Portal:Technology
The Technology Portal
Technology ("science of craft", from Greek τέχνη, techne, "art, skill, cunning of hand"; and -λογία, -logia) is the sum of techniques, skills, methods, and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation. Technology can be the knowledge of techniques, processes, and the like, or it can be embedded in machines to allow for operation without detailed knowledge of their workings. Systems (e.g. machines) applying technology by taking an input, changing it according to the system's use, and then producing an outcome are referred to as technology systems or technological systems.
The simplest form of technology is the development and use of basic tools. The prehistoric invention of shaped stone tools followed by the discovery of how to control fire increased sources of food. The later Neolithic Revolution extended this, and quadrupled the sustenance available from a territory. The invention of the wheel helped humans to travel in and control their environment. (Full article...)
Selected articles
The Heckscher State Parkway (formerly known as the Heckscher Spur) is an 8.24-mile-long (13.26 km) parkway on Long Island, New York, in the United States. The parkway, located entirely within the Suffolk County town of Islip, begins at the south end of the Sagtikos State Parkway in West Islip, from where it continues west as the Southern State Parkway. It proceeds east as a six-lane parkway through Brentwood and Central Islip, loosely paralleling New York State Route 27 (NY 27). At Islip Terrace, the Heckscher Parkway turns southward, crossing NY 27 before ending at the toll barrier for Heckscher State Park in Great River. The parkway comprises the eastern portion of New York State Route 908M (NY 908M), an unsigned reference route, with the Southern State Parkway occupying the western section. In order to avoid confusion, the highway is signed as an extension of the Southern State Parkway west of the NY 27 interchange (exit 44).
The parkway was originally built in 1929 as a connector between NY 27A and the newly opened Heckscher (formerly Deer Range) State Park. In 1959, bids were announced for a new Heckscher State Parkway, which would connect the original road to the Sagtikos State Parkway. This section was officially opened on November 3, 1962, with a ceremony featuring speeches by Robert Moses and Governor Nelson Rockefeller. The Long Island Transportation Plan 2000, a long-term study done in the late 1990s, called for the Heckscher Parkway to be widened west of NY 27 to accommodate a carpool and bus lane. (Full article...)
Stapleton Road railway station is on the Severn Beach Line and Cross Country Route, serving the inner-city district of Easton in Bristol, England. It is 1.6 miles (2.6 km) from Bristol Temple Meads. Its three letter station code is SRD. the station has two platforms, four running lines and minimal facilities. It is managed by Great Western Railway, the seventh company to be responsible for the station, and the third franchise since privatisation in 1997. They provide all train services at the station, the standard service being a train every 40 minutes along the Severn Beach Line, an hourly service to Bristol Parkway, and another hourly service to Westbury.
The station was opened in 1863 by the Bristol and South Wales Union Railway, with a single track and platform. The line was doubled in 1874 when the Clifton Extension Railway opened, then expanded to four tracks and platforms in 1888. There were buildings on all platforms and a goods yard to the north. Stapleton Road became one of Bristol's busiest stations, but service levels reduced significantly in the 1960s when reversing trains at Bristol Temple Meads became common. The goods facilities were closed in 1965, staff were withdrawn in 1967 and the line was reduced to two tracks in 1984. (Full article...)
Grand Street is a station on the IND Sixth Avenue Line of the New York City Subway. Located at the intersection of Grand Street and Chrystie Street in the Lower East Side and Chinatown neighborhoods of Manhattan, it is served by the D train at all times and the B train on weekdays.
Opened on November 26, 1967, this station was one of two added as part of the Chrystie Street Connection. The station has two tracks and two narrow side platforms, located approximately 30 feet (9.1 m) below ground. In the original plan for the station, this would have been a four-track, two-island platform station, with a transfer to the Second Avenue Subway. The fourth phase of the Second Avenue Subway, if built, would include new platform(s) connecting to the existing platforms. (Full article...)
DME 4004 and 4000 at Davis Junction, Illinois
The Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad (reporting mark DME) was a Class II railroad subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway operating across South Dakota and southern Minnesota in the Northern Plains of the United States. Portions of the railroad also extend into Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois.
