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'a patchy' server â€" thus the name Apache.

********

Apple- for the favourite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computer if his colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 p.m. Apple's Macintosh is named after a popular variety of apple sold in the US. Apple also wanted to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by the other computer companies at the time had names like IBM, NEC, DEC, ADPAC, Cincom, Dylakor, Input, Integral Systems, SAP, PSDI, Syncsort and Tesseract. The new company sought to reverse the entrenched view of computers in order to get people to use them at home. They looked for a name that was unlike the names of traditional computer companies, a name that also supported a brand positioning strategy that was to be perceived as simple, warm, human, approachable and different.

Note: Apple had to get approval from the Beatle's Apple Corps to use the name 'Apple' and paid a one-time royalty of $100,000 to McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., a maker of high-end audio equipment, to use the derivative name 'Macintosh', known now as just 'Mac'.

********

AT&T- American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation officially changed its name to AT&T in the 1990s.

********

Bauknecht- Founded as an electrotechnical workshop in 1919 by Gottlob Bauknecht .

********

BBC- Stands for British Broadcasting Corporation.

********

BenQ- Bringing ENjoyment and Quality to life

********

Blaupunkt- Blaupunkt (Blue dot) was founded in 1923 under the name Ideal. Their core business was the manufacturing of headphones. If the headphones came through quality tests, the company would give the headphones a blue dot. The headphones quickly became known as the blue dots or blaue Punkte. The quality symbol would become a trademark, and the trademark would become the company name in 1938.

********

BMW- abbreviation of Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavarian Motor Factories)

********

Borealis - The Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis, is the celestial phenomenon that features bursts of light in colourful patterns dancing across the night skies of the north. Borealis, inspired from the shining brilliance of the Northern Lights, was formed in 1994 out of the merger between two northern oil companies, Norway's Statoil and Finland's Neste.

********

BP - formerly British Petroleum, now "BP" (The slogan "Beyond Petroleum" has incorrectly been taken to refer to the company's new name following its rebranding effort in 2000).

********

BRAC- abbreviation for Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, world's largest NGO (non governmental organization). It works in development programs around the world.

********

Bridgestone- named after founder Shojiro Ishibashi. The surname Ishibashi (??) means "stone bridge", i.e. "bridge of stone".

********

Bull- Compagnie des machines Bull was founded in Paristo exploit the patents for punched card machines taken out by a Norwegian engineer, Fredrik Rosing Bull.

********

Cadillac- Cadillac was named after the 18th century French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe , sieur de Cadillac, founder of Detroit, Michigan. Cadillac is a small town in the South of France.

********

Canon- Originally (1933) Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory the new name (1935) derived from the name of the company's first camera, the Kwannon, in turn named after the Japanese name of the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy.

********

CGI- from the first letter of Information Management Consultant in french (Conseiller en Gestion et Informatique).

********

Cisco- short for San Francisco. It has also been suggested that it was "CIS-co" -- Computer Information Services was the department at StanfordUniversitythat the founders worked in.

********

COBRA- Computadores Brasileiros, "Brazilian Computers", electronics and services company, was the first state-owned designer and producer of computers in the 1970s, later acquired by the Banco do Brasil.

********

Coca-Cola- Coca-Cola's name is derived from the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring. Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the 'K' of kola to 'C' for the name to look better.

********

Colgate-Palmolive- formed from a merger of soap manufacturers Colgate & Company and Palmolive-Peet. Peet was dropped in 1953. Colgate was named after William Colgate, an English immigrant, who set up a starch, soap and candle business in New York Cityin 1806. Palmolive was named for the two oils (Palm and Olive) used in its manufacture.

********

Compaq- from "comp" for computer, and "pack" to denote a small integral object; or: Compatibility And Quality; or: from the company's first product, the very compact Compaq Portable.

********

Comsat - an American digital telecommunications and satellite company, founded during the President Kennedy era to develop the technology. Contraction of Communications Satellites.

********

Daewoo- the company founder Kim Woo Chong called it Daewoo which means "Great Universe" in Korean.

********

Dell- named after its founder, Michael Dell. The company changed its name from Dell Computer in 2003.

********

DHL- the company was founded by Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom , and Robert Lynn , whose last initials form the company's moniker.

********

eBay- Pierre Omidyar, who had created the Auction Web trading website, had formed a web consulting concern called Echo Bay Technology Group. " EchoBay" didn't refer to the town in Nevada, the nature area close to Lake Mead, or any real place. "It just sounded cool," Omidyar reportedly said. When he tried to register EchoBay.com, though, he found that Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company, had gotten it first. So, Omidyar registered what (at the time) he thought was the second best name: eBay.com.

