When you think of the "World Wide Web," you likely imagine a sprawling network of computers circling the globe, blasting information to each other 24 hours a day.
And you'd be right, though this wasn't always the case.
When he first invented it in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee kept the entire World Wide Web (which was still rather small for a time) on his NeXTcube from NeXT, the company started by Steve Jobs after being ousted from Apple.
This is of course but one example from the Internet's unusual history. We have nine more for you.
Garfield the cartoon cat once offered a free email service at Gmail.com.
Google literally had to buy the Gmail domain from Garfield.
YouTube’s copyright-checking software scans over 100 years of video every day.
Google enlists the help of software to scan the volumes of video footage uploaded to YouTube every day to ensure that intellectual property stays protected. We can only imagine what a timesaver that must be compared to humans doing the same task.
The first-ever webcam was used to watch a pot of coffee.
Because what's worse than walking down the hall to fill your caffeine craving only to discover an empty coffee pot?
Beginning in 1991, Cambridge University successfully implemented the first webcam on its own local network. Its sole purpose was to monitor a coffee pot to see how much coffee was left.
It remained in operation until 2001.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider