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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Molly Allen White (born 1993) is an American software engineer, Wikipedia editor, and crypto skeptic. A critic of the decentralized blockchain (Web3) and cryptocurrency industries, she runs the website Web3 Is Going Just Great, which documents malfeasance in that technology space. She has appeared in Web3-related news, consulted on federal legislation for regulating the crypto industry, and successfully proposed that the Wikimedia Foundation cease to collect crypto donations. White additionally volunteers as a Wikipedia editor and is among the site's most active women. She has edited a range of articles on right-wing extremism. (Full article...) - Image 2
The Bømlafjord Tunnel (Norwegian: Bømlafjordtunnelen) is a subsea road tunnel under Bømlafjorden which connects the island of Føyno in Stord Municipality to the mainland at Dalshovda in Sveio Municipality in Vestland county, Norway. The tunnel is 7.82 kilometers (4.86 mi) long and reaches 260.4 m (854 ft) below mean sea level. It carries three lanes of European Road E39 and is part of the Triangle Link, a fixed link which connects Sunnhordland to Haugaland. Plans for the tunnel arose in the 1980s; construction started in 1997 and the tunnel opened on 27 December 2000. The tunnel was built using the drilling and blasting method, with two teams building from each end. The tunnel runs through an area composed mostly of gneiss, phyllite and greenstone. The tunnel was the longest subsea tunnel in Norway until the opening of Karmøytunnelen. It is still (2013) the deepest point on the E-road network. The tunnel was a toll road from the opening until 30 April 2013. In 2012 the tunnel had an average 4,084 vehicles per day. (Full article...) - Image 3
The Grand Crimean Central Railway was a military railway built in 1855 during the Crimean War by the United Kingdom. Its purpose was to supply ammunition and provisions to Allied soldiers engaged in the Siege of Sevastopol who were stationed on a plateau between Balaklava and Sevastopol. It also carried the world's first hospital train.
The railway was built at cost and without any contract by Peto, Brassey and Betts, a partnership of English railway contractors led by Samuel Morton Peto. Within three weeks of the arrival of the fleet carrying materials and men the railway had started to run and in seven weeks 7 miles (11 km) of track had been completed. The railway was a major factor leading to the success of the siege. After the end of the war the track was sold and removed. (Full article...) - Image 4New York State Route 239 (NY 239) was a state highway in eastern Erie County, New York, United States. The southern terminus of the route was at an intersection with NY 354 in Marilla. Its northern terminus was at a junction with U.S. Route 20 (US 20) in the village of Alden. NY 239 was about 3 miles (5 km) in length and named Exchange Street. When NY 239 was assigned as part of the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York, it extended eastward to the Wyoming County village of Attica. NY 239 was truncated to Marilla in 1949 and removed from the state highway system completely in September 1980 as a result of a highway maintenance swap between the state of New York and Erie County earlier that year. The roadway is now County Route 578 (CR 578). (Full article...)
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The MAX Blue Line is a light rail line serving the Portland metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Oregon. Operated by TriMet as part of the MAX Light Rail system, it connects Hillsboro, Beaverton, Portland, and Gresham. The Blue Line is the longest in the network; it travels approximately 33 miles (53 km) and serves 48 stations from Hatfield Government Center to Cleveland Avenue. It is the busiest of the five MAX lines, having carried an average 55,370 riders each day on weekdays in September 2018. Service runs for 221⁄2 hours per day from Monday to Thursday, with headways of between 30 minutes off-peak and five minutes during rush hour. It runs later in the evening on Fridays and Saturdays and ends earlier on Sundays.
The success of local freeway revolts in Portland in the early 1970s led to a reallocation of federal assistance funds from the proposed Mount Hood Freeway and Interstate 505 (I-505) projects to mass transit. Among various proposals, local governments approved the construction of a light rail line between Gresham and Portland in 1978. Referred to as the Banfield Light Rail Project during planning and construction as a part of the Banfield Freeway redevelopment, construction of what is now the Eastside MAX segment began in 1983. The line was inaugurated as the Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) on September 5, 1986. (Full article...) - Image 6New York State Route 3 (NY 3) is a major east–west state highway in New York, in the United States, that connects central New York to the North Country region near the Canada–US border via Adirondack Park. The route extends for 245.88 miles (395.71 km) between its western terminus at an intersection with NY 104A in the Cayuga County town of Sterling and its eastern terminus at a junction with U.S. Route 9 (US 9) in the Clinton County city of Plattsburgh. NY 3 traverses eight counties and is a lakeside roadway from Mexico to Sackets Harbor, a mountainous route in Adirondack Park, and an urban arterial in Fulton, Watertown, and Plattsburgh.