********

Epson - Epson Seiko Corporation, the Japanese printer and peripheral manufacturer, was named from "Son of Electronic Printer"

********

Fanta- was originally invented by Max Keith in Germanyin 1940 when World War II made it difficult to get the Coca-Cola syrup to Nazi Germany. Fanta was originally made from byproducts of cheese and jam production. The name comes from the German word for imagination (Fantasie or Phantasie), because the inventors thought that imagination was needed to taste oranges from the strange mix.

********

Fazer - named after its founder, Karl Fazer.

********

Fiat- acronym of Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (Italian Factory of Cars of Turin).

********

Fuji- from the highest Japanese mountain Mount Fuji.

********

Google- the name is an intentional misspelling of the word googol, reflecting the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available online.

********

Haier- Chinese ? "sea" and ? (a transliteration character; also means "you" in Literary Chinese)

********

HP- Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.

********

Hitachi- old place name, literally "sunrise"

********

Honda- from the name of its founder, Soichiro Honda

********

Honeywell- from the name of Mark Honeywell founder of Honeywell Heating Specialty Co. It later merged with Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company and was finally called Honeywell Inc. in 1963.

********

Hotmail- Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for Hotmail as it included the letters "HTML" - the markup language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing. (If you click on Hotmail's 'mail' tab, you will still find "HoTMaiL" in the URL.)

********

HSBC- The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.

********

Hyundai- connotes the sense of "the present age" or "modernity" in Korean.

********

IBM- named by Tom Watson, an ex-employee of National Cash Register. To one-up them in all respects, he called his company International Business Machines.

********

ICL- abbreviation for International Computers Ltd, once the UK's largest computer company, but now a service arm of Fujitsu, of Japan.

********

IKON - copier company name derived from I Know One Name.

********

Intel- Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore initially incorporated their company as N M Electronics. Someone suggested Moore Noyce Electronics but it sounded too close to "more noise" -- not a good choice for an electronics company! Later, Integrated Electronics was proposed but it had been taken by somebody else. Then, using initial syllables from INTegrated ELectronics, Noyce and Moore came up with Intel. To avoid potential conflicts with other companies of similar names, Intel purchased the name rights for $15,000 from a company called Intelco. (Source: Intel 15 Years Corporate Anniversary Brochure)

********

Interland - a web hosting provider formally known as Micron Computer, Inc. which was named either after InternetLandor the combination of the largest acqusition it performed, Interliant with the word Land.

********

Kawasaki- from the name of its founder, Shozo Kawasaki

********

Kodak - Both the Kodak camera and the name were the invention of founder George Eastman . The letter "K" was a favourite with Eastman; he felt it a strong and incisive letter. He tried out various combinations of words starting and ending with "K". He saw three advantages in the name. It had the merits of a trademark word, would not be mis-pronounced and the name did not resemble anything in the art. There is a misconception that the name was chosen because of its similarity to the sound produced by the shutter of the camera.

********

Konica- it was earlier known as Konishiroku Kogaku. Konishiroku in turn is the short for Konishiya Rokubeiten which was the first name of the company established by Rokusaburo Sugiura in the 1850s.

********

Korg - Formed from the surnames of the founders, Tsutomu Katoh and Tadashi Osanai, combined with the letters "rg" from the word organ.

********

LG - combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar. (In Mexicopublicists explained the name change to the public as an abbreviation to Línea Goldstar Spanish for Goldstar Line)

********

L'Oréal- In 1907, Eugène Schueller, a young French chemist, developed an innovative hair-color formula. He called his improved hair dye Auréole.

********

Lotus Software - Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or 'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation technique as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

********

Lucent Technologies- a spin-off from AT&T, it was named Lucent (meaning "luminous" or "glowing with light") because "light as a metaphor for visionary thinking reflected the company's operating and guiding business philosophy," according to the Landor Associates staff who chose the name. Source: Design Management Journal 8:1 (Winter 1997).

********

Lycos- from Lycosidae, the family of wolf spiders.

********

Mazda Motor- from the company's first president, Jujiro Matsuda . In Japanese, no syllables are ever stressed and some inner syllables are virtually skipped. Thus, Matsuda is pronounced "Matsda". To make the name fly better outside of Japan, the spelling was changed to Mazda.

********

McDonald's- from the name of the brothers Dick McDonald and Mac McDonald, who founded the first McDonald 's restaurant in 1940.

********

Mercedes- This is the first name of the daughter of Emil Jellinek, who worked for the early Daimler company around 1900.

********

MGM- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was formed by the merger of three picture houses Metro Picture Corporation, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer Pictures. Goldwyn Picture Corporation in turn was named after the last names of Samuel Goldfish and Edgar and Archibald Selwyn.

