Portal:Technology
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Technology is the application of conceptual knowledge for achieving practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word technology can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible tools such as utensils or machines, and intangible ones such as software. Technology plays a critical role in science, engineering, and everyday life.
Technological advancements have led to significant changes in society. The earliest known technology is the stone tool, used during prehistoric times, followed by the control of fire, which contributed to the growth of the human brain and the development of language during the Ice Age. The invention of the wheel in the Bronze Age allowed greater travel and the creation of more complex machines. More recent technological inventions, including the printing press, telephone, and the Internet, have lowered barriers to communication and ushered in the knowledge economy. (Full article...)
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SS John Mitchell was a steel-hulled, American lake freighter in service between 1907 and 1911. She was built in 1906 by the Great Lakes Engineering Works in St. Clair, Michigan, for the Cornell Steamship Company of Chicago, Illinois, which was managed by C.W. Elphicke. She entered service in 1907, and had a sister ship named William B. Davock. Throughout her career, John Mitchell carried iron ore and coal. On October 4, 1908, she ran aground at Indiana Harbor, Indiana, while loaded with iron ore.
Early in the morning of July 7, 1911, John Mitchell left Buffalo, New York, with between 6,889 long tons (7,716 short tons; 7,000 t) and 7,382 long tons (8,268 short tons; 7,500 t) of coal bound for Superior, Wisconsin. On the morning of July 10, John Mitchell entered Lake Superior. A thick fog that hung over the lake severely reduced visibility. When she was off Vermilion Point, John Mitchell was inexplicably rammed in her port bow by the unladen bulk freighter William Henry Mack. Following the collision, John Mitchell immediately took on a list to port due to the rapid influx of water. After establishing that John Mitchell would not remain afloat, a ladder was placed between her deck and William Henry Mack's deck. The majority of the passengers and crew climbed over to William Henry Mack, while six people escaped using a lifeboat, which eventually capsized; all of the people in the lifeboat were rescued. Three crewmen jumped overboard to aid in the rescue, but were sucked under and drowned when John Mitchell sank. (Full article...) - Image 2
Tom Kilburn CBE FRS (11 August 1921 – 17 January 2001) was an English mathematician and computer scientist. Over his 30-year career, he was involved in the development of five computers of great historical significance. With Freddie Williams he worked on the Williams–Kilburn tube and the world's first electronic stored-program computer, the Manchester Baby, while working at the University of Manchester. His work propelled Manchester and Britain into the forefront of the emerging field of computer science.
A graduate of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Kilburn worked on radar at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) in Malvern under Frederic Calland Williams during the Second World War. After the war ended, he was recruited by Williams to work on the development of computers at the University of Manchester. He led the development of a succession of innovative Manchester computers that incorporated a host of ground-breaking innovations and developments, including the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercial computer, and the Atlas, one of the first time-sharing multiprocessing computers that incorporated job scheduling, spooling, interrupts, instruction pipelining and paging. (Full article...) - Image 3New York State Route 394 (NY 394) is a state highway located within Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties in southwestern New York in the United States. Its western terminus is located on the shore of Lake Erie at an intersection with NY 5 in the Westfield hamlet of Barcelona. The eastern terminus is located at an interchange with the Southern Tier Expressway (Interstate 86 or I-86 and NY 17) at the Coldspring hamlet of Steamburg. From Mayville to Jamestown, NY 394 follows the western edge of Chautauqua Lake. East of Jamestown, the route straddles the Southern Tier Expressway and connects to the highway in four different locations, including at its eastern terminus.
The segments of NY 394 between Westfield and Mayville, as well as east of Jamestown were originally designated as NY 17 in 1924. Six years later, the remainder of current NY 394 gained a pair of designations as part of the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York; however, by the mid-1940s, the Mayville–Jamestown stretch was solely designated as New York State Route 17J. In November 1973, NY 17 was realigned onto the new Southern Tier Expressway east of Jamestown. The former alignment of NY 17 between Jamestown and Steamburg and all of NY 17J were redesignated as NY 394. NY 394 was extended westward to Barcelona shortly afterward. Today the route is also concurrent with part of New York State Bicycle Route 17. (Full article...) - Image 4U.S. Route 195 (US 195) is a north–south United States Highway, of which all but 0.65 miles of its 94.02 miles (1.05 of 151.95 km) are within the state of Washington. The highway starts in rural Idaho north of the city of Lewiston as a state highway in an interchange with US 95. As the road crosses into Washington it becomes a state highway that connects communities in the Palouse region of Eastern Washington. US 195 travels north, serving the cities of Pullman, Colfax and Rosalia in Whitman County before continuing into Spokane County to its terminus in the city of Spokane at an interchange with Interstate 90 (I-90).
The first section of US 195 designated as part of Washington's state highway system was codified in 1913 from Colfax to Spokane as the Inland Empire Highway and from the Idaho state line to Pullman as the Second Division of the Eastern Route of the Inland Empire Highway. The two highways were included as part of State Road 3 in 1923 and US 195 during the creation of the US Highway System on November 11, 1926. Originally, the northern terminus of the highway was at US 95 in Sandpoint, but was truncated to Spokane after US 2 was extended west from Bonners Ferry in 1946. (Full article...) - Image 5
The EMD F40PH is a four-axle 3,000–3,200 hp (2.2–2.4 MW) B-B diesel-electric locomotive built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division in several variants from 1975 to 1992. Intended for use on Amtrak's short-haul passenger routes, it became the backbone of Amtrak's diesel fleet after the failure of the EMD SDP40F. The F40PH also found widespread use on commuter railroads in the United States and with VIA Rail in Canada. Additional F40PH variants were manufactured by Morrison-Knudsen and MotivePower between 1988 and 1998, mostly rebuilt from older locomotives.
Amtrak retired its fleet of F40PHs in the early-2000s in favor of the GE Genesis, but the locomotive remains the mainstay of VIA Rail's long-distance trains; a depiction of the locomotive hauling The Canadian is featured on the reverse of the Frontier series Canadian $10 bill. The F40PHs are still a common sight on many other commuter railroads throughout the United States. In addition, Amtrak has kept 22 of its F40PHs in use as non-powered control units. (Full article...) - Image 6
Hammerfest Airport (Norwegian: Hammerfest lufthavn; IATA: HFT, ICAO: ENHF) is a regional airport at Prærien just outside the town of Hammerfest in Hammerfest Municipality in Finnmark county, Norway. It is operated by the state-owned Avinor and handled 145,396 passengers in 2014, making it the third-busiest regional airport in the country. The airport has a 880-meter (2,890 ft) runway aligned 05/23. Services are provided by Widerøe using the Dash 8-100. Up to eight daily flights are provided to Tromsø and public service obligation flights are flown eastwards to other airports in Finnmark. The airport is the base for offshore helicopter services operated by Bristow Norway and CHC Helikopter Service. An estimated 40,000 people from Hammerfest Airport's catchment area annually use Alta Airport for flights to Oslo.
Hammerfest was served from 1935 by scheduled seaplanes at a water aerodrome at Rypefjord. Services were interrupted by World War II, but resumed in 1945, lasting until the 1963 opening of Alta Airport. Hammerfest Airport opened on 1 August 1974, along with four other regional airport in Finnmark, and was originally served with de Havilland Canada Twin Otters. The de Havilland Canada Dash 7 was introduced in 1983 and a helicopter base was established in 1989. The Dash 8 was introduced in 1995 and the airport was nationalized two years later. A Dash 8 was damaged beyond repair after a hard landing in 2005. Because of the limited space for expansion and unfavorable wind conditions, there is a proposal to build a new airport at Grøtnes. (Full article...) - Image 7Mechanical–electrical analogies are the representation of mechanical systems as electrical networks. At first, such analogies were used in reverse to help explain electrical phenomena in familiar mechanical terms. James Clerk Maxwell introduced analogies of this sort in the 19th century. However, as electrical network analysis matured it was found that certain mechanical problems could more easily be solved through an electrical analogy. Theoretical developments in the electrical domain that were particularly useful were the representation of an electrical network as an abstract topological diagram (the circuit diagram) using the lumped element model and the ability of network analysis to synthesise a network to meet a prescribed frequency function.