The DM&E began operations on September 5, 1986, over trackage spun off from the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company in South Dakota and Minnesota. Many of the negotiations were handled by the office of Senator Larry Pressler and his legal counsel Kevin V. Schieffer. After DME's successful first decade, Schieffer succeeded J. C. McIntyre as president of the railroad on November 7, 1996. (Full article...)
"Fat Man" (also known as Mark III) is the codename for the type of nuclear bomb that was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki by the United States on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the first being Little Boy, and its detonation marked the third nuclear explosion in history. It was built by scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium from the Hanford Site, and it was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar piloted by Major Charles Sweeney.
The name Fat Man refers to the early design of the bomb because it had a wide, round shape. Fat Man was an implosion-type nuclear weapon with a solid plutonium core. The first of that type to be detonated was the Gadget in the Trinity nuclear test less than a month earlier on 16 July at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico. Two more were detonated during the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946, and some 120 were produced between 1947 and 1949, when it was superseded by the Mark 4 nuclear bomb. The Fat Man was retired in 1950. (Full article...)- M-132 was the designation of a former state trunkline highway in the Lower Peninsula of the US state of Michigan near Ann Arbor. The highway, commissioned in 1929, connected Ann Arbor and Dexter to the northwest along present-day Dexter–Ann Arbor Road. The roadway was turned back to local control around 1960. (Full article...)
U.S. Route 80 (US 80) also known as the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway, the Broadway of America and the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway was a major transcontinental highway that existed in the U.S. state of Arizona from November 11, 1926, to October 6, 1989. At its peak, US 80 traveled from the California border in Yuma to the New Mexico state line near Lordsburg. US 80 was an important highway in the development of Arizona's car culture. Like its northern counterpart, US 66, the popularity of travel along US 80 helped lead to the establishment of many unique road side businesses and attractions, including many iconic motor hotels and restaurants. US 80 was a particularly long highway, reaching a length of almost 500 miles (800 km) within the state of Arizona alone for most of the route's existence.
Along with US 66, US 80 was one of the first U.S. Highways to span Arizona. Where US 66 served northern Arizona, US 80 acted the main interstate highway for the southern half of the state, serving the major cities of Phoenix and Tucson, along with other small towns and cities. The condition of the highway was modernized and improved during the Great Depression, largely through manual labor and funding provided by the Works Progress Administration, which included the grade separation of railroad crossings and paving of the highway. Tourism and traffic along US 80 greatly increased following the end of World War II, creating a temporary economic boom for businesses along the highway. Several areas of the highway were also bypassed or straightened during this time to help alleviate the increasing traffic. (Full article...)
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The Trojan Room coffee pot was the inspiration for the world's first webcam. The coffee pot was located in the corridor just outside the so-called Trojan Room within the old Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. The webcam was created in 1991 to help people working in other parts of the building avoid pointless trips to the coffee pot by providing, on the user's desktop computer, a live 128×128 pixel greyscale picture of the state of the coffee pot. The webcam was shut down on 22 August 2001, following the Computer Laboratory's move to the William Gates Building.
A 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.- A 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.
Photograph credit: Langley Research Center; restored by Adam CuerdenMary Jackson (1921–2005) was an African American mathematician and aerospace engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which was succeeded by NASA in 1958. For most of her career, she worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia; starting as a computer at the segregated West Area Computing division, she later took advanced engineering classes and, in 1958, became NASA's first black female engineer.
After 34 years at NASA, Jackson had earned the most senior engineering title available. Realizing that she could not earn further promotions without becoming a supervisor, she accepted a demotion to become a manager of the Federal Women's Program in the NASA Office of Equal Opportunity Programs, as well as of the Affirmative Action Program. In this role, she worked to influence both the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, engineering and mathematics careers. She was portrayed by Janelle Monáe as a lead character in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. This picture, taken in 1980, shows Jackson working at NASA Langley.- The OLPC XO-1 is an inexpensive subnotebook laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries.
Credit: Mike McGregor 
Photo credit: Eric PierceThe pin tumbler lock is a lock mechanism that utilizes a group of pins of varying lengths to prevent opening the lock without the correct key. Pin tumblers are most commonly employed in cylinder locks, but may also be found in tubular or radial locks.
