QR codes were developed in Japan in 1994 to fix bar code limitations

Japan is home to intricately designed region-specific manhole covers

The country's eye-catching sewer covers were a form of brand rehabilitation, intended to change people's perceptions of the sewer. Additionally, they're easy to see at night, making firefighters' nighttime duties a bit easier.

DNA cassette tapes could store 36,000 terabytes of data

By translating binary code into the base-pair code found in genetic sequences, researchers in China are storing digital data on DNA-coated tapes for compact, durable, and energy-efficient storage. The tapes use a blend of polyester and nylon with barcode patterns for data addressing.

Chip technology replaced magstripes to stop easy card cloning and fraud

The magstripe on bank cards always gives the same data, making it simple to copy using a device called a grabber. In contrast, embedded chips create a unique code with every transaction, making it much harder to clone or steal card information.

Yakuza gangsters' tattoos often portrayed moments from their lives

Although tattoos have been worn in Japan for centuries, no single group is more famous for their elaborate, full-body tattoos—featuring traditional Japanese art—than Yakuza gangsters. The criminal organization does not use tattoos to mark their association, though. Instead, the scenes are intensely personal.

Eating KFC is a Christmas tradition in Japan

Since a 1974 marketing campaign, eating KFC on Christmas has become a nationwide custom in Japan. Families place orders weeks in advance, and the holiday accounts for nearly a third of KFC Japan's total yearly sales.

Are emojis real communication? And other questions for the experts

Emojis took off around 2009, after Apple's operating system for its defining iPhone became available in Japan. By 2012, a standardized set of emojis was released, and now seven in ten users feel a message without one of the 3,664 official emojis is lacking.

The long-lost art of coded postage stamps

In the 1800s, the postcard was a relatively new phenomenon, as was the post office. In the burgeoning system, recipients of mail had to sometimes pay prohibitively costly fees to receive it. So to get around the fees, a system of placing stamps on the envelopes in specific ways to communicate—a simple yes or no—was devised by clever mailers and expanded and codified by postcard companies into guides. Learn about the fascinating system here.

How helium greatly improves the efficiency of barcode-scanning lasers

Rather than directly energizing neon atoms, electrical discharge at lower, more practical power levels can excite helium atoms to energy levels nearly equal to those in neon atoms. Within a helium-neon laser, these gases are present in a 10-to-1 ratio, enabling helium to efficiently transfer energy to neon, which is then discharged as red light.

The Juke 8 was the world's first karaoke machine

Daisuke Inoue invented the machine in 1971 by combining an amplifier, microphone, and 8-track machine, though he never patented it and, as a result, never collected royalties from the billion-dollar industry.

A technological breakthrough altered how Billboard determined what was popular

Before 1991, retail stores manually reported sales to Billboard, which then used those figures as part of its calculations for its weekly charts. In 1991, the magazine began using Nielsen SoundScan, a technology that tracked every unit sold in participating stores, providing a more accurate picture of what consumers were actually buying.

View a history of hashtags through 2013

First used on Twitter in August 2007, the social media shorthand gained popularity in October of that year during the San Diego wildfires as a means of coordinating emergency response and disaster relief. Instagram, Google+, Flickr, Facebook, and other social media companies would later integrate hashtags into their platforms.

USB connectors for universal data transfer debuted in 1996

Since the introduction of USB 1.0 by a consortium of companies, data transfer speeds have steadily increased from 1.5 megabits per second to 40 gigabits per second as of 2019. Variations in USB connector types enable them to be used for applications and devices that require different speeds and power.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

A popular tag in World War II announced 'Kilroy was here'

The graffito appeared seemingly everywhere throughout the 1940s and followed a similar pattern: A man with an oversized nose peering over a ledge, with the phrase written below it. Scholars believe it was an American form of similar tags that appeared in Australia and England, making "Kilroy" a meme long before the word had entered the lexicon.

Expanding supermarket chains began offering coupons to attract customers in the 1940s

This was partially a customer acquisition strategy devised to lure customers into chains and away from their local independent grocers.