********

Micron- computer memory producer named after the microscopic parts of its products. The official name was Micron Computer, Inc. Since, the company has become Interland, a web hosting provider, after selling/spinning off its RAM division and closing down its computer division, licensing the name. The company is now headquartered in Atlanta.

********

Microsoft- coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.

********

midPhase- the post-dotcom era gave using the .com in a companies official name untrendy. A new dotcom company may be named traditionally, in midPhase's case it was named midPhase Services, Inc., the midPhase stands for Middle Phase, or middle of the road.

********

Mitsubishi- The name Mitsubishi (??) has two parts: mitsu means three and hishi (changing to bishi in the middle of the word) means water chestnut, and from here rhombus, which is reflected in the company's logo.

********

Motorola- Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company (at the time, Galvin Manufacturing Company) started manufacturing radios for cars. Many audio equipment makers of the era used the " ola" ending for their products, most famously the "Victrola" phonograph made by the Victor Talking Machine Company. The name was meant to convey the idea of "sound" and "motion". The name became so recognized that the company later adopted it as the company name.

********

Mozilla Foundation- from the name of the web-browser that preceded Netscape Navigator. When Marc Andreesen , founder of Netscape, created a browser to replace the Mosaic browser, it was internally named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer, Godzilla) by Jamie Zawinski.

********

MRF- Madras Rubber Factory, founded by K M Mammen Mappillai in 1946. He started with a toy balloon-manufacturing unit at Tiruvottiyur, Chennai (then called Madras). In 1952, he began manufacturing tread-rubber, and in 1961, tyres.

********

Nero - Nero Burning ROM named after Nero burning Rome.

********

Netscape- named by first marketing employee Greg Sands, in a panic when the Universityof Illinoisthreatened to sue the new company for its original name, Mosaic. Netscape then paid Landor $50,000 to design a logo.

********

Nike- named for the Greek goddess of victory.

********

Nikon - the original name was Nippon Kogaku, meaning "Japanese Optical".

********

Nissan- the company was earlier known by the name Nippon Sangyo which means "Japanese industry".

********

Nokia- started as a wood-pulp mill, the company expanded into producing rubber products in the Finnish city of Nokia. The company later adopted the city's name.

********

Nortel - The Nortel Networks name came from Nortel (Northern Telecom) and Bay Networks. The company was originally spun off from the Bell Telephone Company of Canada Ltd in 1895 as Northern Electric and Manufacturing, and traded as Northern Electric from 1914 to 1976.

********

Novartis- after the Latin expression "novae artes" which means something like "new skills".

********

Oracle - Larry Ellison, Ed Oates and Bob Miner were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or some such). The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL database language from IBM. The project eventually was terminated but they decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they changed the name of the company, Relational Technology Inc, to the name of the product.

********

Pepsi- Pepsi derives its name from (treatment of) dyspepsia, an intestinal ailment.

********

Philips - Royal Philips Electronics was founded in 1891, by brothers Gerard (the engineer) and Anton (the entrepreneur) Philips .

********

Qantas- From its original name, Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial Services.

********

Red Hat- Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. People would turn to him to solve their problems, and he was referred to as 'that guy in the red hat'. He lost the cap and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone.

********

Reebok- another spelling of rhebok (Pelea capreolus), an African antelope.

********

SAAB- founded in 1937 in Swedenas "Svenska Aeroplan aktiebolaget" (Swedish Aeroplane Company) abbreviated SAAB.

********

Samsonite- Samsonite was launched as a brand in 1941, receiving its name from the Biblical character Samson, renowned for his strength.

********

Samsung- meaning three stars in Korean.

********

Sanyo- The Japanese translation is disputed, although the Chinese name is "??" (literally, "Three Oceans")

********

SAP- "Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formerly "SystemAnalyse und Programmentwicklung" (German for "System analysis and program development"), formed by 4 ex- IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of IBM.

********

SEGA- "Service Games of Japan" (SeGa) Founded by Marty Bromley (an American) to import pinball games to Japanfor use on American military bases.

********

Sharp- Japanese consumer electronics company named from its first product, an ever-sharp pencil.

********

Shell- Royal Dutch Shell was established in 1907, when the Royal Netherlands Petrol Society Plc. and the Shell Transport and Trading Company Ltd. merged. The Shell Transport and Trading Company Ltd. had been established at the end of the 19th century, by commercial firm Samuel & Co (founded in 1830). Samuel & Co were already successfully importing Japanese shells when they set up an oil company, so the oil company was named after the shells Samuel & Co were importing.

********

Siemens - founded in 1847 by Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske: the company was originally called Telegraphen-Bau-Anstalt von Siemens & Halske.

