technology

i used to believe that www meant world wide willy until a few months later when i came across a frind who correced me and said it meant world wide web

bethey

When I was younger I used to believe that when you faxed someting the paper would de-materialize and the particles would travel through the phone lines and re-materialize later at the other end of the fax machine.

Laura Vivoni

When I was a kid I couldn't figure out how video got to a TV through a tiny little cable, and with so many channels! I figured that a huge set of tiny images must be transferred through the cable using fibre optics or something (like a multiplexed image), and then the TV would pick a section of this big image when you choose a channel, then magnify that section onto the TV screen and voila - TV! I figured the sound was picked up using some sort of radio tuner. I was tempted to cut the cable and see if a bunch of tiny images would project from it! I understand how they work today, but you gotta admit, it's pretty amazing how color video goes through a simple 2-pin cable.

Anon

When I was 3 we lived with my great-grandmother in Missisiippi and my mom had a record player in our room. (This was in 1967 for those who don't know what a record player is!!) I was so curious about the spinning of it so she told me there was a little man under the record running in a circle making it spin. I always wondered if he had a friend in there to help if he got tired.

mommy0203

Not actually my own belief, but when my young son came across an old typewriter at a car boot sale, he thought it was an antique computer.

Irene

When I first heard the term "burning a CD", I had the immediate vision of someone setting a CD on fire and giving it to someone.

Keven White

'Mole machines' is what me and my brother used to call them. You see them in Thunderbirds, any film about Victorians tunnelling trying to find the core of the Earth, and lots of cartoons. They're basically cylinders with giant screws on the front and they burrow through soil, rock, or the white-hot core of the planet at about fifteen miles an hour.

I knew not everything you saw on TV existed in real life, but I saw these things on too many different shows and films for it to be a coincidence. So Mole Machines must be real, I deduced, and I hoped fervently to ride in one when I was a grown up. Big disappointment.

I was delighted to see a Mole Machine pop up in The Incredibles. Maybe a whole new generation of kids will see them as a viable transport option.

Andy R

I used to believe my computer monitor had a van inside. This started because I asked my dad what made the whirring noise. He said it had a fan... I said "Really? A real van?", "Yes." I was convinced for nearly ten years that computers had nothing except a little blue van in them. It never occured to me to ask what it was for.

Nicholas Wordsworth

in the early 1970's my parents had a digital clock radio. the numbers flipped over to change. i thought there was a very tiny monkey inside who painted each number. it took him exactly 60 seconds to paint each number, except when the hour changed and he had to rush to paint all the new numbers in time.

scoop

When I was little my mom was cooking with the microwave. when it dinged it was done. so I thought that if you made it ding sooner that the food would be done sooner. I used to say "ding it ding it ding it!" when I was really hungry.

Kat

I remember as a kid, when I first started using the internet (back in 96') I would type things how I thought they should be typed.

If I was searching for something with spaces in it, I didn't think the spaces were wide enough in-between the words (I don't remember how I logical decided this, but somehow I did) so for instance if I wanted to search "Frank Black" I would type in "Frank Black" or "F r a n k B l a c k".

This was probably because I thought that whenever I typed in something to a search engine, that it would actually be reviewed by someone and then they would give me back search results.

I thought it would make it easier for the search people in internet if I made it easier for them to read things.

Yup... those were the days.

Justin Grizwald

When I was really little my mother told me the vacuum cleaner would suck my lungs out if I touched it, and I believed her. Vacuums STILL scare me, a source of great amusment as I'm now 19 and in college.

NotAnotherExit

I was told a scary story by my babysitter once, about a girl who passed out in front of her microwave while it was heating something... and the girl's internal organs got all fried. To this day, I can't stand in front of the microwave while it's heating anything, I always stand to the side if I'm waiting. Funny thing, my little brother has the same inherent belief that microwaves are dangerous to stand in front of. We both just can't get the image of dangerous rays coming out to fry us, even though we're now both in our 20's.

Anon

I used to believe that if you talked into the c.d. player while the radio was on, other people would hear it. So I would always run to the radio and shout things I wanted people to know. Like my birthday so people would bring me presents...

confused

I used to think when a person had surgery, they put you in this big round machine..and fed you through it, and the machine had all these little apparatuses in it, that 'operated' on you.

Debbie

I use to think that I would be able to emit light from a regular piece of paper by coloring it with the three special colors(green, blue, and red)TV pixels showed when zoomed in. I believed these three colors were what gave luminition to any surface!

Armando

When i was little, about 3 or 4, I believed that if you started taping a TV show on the VCR, it didn't matter where you started recording it, you could always rewind it back to the beginning.
Whenever I missed the start of a program I wanted to watch I would ask my Dad to tape it and he would say 'there's no point, you've already missed some of it' and I would reply 'no Daddy, tape it and then wind it back to the start!'. Then he would say I couldn't, and I would shout 'YES DADDY, WIND IT!'
I was an odd child. Mind you, I haven't really changed, but now I am quite good with computer, DVD players etc.!

Know-it-all Micky

I believed that Polariod cameras had an unlimited amount of film in them.

Gregory

I thought music was made by computers until I was about 14. Somebody writes the lyrics then they put it in a computer and it makes the music. It made perfect sense to me.

Anon