This approach is especially useful in the design of mechanical filters—these use mechanical devices to implement an electrical function. However, the technique can be used to solve purely mechanical problems, and can also be extended into other, unrelated, energy domains. Nowadays, analysis by analogy is a standard design tool wherever more than one energy domain is involved. It has the major advantage that the entire system can be represented in a unified, coherent way. Electrical analogies are particularly used by transducer designers, by their nature they cross energy domains, and in control systems, whose sensors and actuators will typically be domain-crossing transducers. A given system being represented by an electrical analogy may conceivably have no electrical parts at all. For this reason domain-neutral terminology is preferred when developing network diagrams for control systems. (Full article...)
Selected picture
- Image 1Photograph: Christoph BraunA 'K6' model red telephone box outside of St Paul's Cathedral in London. These kiosks for a public telephone were designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and painted "currant red" for easy visibility. Although such telephone boxes ceased production when the KX series was introduced in 1985, they remain a common sight in Britain and some of its colonies, and are considered a British cultural icon.
- Image 3A telephone, or phone, is a telecommunications device that converts sound, typically the human voice, into electronic signals suitable for transmission via cables or other transmission media over long distances through satellite.
- Image 4Photograph: David GublerThe Wiesen Viaduct is a single-track railway viaduct (concrete blocks with dimension stone coverage) which spans the Landwasser southwest of the hamlet of Wiesen, Switzerland. Designed by Henning Friedrich, then the chief engineer of the Rhaetian Railway, it was built between 1906 and 1909 by the contractor G. Marasi (Westermann & Cie, Zürich) under the supervision of P. Salaz and Hans Studer (RhB). The Rhaetian Railway still owns and uses the viaduct today for regular service with 29 passenger trains per day. An important element of the Davos–Filisur railway, the viaduct is 88.9 metres (292 ft) high, 210 metres (690 ft) long, and has a main span of 55 metres (180 ft). In 1926, the viaduct was the inspiration for Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's painting Brücke bei Wiesen.
- Image 5Image credit: FastfissionSchematic representation of the two methods with which to assemble an atomic bomb. An A-bomb produces its explosive energy through nuclear fission reactions alone. A mass of fissile material (enriched uranium or plutonium) is assembled into a supercritical mass—the amount of material needed to start an exponentially growing nuclear chain reaction—either by shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another (the "gun" method, shown on top here), or by compressing a sub-critical sphere of material using chemical explosives to many times its original density (the "implosion" method, at bottom).
- Image 6Photograph: National Photo Company, Restoration: Adam CuerdenThe William Crooks is a 4-4-0 steam locomotive that was the first locomotive to operate in the U.S. state of Minnesota, beginning in 1861. It was named after William Crooks, the chief mechanical engineer for the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, who earlier served as a colonel in the 6th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War. Crooks laid out the initial ten-mile track between Minneapolis and St. Paul on which the locomotive operated. It was retired from regular service in 1897, but operated special services for several further decades. It is now in the Lake Superior Railroad Museum in Duluth.
- Image 7Diagram: Jeff Dahl
- Image 8Photograph credit: Dllu
The N700 Series Shinkansen is a Japanese Shinkansen high-speed train with tilting capability developed jointly by JR Central and JR West. It has been used on the Tokaido and San'yō Shinkansen lines since 2007. This photograph shows the train travelling at approximately 300 km/h through Himeji Station, and was captured with a line scan camera using strip photography. - Image 9Photo: IkiwanerAn Agusta A109 rescue helicopter leaves Mount Pilatus, near Lucerne, Switzerland, after recovering a patient. Later renamed AgustaWestland AW109, the A109 is a helicopter manufactured by Agusta (now AgustaWestland) of Italy. It is a light-weight, twin-engine, eight-seat multi-purpose craft.
- Image 10A transit map of the New York City Subway, one of the oldest and most extensive public transportation systems in the world. Operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York, it has 468 stations in operation on 209 mi (337 km) of routes, with 842 miles (1,355 km) of track. It is the busiest rapid transit rail system by annual ridership in the Western Hemisphere, and fifth busiest in the world. Its stations are located throughout the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Staten Island has its own rail line which is not part of the system, but is included in the map as well.
- Image 11Credit: Mike McGregorThe OLPC XO-1 is an inexpensive subnotebook laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries.
