Flyover IT Strategy Trivia – Nerd Knowledge! November 2, 2021

Here’s a review of this week’s questions:

1. What was the first-ever web browser?
2. What company invented Ethernet networking?
3. What is the origin of the word “spam” in the context of email spam?

And here are the answers:

1. In 1990, almost four years before Netscape, W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee (founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, developed the first web browser. It was called…wait for it…WorldWideWeb. It was renamed Nexus.
2. The networking platform that ships with virtually every modern computer was born at Xerox PARC around 1973 with Robert Metcalfe and three of his colleagues credited as inventors. An early experimental version of Ethernet ran at 2.94 Mb/s In 1979, Metcalfe convinced Xerox, Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation to promote 10Mb/s Ethernet through the “DIX” standard.
3. Many people think the term for the useless and ubiquitous email derived from the Hormel meat product, but that’s not correct. The real origin of the term comes from Monty Python’s Flying Circus skit in which all the restaurant’s menu items devolve into SPAM.  When the waitress repeats the word SPAM, a group of Vikings in the corner sing “SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, lovely SPAM!  Wonderful SPAM!,” drowning out other conversation.

Thanks for playing!