In 1924, the segment of the Theodore Roosevelt International Highway within New York was designated NY 3. At that time, it spanned the full east–west length of the state, extending from the eastern bank of the Niagara River in North Tonawanda to the western edge of Lake Champlain in Plattsburgh; however, the routing through the North Country was significantly different at that time from its modern alignment. The route was moved onto its modern routing east of Watertown as part of the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York; it was truncated to Sterling on its western end and rerouted to follow its current alignment from Sterling to Watertown roughly five years later. (Full article...) - Image 7Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) is an annual academic conference on the subjects of bioinformatics and computational biology organised by the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). The principal focus of the conference is on the development and application of advanced computational methods for biological problems. The conference has been held every year since 1993 and has grown to become one of the largest and most prestigious meetings in these fields, hosting over 2,000 delegates in 2004. From the first meeting, ISMB has been held in locations worldwide; since 2007, meetings have been located in Europe and North America in alternating years. Since 2004, European meetings have been held jointly with the European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB).
The main ISMB conference is usually held over three days and consists of presentations, poster sessions and keynote talks. Most presentations are given in multiple parallel tracks; however, keynote talks are presented in a single track and are chosen to reflect outstanding research in bioinformatics. Notable ISMB keynote speakers have included eight Nobel laureates. The recipients of the ISCB Overton Prize and ISCB Accomplishment by a Senior Scientist Award are invited to give keynote talks as part of the programme. The proceedings of the conference are currently published by the journal Bioinformatics. (Full article...)
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- Image 1Photo credit: UpstateNYerMS Majesty of the Seas is a Sovereign class cruise ship owned and operated by Royal Caribbean International, a cruise line based in Miami, Florida. Her sister ship MS Sovereign of the Seas was the largest cruise ship in the world at the time of its completion in 1988.
- Image 3A 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 4A 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 5A 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 6Credit: Mike McGregorThe OLPC XO-1 is an inexpensive subnotebook laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries.
- Image 7Photograph: Katsuhiko Tokunaga/SuperJet InternationalThe Sukhoi Superjet 100 is a modern fly-by-wire twin-engine regional jet with 8 to 108 passenger seats. Development began in 2000; the aircraft had its maiden flight on 19 May 2008 and entered commercial service on 21 April 2011. This aircraft is seen flying off the coast of Italy near Sanremo.
- Image 8A 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 9Photo: Drew Jacksich; edit: Bruce1eeUnion Pacific 844 at Painted Rocks, Nevada, on a run from Elko to Sparks, on September 15, 2009. Built in 1944, it was the last steam locomotive delivered to Union Pacific and is the only steam locomotive never retired by a North American Class I railroad.
- Image 10Photograph credit: Petar MiloševićA thermoplastic-sheathed cable consists of a toughened outer thermoplastic sheath of polyvinyl chloride, covering one or more individual annealed copper conductors. Each of the current-carrying conductors in the "core" is insulated by an individual thermoplastic sheath, coloured to indicate the purpose of the conductor concerned. The protective earth conductor may also be covered with insulation, although, in some countries, this conductor may be left as bare copper. The type of thermoplastic, the dimensions of the conductors and the colour of their individual insulation are specified by the regulatory bodies in the various countries concerned.
- Image 11Image credit: Michael OttoA pastoral scene of a lone house, composed using Blender, an open source 3D computer graphics software. Blender can be used for a number of applications and is available for a wide variety of operating systems.
- Image 12Photo credit: Christian KuhnaThe rotor of a modern steam turbine , which converts steam (heat) energy into kinetic (mechanical) energy. The steam path is from the smallest blade, expanding through progressively larger blade elements. Steam turbines are used in power plants to extract mechanical work from pressurized steam and benefit from their high efficiency and high power-to-weight ratio compared to other technologies, leading to their widespread deployment from electricity generation to marine propulsion.