- Image 12Image credit: Søren Peo PedersenTwo TRS connectors (also known as jack plugs or phone plugs), a common audio connector. They are cylindrical in shape, with two or more contacts. Originally invented for use in telephone switchboards, jack plugs are still widely used, both in the original ¼-inch (6.3 mm) size and in miniaturized versions. The top plug in this image is for stereo connections, while the bottom is for mono.
- Image 13Photograph: Julia Margaret Cameron; restoration: Adam CuerdenJohn Herschel was an English mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, and experimental photographer. He named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus, invented the cyanotype and actinometer, and wrote extensively on topics including meteorology, physical geography and the telescope.
- Image 14The Let L-410 Turbolet is a twin-engined short-range transport aircraft, manufactured by the Czech aircraft manufacturer LET, mostly used for passenger transport. The L-410 first flew in 1969, and with more than 1100 produced, is the most popular 19-seat plane in history.
- Image 15A wheel is a circular component that is intended to rotate on an axial bearing. The wheel is one of the main components of the wheel and axle which is one of the six simple machines.
- Image 16Photo credit: HeptagonA multiple exposure composite image of the implosion of a chimney at the former brewery "Henninger" in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. This controlled demolition technique involves strategically placing explosive material and timing its detonation so that a structure collapses on itself in a matter of seconds, minimizing the physical damage to its immediate surroundings.
- Image 17A disc of copper made by continuous casting, the process whereby molten metal is solidified into a "semifinished" state for subsequent rolling in the finishing mills. Continuous casting replaced the creation of ingots using stationary moulds. The process allows lower-cost production of metal sections with better quality, due to the inherently lower costs of continuous, standardised production of a product, as well as providing increased control over the process through automation. After casting, this disc was then etched to achieve its final state.
- Image 18An overhead power line is a structure used in electric power transmission and distribution to transmit electrical energy along large distances. It consists of one or more conductors suspended by towers or utility poles.
- Image 19Photograph credit: Matt Steiner and Kees08A hybrid-propellant rocket is a rocket with an engine that uses propellants in two different phases, one solid and the other gaseous or liquid. The concept can be traced back to at least the 1930s.
This picture shows a transparent 3D-printed hybrid-rocket fuel grain with dual helical fuel ports, a post-combustion chamber, and a de Laval nozzle, photographed prior to the hot-fire test. The motor used nitrous oxide as the oxidizer and Pyrodex pellets for the igniter. - Image 20Photograph: Diego DelsoThe Assut de l'Or Bridge is a white single-pylon cable-stayed bridge in the City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia, Spain. Completed in 2008, it was designed by Valencian architect and civil engineer Santiago Calatrava as a variant of his cantilever spar cable-stayed bridge in Seville.
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- Image 1Top 30 AI patent applicants in 2016 (from Emerging technologies)
- Image 2A variety of stone tools (from History of technology)
- Image 3A rare 1884 photo showing the experimental recording of voice patterns by a photographic process at the Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Many of their experimental designs panned out in failure. (from Invention)
- Image 4Walls at Sacsayhuaman (from History of technology)
- Image 5Eric M. C. Tigerstedt (1887–1925) was known as a pioneer of sound-on-film technology. Tigerstedt in 1915. (from Invention)
- Image 7Self-replicating 3D printer (from Emerging technologies)
- Image 8Agriculture preceded writing in the history of technology. (from History of technology)
- Image 10Thomas Edison with his second phonograph, photographed by Levin Corbin Handy in Washington, April 1878 (from History of technology)
- Image 11Alessandro Volta with the first electrical battery. Volta is recognized as an influential inventor. (from Invention)
- Image 12'BUILD YOUR OWN TELEVISION RECEIVER.' Science and Invention magazine cover, November 1928 (from Invention)
- Image 13Newcomen steam engine for pumping mines (from History of technology)
- Image 15The wheel, invented sometime before the 4th millennium BC, is one of the most ubiquitous and important technologies. This detail of the "Standard of Ur", c. 2500 BCE., displays a Sumerian chariot. (from History of technology)
- Image 193D printer (from Emerging technologies)
- Image 21Edison electric light bulbs 1879–80 (from History of technology)
- Image 22Ford assembly line, 1913. The magneto assembly line was the first. (from History of technology)
- Image 27The preserved Rocket (from History of technology)
Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch
- ... that Mary Earle was born near Ben Nevis, and although she became a professor of food technology in New Zealand, she never forgot her Scottish roots?