When the correct key is inserted, the gaps between the key pins (red) and driver pins (blue) align with the edge of the plug (yellow).- A 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.
Credit: Berthold Werner 
Photograph: NASATwo Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers stand with three vehicles, providing a size comparison of three generations of Mars rovers. Front and center is the flight spare for the first Mars rover, Sojourner, which landed on Mars in 1997 as part of the Mars Pathfinder Project. On the left is a Mars Exploration Rover test vehicle, a working sibling to Spirit and Opportunity, which landed on Mars in 2004. On the right is a test rover for the Mars Science Laboratory, which landed Curiosity on Mars in 2012.
Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring is a 1943 painting by the British painter Laura Knight depicting a young woman, Ruby Loftus (1921–2004), working at an industrial lathe as part of the British war effort in World War II. The painting was commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee, and is now part of the Imperial War Museum's art collection. The painting brought instant fame to Loftus, and has been likened to the American figure of "Rosie the Riveter".
The 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.- An 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.
Photograph: UberprutserA windmill is a mill that converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Traditional windmills were often used to mill grain, pump water, or both. Most modern windmills take the form of wind turbines used to generate electricity, or windpumps used to pump water, either for land drainage or to extract groundwater.
Here, the smock mill Goliath is viewed in front of the wind farm Growind in Eemshaven in the Netherlands.
Photo credit: Fir0002The Mazda RX-8 sports car is a front mid-engine, rear-wheel drive four-seat coupé manufactured by Mazda Motor Corporation. It is the successor to the RX-7 and, like its predecessors in the RX range, it is powered by a rotary engine. The RX-8 began North American sales in the 2004 model year.
The Australia Telescope Compact Array is a radio telescope operated by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) at the Paul Wild Observatory, 25 km (16 mi) west of the town of Narrabri in New South Wales, Australia. The telescope is an array of six identical dishes each 22 metres (72 ft) in diameter, which commonly operate in aperture synthesis mode to produce images from radio waves. Five of the dishes can be moved along a 3-kilometre (2 mi) railway track; the sixth is situated three kilometres west of the end of the main track. Each dish weighs about 270 tonnes (270 long tons; 300 short tons).
This photograph, showing five of the Australia Telescope Compact Array's dishes, was taken around 1984, in the late phase of the construction process. It is a long-exposure photograph taken in darkness in the late evening; during the exposure, the photographer, John Masterson, walked around the dishes firing off over 130 flashes using a hand-held flash gun.
Photo credit: Eric PierceThe four-stroke cycle of an internal combustion engine is the cycle most commonly used for automotive and industrial purposes today, including cars, trucks, and generators.
The cycle was invented by Nikolaus Otto in 1876, and is also called the Otto cycle. The cycle is characterized by four strokes, or straight movements in a single direction, of the piston.
Photo credit: Richard BartzA parabolic antenna, a high-gain reflector antenna used for radio, television and data communications, at Erdfunkstelle Raisting, the largest facility for satellite communication in the world, based in Raisting, Bavaria, Germany. Parabolic antennas work by reflecting electromagnetic radiation off the paraboloid dish to or from the feed horn (center), for reception or transmission respectively.
Photograph credit: Stefan KrauseThe BMW S1000RR is a sport bike made by BMW Motorrad. It was introduced in 2008, initially for competition in the 2009 Superbike World Championship, and has been in commercial production since then. Powered by a 999 cc (61.0 cu in) four-cylinder engine, redlined at 14,200 rpm, it delivers 133.6 kW (179.2 hp; 181.6 PS) to the rear wheel, making it the most powerful motorcycle in the class. Rubén Xaus and Troy Corser rode the bike for its inaugural Superbike World Championship in 2009, gaining highest finishes of fifth and seventh respectively, but it achieved greater success in the 2010 FIM Superstock 1000 championship season, with rider Ayrton Badovini winning every single race but one on the S1000RR.
Photograph: 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.
Photo: 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.
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Did you know...