Turning 2D illustrations into 3D models with AR

Coloring books capture the imagination of children and provide them with one of their earliest opportunities for creative expression. This two-minute video shows an augmented reality coloring book app in which children color characters in a printed coloring book, their drawing is detected and tracked, and the video stream is augmented with an animated 3-D version of the character that is textured according to the child’s coloring.

Japan was an empire from 1868 until 1947

The Empire of Japan began on Jan. 3, 1868, and facilitated rapid modernization. It endured through a period of colonial expansion—including Korea and Taiwan—1930s militarism, and participation in WWII, until Japan’s formal transformation into a constitutional state under the 1947 constitution following Allied occupation.

The earliest earthquake detection device involved eight ball-wielding dragons

Invented in China in 132 CE, the seismoscope was an urn with dragons facing different directions. If an earthquake occurred, the dragon facing the direction of the tremor released its ball. Like modern seismographs, its mechanism may have involved a suspended weight.

Five charts that changed the world

Data visualization helps us understand the world, providing a powerful way to communicate complicated information in a quick and efficient way. There are many different ways to create graphs, and these five examples—the pie chart, geographic dot...

'Pac-Man' was the rare early video game aimed at both men and women

The early arcade games were mainly aimed at boys and young men, with a focus on sports and violence. Toru Iwatani was interested in appealing to a wider audience and created "Pac-Man," released in Japan in 1980.

MSG was first isolated from seaweed in Japan in 1908

The compound monosodium glutamate has been identified in dairy, meats and vegetables, and provides an "umami"—Japanese for "tasty"—flavor to food. Studies in the late 1960s characterized MSG as harmful, but only when testing doses hundreds of times greater than what would be consumed in a typical diet.

The horror hotlines of the 1990s

Before the internet, 900-number hotlines were the way to retrieve instant information over the phone, whether for weather reports, movie information, or spooky horror stories. Callers could dial the number and hear ghost stories, experience interactive horrors, and more. This article reminisces about this extinct technology and how it paved the way for the internet.

Blue zones are regions with unusually high numbers of centenarians

Factors thought to contribute to longevity in these regions include diet and social connections, but their legitimacy is often questioned due to a lack of rigorous scientific methodology and potential record inaccuracies.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

The quarterback cadence is a unique quirk to the game of football

Only the offense knows when the ball will be snapped, giving the team with the ball the advantage. Common combinations of colors and numbers (like "blue 42") were codes for plays early in the sport, but are now used arbitrarily.

Mapping the universe's 1.3 million quasars

Quasars form the core of active galaxies where supermassive black holes devour unimaginable amounts of matter. You can see a map of all 1.3 million of these objects with this 3D map. It was assembled with data from the Gaia spacecraft and shows how the spread of dark matter across space matches that described by the Cosmic Microwave Background.

The origin of shortest-path algorithms and how they became optimized for navigation apps

In 1956, Dutch programmer Edsger Dijkstra spent about 20 minutes developing an algorithm to demonstrate how computers could quickly determine the shortest route between Rotterdam and Groningen. Since then, modified versions of Dijkstra's formulation comprise the processing backbone of systems such as Google Maps and Apple Maps.

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Some coin denominations have ridges etched on their sides, partly to prevent counterfeiting, in a practice called 'reeding.'

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Artificial coral reefs have been 3D printed from nontoxic, biodegradable terracotta clay, which coral polyps have used as a foundation for rebuilding marine ecosystems.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Power lines are dotted with large, brightly colored balls to improve the visibility of these thin wires to helicopters and small planes and help prevent potential crashes.

The 1987 Nintendo video game 'Stadium Events' isn't known for being particularly fun, but its scarcity has made it a highly sought-after item that has sold for up to $35K at auction.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

The 2026 Ebola outbreak is hampered by a lack of vaccine against the species of the virus, heightening the need for rapid tests to aid in disease control.

The first steps to rebuilding your credit score include getting to know exactly what's on your credit report and figuring out how far you are from the '700 club,' or 'good score' range.