********

Sprint- from its parent company, Southern Pacific Railroad INTernal Communications. Back in the day, pipelines and railroad tracks were the cheapest place to lay communications lines, as the right-of-way was already leased or owned.

********

Sun Microsystems- its founders designed their first workstation in their dorm at StanfordUniversity, and chose the name Stanford University Network for their product, hoping to sell it to the college. They didn't.

********

Suzuki- from the name of its founder, Michio Suzuki

********

Tesco- Founder Jack Cohen, who from 1919 sold groceries in the markets of the London East End, acquired a large shipment of tea from T. E. Stockwell and made new labels by using the first three letters of the supplier's name and the first two letters of his surname forming the word "TESCO".

********

Toshiba- was founded by the merger of consumer goods company Tokyo Denki (Tokyo Electric Co) and electrical firm Shibaura Seisaku-sho (Shibaura Engineering Works).

********

Toyota- from the founder's name Sakichi Toyoda. Initially called Toyeda, it was changed after a contest for a better-sounding name. The new name was written in katakana with eight strokes, a number that is considered lucky in Japan.

********

Unisys- made-up name for the company that resulted from the combination of two old mainframe computer companies, Burroughs and Sperry [Sperry Univac/Sperry Rand]. It "united" two incompatible ranges. Unisys was briefly the world's second-largest computer company, after IBM.

********

Verizon- A portmanteau of veritas (Latin for truth) and horizon.

********

Vodafone- is a multinational mobile phone operator with headquarters in the United Kingdom. Its name is made up of VOice, DAta, TeleFONE. Vodafone made the UK's first mobile call at a few minutes past midnight on the 1 January 1985.

********

Volvo- From the Latin word "volvo", which means "I roll". It was originally a name for a ball bearing being developed by SKF.

********

Xerox - The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say `dry' (as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying). The Greek root `xer' means dry.

********

Yahoo!- a "backronym" for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. The word Yahoo was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders David Filo and Jerry Yang selected the name because they jokingly considered themselves yahoos

********

English Paradoxims

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple...

English muffins were not invented in England or French fries in France.

Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce, and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth,

why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So, one moose, 2 meese? One index, two indices? Is cheese the plural of choose?If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

In what language do people recite at a play, and play at a recital?

Ship by truck, and send cargo by ship?

Have noses that run and feet that smell?

Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another?

When a house burns up, it burns down. You fill in a form by filling it out, and an alarm clock goes off by going on.

When the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it?

Do You Remember When?

A computer was something on TV
from a science fiction show of note
A window was something you hated to clean...
And ram was the cousin of a goat...

Meg was the name of a girlfriend
and gig was a job for the nights
now they all mean different things
and that really mega bytes

An application was for employment
a program was a TV show
a cursor used profanity
a keyboard was a piano

Memory was something that you lost with age
a cd was a bank account
and if you had a 3 1/2" floppy
you hoped nobody found out

Compress was something you did to the garbage
not something you did to a file
you'd be in jail for a while

Logon was adding wood to the fire
hard drive was a long trip on the road
a mouse pad was where a mouse lived
and a backup happened to your commode

Cut you did with a pocket knife
Paste you did with glue
a web was a spider's home
and a virus was the flu

I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper
and the memory in my head
I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash
but when it happens they wish they were dead

Life in the 1500s

The next time you're washing yourself and complain that the water temperature isn't to your liking, think how it was for the unfortunate people living in the 1500s.

Most people married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good in June. However, they were starting to smell so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the sons and other men, then the women, and finally the children - last of all the babies. By then, the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it; hence the saying, "don't throw the baby out with the bath water."

Houses had thatched roofs; thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the dogs, cats and other small animals (mice, rats, and bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained, it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof; hence the saying "it's raining cats and dogs." There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This was a real problem in the bedroom, where bugs and other droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed. A bed with big posts and a sheet over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt; hence the saying, "dirt poor."

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh on the floor to help their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more thresh until it would all start slipping outside when you opened the door. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway, a "thresh hold."

In those days people cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight, then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while; hence the rhyme, "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which was quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man "could bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Most people did not have pewter plates, but had trenchers, a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Often trenchers were made from stale bread which was so old and hard that it could be used for quite some time. Trenchers were never washed. Sometimes worms and mold got into the wood and old bread. After eating off wormy, moldy trenchers, one would get "trench mouth."

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burned bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or "upper crust."
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock people out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up; hence the custom of holding a "wake."

England is old and small, and they started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and take the bones to a "bone house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 were found to have scratch marks on the inside, and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground, and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."

And that's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth...whoever said history was boring?