- Image 13Photo: Bachrach Studios; Restoration: Michel VuijlstekeThomas Edison (1847–1931) was an American inventor, scientist and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
- Image 14Image credit: Joaquim Alves GasparAn animation showing how to use a vernier caliper, which is a caliper that uses a vernier scale to interpolate linear measurements. Vernier calipers can measure internal and external dimensions using, respectively, the uppermost and lower jaws, and also depths, using the depth probe (located at the right end). In this example, the first two digits (2.4) are decided by the location of the zero of the vernier scale in the centimeter scale, and the last digit (0.07), by the first line of the vernier scale that exactly matches a line of the centimeter scale above.
- Image 15Photograph: 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 16Photo: Evan AmosThe Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced in 1982 by Commodore International. Its low retail price and easy availability led to the system becoming the market leader for three years. It remains the best-selling single personal computer model of all time.
- Image 17Photograph: MyrabellaThe Nice tramway crossing Place Garibaldi, Nice, where it lowers its pantograph and is powered by batteries. This 8.7-kilometre (5.4 mi), single-line tramway is operated by Veolia Transdev. It opened on 24 November 2007, replacing bus lines 1, 2, 5 and 18.
- Image 18Photograph: Raimond SpekkingBucket-wheel excavators (BWEs) are heavy equipment used in surface mining. The primary function of a BWE is to act as a continuous digging machine in large-scale open pit mining operations. These BWEs were photographed at the Garzweiler surface mine in Germany.
- Image 19Photograph: Peter TrimmingThe Mark IV tank was introduced by the British in May 1917 to fight in World War I. The "female" version, as pictured here, was armed with five machine guns. Production of the Mark IV ceased at the end of the War in 1918. A small number served briefly with other combatants afterwards.
This Mark IV tank, on display in Ashford, Kent, was presented to the town after the end of World War I. The engine was removed to install an electricity substation inside it, though this substation was subsequently removed; the tank's interior is now empty. - Image 20An 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.
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- Image 1Eric M. C. Tigerstedt (1887–1925) was known as a pioneer of sound-on-film technology. Tigerstedt in 1915. (from Invention)
- Image 3Top 30 AI patent applicants in 2016 (from Emerging technologies)
- Image 43D printer (from Emerging technologies)
- Image 6'BUILD YOUR OWN TELEVISION RECEIVER.' Science and Invention magazine cover, November 1928 (from Invention)
- Image 7Thomas Edison with his second phonograph, photographed by Levin Corbin Handy in Washington, April 1878 (from History of technology)
- Image 8Walls at Sacsayhuaman (from History of technology)
- Image 9Edison electric light bulbs 1879–80 (from History of technology)
- Image 10The 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 12The preserved Rocket (from History of technology)
- Image 14Newcomen steam engine for pumping mines (from History of technology)
- Image 17Self-replicating 3D printer (from Emerging technologies)
- Image 20A 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 23Ford assembly line, 1913. The magneto assembly line was the first. (from History of technology)
- Image 25Alessandro Volta with the first electrical battery. Volta is recognized as an influential inventor. (from Invention)
- Image 26Agriculture preceded writing in the history of technology. (from History of technology)
- Image 28A variety of stone tools (from History of technology)
Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch
- ... that Małgorzata Kalinowska-Iszkowska was awarded a Polish Gold Cross of Merit for her work in information technology?
- ... that Guy Parmelin, now President of Switzerland, opened the study program of cyber security of the Lucerne School of Information Technology in 2018?
- ... that Peter Corby's electric trouser press used technology designed for Concorde?
- ... that Criccieth Castle combined the "latest advances in military technology" with the "haphazard Welsh castle building style"?
- ... that it was Caltech experimental physicist Rana X. Adhikari's idea to build a gravitational-wave observatory in India?
- ... that when Chorus Systèmes SA was founded in 1986, French technology start-up companies were rare?
- ... 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 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, it was 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 short 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 which 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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News
- 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)
- February 6, 2024 –
- The Dutch owner of Yandex, a Russian multinational technology company and search engine, announces the sale of the company to a "fully Russian-owned entity" for 475 billion rubles (US$5.2 billion). (BBC News)
- January 29, 2024 –
- American neurotechnology company Neuralink announces it has implanted its brain–computer interface in a human brain for the first time, and that the person is "recovering well" with "initial results showing promising neuron spike detection". (The Guardian)
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