- ... that Thomas Hall made an electric train that received power from the rails on which it travelled instead of onboard batteries, a new technology at the time?
- ... that Pamela McCorduck, who chronicled the evolution of artificial intelligence, regretted not recognizing the technology's potential for misuse?
- ... that Research Policy is regarded as the leading journal in the field of innovation studies?
- ... that OPTi Inc. won a patent suit against Apple for unauthorized use of "predictive snooping" technology?
- ... that Criccieth Castle combined the "latest advances in military technology" with the "haphazard Welsh castle building style"?
- ... that racing driver James Sofronas worked as a salesman for a technology company to buy the Nissan NX 2000 required for his first competitive race?
- ... that touch-screen technology, pay-at-the-pump, car phones, and Coca-Cola Cherry were shown at the 1982 World's Fair?
Top 10 WikiProject Technology popular articles of the month
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YouTube is an American online video sharing platform owned by Google. Accessible worldwide, YouTube launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States, it is the second most visited website in the world, after Google Search. YouTube has more than 2.5 billion monthly users, who collectively watch more than one billion hours of videos every day. , videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute, and as of 2021, there were approximately 14 billion videos in total. (Full article...) - Image 2Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name derives from the face book directories often given to American university students. Membership was initially limited to Harvard students, gradually expanding to other North American universities. Since 2006, Facebook allows everyone to register from 13 years old, except in the case of a handful of nations, where the age limit is 14 years. , Facebook claimed almost 3 billion monthly active users. As of October 2023, Facebook ranked as the 3rd most visited website in the world, with 22.56% of its traffic coming from the United States. It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s. (Full article...)
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ChatGPT is a chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched on November 30, 2022. Based on large language models (LLMs), it enables users to refine and steer a conversation towards a desired length, format, style, level of detail, and language. Successive user prompts and replies are considered at each conversation stage as context. (Full article...) - Image 4
WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content. WhatsApp's client application runs on mobile devices, and can be accessed from computers. The service requires a cellular mobile telephone number to sign up. In January 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business app called WhatsApp Business which can communicate with the standard WhatsApp client. (Full article...) - Image 5
Elon Reeve Musk (/ˈiːlɒn/ EE-lon; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman and investor. He is the founder, chairman, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, product architect, and former chairman of Tesla, Inc.; owner, executive chairman, and CTO of X Corp.; founder of the Boring Company and xAI; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the Musk Foundation. He is one of the wealthiest people in the world; , Forbes estimates his net worth to be $178 billion. (Full article...) - Image 6
X, commonly referred to by its former name Twitter, is a social media website based in the United States. With over 500 million users, it is one of the world's largest social networks and the fifth-most visited website in the world. Users can share text messages, images, and videos through posts (originally called "tweets"). X also includes direct messaging, video and audio calling, bookmarks, lists and communities, and Spaces, a social audio feature. Users can vote on context added by approved users using the Community Notes feature. (Full article...) - Image 7
Google LLC (/ˈɡuːɡəl/ ⓘ, GOO-ghəl) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" and is one of the world's most valuable brands due to its market dominance, data collection, and technological advantages in the field of AI. Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc. is one of the five Big Tech companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. (Full article...) - Image 8Artificial intelligence (AI), in its broadest sense, is intelligence exhibited by machines, particularly computer systems. It is a field of research in computer science that develops and studies methods and software that enable machines to perceive their environment and uses learning and intelligence to take actions that maximize their chances of achieving defined goals. Such machines may be called AIs. (Full article...)
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Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple languages. (Full article...) - Image 10
Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried (born March 5, 1992), commonly known as SBF, is an American entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud and related crimes in November 2023. Bankman-Fried founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and was celebrated as a "poster boy" for crypto. At the peak of his net worth, he was ranked the 41st-richest American in the Forbes 400. (Full article...)
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- May 10, 2024 – Israel–Hamas war protests
- Police dismantle encampments and arrest dozens of students protesting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Reuters)
- February 27, 2024 –
- Japanese technology company Sony announces it will cut 900 jobs across its global workforce and has also proposed the closure of London Studio as part of the restructuring. (Sony Interactive Entertainment press release)
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