WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.760 You've probably seen these symbols on the outside of your PC plenty of times, 00:00:04.760 --> 00:00:08.720 but where exactly did they come from? And why did they look that way? 00:00:08.720 --> 00:00:12.560 I mean, the symbol for Thunderbolt couldn't be any more self-explanatory 00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:15.800 unless you've somehow never seen a storm in your life. 00:00:15.800 --> 00:00:20.600 But what's the history behind the Bluetooth logo? Is it just a spiky bee? 00:00:20.600 --> 00:00:23.960 For Bluetooth, the answer is actually yes. 00:00:23.960 --> 00:00:27.240 And no, Bluetooth owes its logo to this guy, 00:00:27.320 --> 00:00:30.880 Harold Gormson, who's better known as Bluetooth, 00:00:30.880 --> 00:00:35.240 because he wore headphones for every job. Our buddy Harold was the king of Denmark 00:00:35.240 --> 00:00:40.640 during the 10th century AD, and a popular hypothesis is that he earned the name Bluetooth 00:00:40.640 --> 00:00:45.080 from the fact that he had a prominent bad tooth that was a dark bluish color. 00:00:45.080 --> 00:00:50.000 It's just a theory though. King Harold became famous for uniting Denmark and Norway, 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:54.000 and once an Intel engineer who had been working on the new wireless standard 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:57.040 learned this fun fact, he thought it would be a good name 00:00:57.040 --> 00:01:00.040 as the goal was to unite wireless devices 00:01:00.040 --> 00:01:03.440 just as Harold united parts of Scandinavia. 00:01:03.440 --> 00:01:08.080 Makes perfect sense, I guess. Anyway, the logo is actually a combination 00:01:08.080 --> 00:01:12.480 of a couple of Nordic runes, one for H and one for B, 00:01:12.480 --> 00:01:16.320 to honor Harold Bluetooth, who I'm sure would be very proud. 00:01:16.320 --> 00:01:20.520 Now let's talk about another symbol with tenuous connections to an ancient figure, 00:01:20.520 --> 00:01:24.000 this thing, which is actually the logo for USB. 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:29.520 At first glance, it might just look like traces on a circuit board, but there's a popular hypothesis 00:01:29.520 --> 00:01:32.920 that says it was taken from Poseidon's trident 00:01:32.920 --> 00:01:37.120 as being able to use one port to connect to so many different devices 00:01:37.120 --> 00:01:41.680 would make you as powerful as a Greek god. That seems like a stretch to me. 00:01:41.680 --> 00:01:46.960 And I mean, yeah, USB is useful, but I really don't know if it's that exciting. 00:01:46.960 --> 00:01:51.800 In any event, there doesn't appear to be any hard evidence to back the Poseidon theory up. 00:01:51.800 --> 00:01:55.760 Where did it come from? That's what I wanna know. But one thing we can say 00:01:55.800 --> 00:02:00.000 is that the large circle on the left is supposed to represent a PC, 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:03.960 while the smaller shapes on the right represent different kinds of peripherals. 00:02:03.960 --> 00:02:08.520 So it does try to convey power in the form of versatility, 00:02:08.520 --> 00:02:13.600 just probably without the mythology. Of course, there are many variations to the USB logo 00:02:13.600 --> 00:02:16.680 that indicate what generation and speed the port is, 00:02:16.680 --> 00:02:21.360 but we have an entire dedicated video explaining those, which we'll link to at the end. 00:02:21.360 --> 00:02:24.840 But for now, we're gonna explain why the hard drive activity light 00:02:24.840 --> 00:02:28.920 looks like a little can of soup. You may already know that the hard drive activity light 00:02:28.920 --> 00:02:35.000 illuminates when one of your internal storage devices is being written to, or having data read from it. 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:38.040 In short, it lets you know that the drive is busy. 00:02:38.040 --> 00:02:42.440 But why a cylinder? Well, the symbol comes from older mechanical hard drives, 00:02:42.440 --> 00:02:45.960 which typically have multiple platters stacked inside, 00:02:45.960 --> 00:02:50.200 forming a cylindrical shape. Back when we were all using mechanical HDDs, 00:02:50.200 --> 00:02:54.360 knowing that the drive was busy was useful, since load times were long. 00:02:54.360 --> 00:02:57.920 So an illuminated light would tell you that the drive was still working 00:02:57.920 --> 00:03:01.200 and that your system hadn't frozen or run into an error. 00:03:01.200 --> 00:03:05.720 But seeing as modern SSDs are much faster due to their lack of moving parts 00:03:05.720 --> 00:03:10.160 and the fact that they can still perform reads and writes even if they're partly busy, 00:03:10.160 --> 00:03:15.440 the drive activity light has become less common, though it's still around on quite a few modern systems. 00:03:15.440 --> 00:03:20.480 Let's wrap things up with one you've seen not just on your PC, but just about everywhere else, 00:03:20.480 --> 00:03:23.640 the power logo, which is a combination of a circle 00:03:23.640 --> 00:03:27.680 that means off and a vertical line that means on. 00:03:27.680 --> 00:03:31.040 The origins of the symbol go back to at least the 1940s, 00:03:31.040 --> 00:03:36.000 inspired by binary code. Engineers would use a zero to indicate the off position 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:39.000 for a switch with one representing on. 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:42.280 In the 1970s, the International Electrotechnical Commission 00:03:42.280 --> 00:03:47.440 decided to standardize the combined symbol as an indicator for a standby mode. 00:03:47.440 --> 00:03:51.720 But in 2004, the IEEE published another standard 00:03:51.760 --> 00:03:55.720 that just declared it to mean power. Of course, this symbol also appears on things 00:03:55.720 --> 00:03:59.360 that don't operate using binary code like your blender, 00:03:59.360 --> 00:04:03.160 assuming it doesn't have Alexa yet. Thanks for watching this video. 00:04:03.160 --> 00:04:08.120 Like it if you liked it. Dislike it if you disliked it. Comment below with your suggestions for future videos. 00:04:08.120 --> 00:04:12.600 And hey, go check out our episode where we explain the current state of USB naming. 00:04:12.600 --> 00:04:14.720 It's fun out there.