- ... that Kosrae State Museum used virtual reality technology to inspire interest in the state's heritage from local stakeholders and members of the Kosraean diaspora?
- ... that the National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management has conducted research to improve the taste and nutrition of a children's dietary supplement distributed by the government of Kerala?
- ... that a former island is named after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?
- ... that Alejandro Finocchiaro, Argentina's current Minister of Education, Culture, Science and Technology, produced the 2008 documentary Mujeres de la Shoá ('Women of the Holocaust')?
- ... that while raising two young children, Li Minhua became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at MIT?
- ... that Andrew Niikondo, acting vice-chancellor of the Namibia University of Science and Technology, completed his secondary school education only at age 30?
Top 10 WikiProject Technology Popular articles of the month
McAfee at Politicon 2016
John David McAfee (/ˈmækəfiː/ MAK-ə-fee; 18 September 1945 – 23 June 2021) was a British-American computer programmer, businessman, and two-time presidential candidate who unsuccessfully sought the Libertarian Party nomination for president of the United States in 2016 and 2020. In 1987, he wrote the first commercial anti-virus software, founding McAfee Associates to sell his creation. He resigned in 1994 and sold his remaining stake in the company. McAfee became the company's most vocal critic in later years, urging consumers to uninstall the company's anti-virus software, which he characterized as bloatware. He disavowed the company's continued use of his name in branding, a practice that has persisted in spite of a short-lived corporate rebrand attempt under Intel ownership. (Full article...)
Musk at the Royal Society admissions day in London, 2018
Elon Reeve Musk FRS (/ˈiːlɒn/ EE-lon; born June 28, 1971) is an entrepreneur and business magnate. He is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at SpaceX; early stage investor, CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI. A centibillionaire, Musk is one of the richest people in the world. (Full article...)
YouTube is an American online video sharing and social media platform launched by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim in February 2005. After Google, YouTube is the most visited website worldwide, with over one billion monthly users. Its users watch more than one billion hours of videos each day, and, as of May 2019, it was estimated that videos were being uploaded at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute. (Full article...)
Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, a search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. It is considered one of the Big Five companies in the American information technology industry, along with Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. (Full article...)
WhatsApp Messenger, or simply WhatsApp, is an American freeware, cross-platform centralized instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by Facebook, Inc. It allows users to send text messages and voice messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content. WhatsApp's client application runs on mobile devices but is also accessible from desktop computers, as long as the user's mobile device remains connected to the Internet while they use the desktop app. The service requires a cellular mobile telephone number to sign up. In January 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business app targeted at small business owners, called WhatsApp Business, to allow companies to communicate with customers who use the standard WhatsApp client. (Full article...)
Amazon.com, Inc. (/ˈæməzɒn/ AM-ə-zon) is an American multinational technology company which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It is one of the Big Five companies in the U.S. information technology industry, along with Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook. The company has been referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world", as well as the world's most valuable brand. (Full article...)
Facebook is an American online social media and social networking service owned by Facebook, Inc. (Full article...)
Netflix, Inc. is an American over-the-top content platform and production company headquartered in Los Gatos, California. Netflix was founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California. The company's primary business is a subscription-based streaming service offering online streaming from a library of films and television series, including those produced in-house. As of July 2021, Netflix had 209 million subscribers, including 72 million in the United States and Canada. It is available worldwide except in mainland China (due to local restrictions), Syria, North Korea, and Crimea (due to US sanctions). The company has offices in Canada, France, Brazil, the Netherlands, India, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Netflix is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), producing and distributing content from countries all over the globe. (Full article...)
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company that specializes in consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. Apple is the world's largest technology company by revenue (totaling $274.5 billion in 2020) and, since January 2021, the world's most valuable company. As of 2021, Apple is the world's fourth-largest PC vendor by unit sales, and fourth-largest smartphone manufacturer. It is one of the Big Five American information technology companies, along with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. (Full article...)- Twitter is an American microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and retweet tweets, but unregistered users can only read them. Users access Twitter through its website interface or its mobile-device application software ("app"), though the service could also be accessed via SMS before April 2020. The service is provided by Twitter, Inc., a corporation based in San Francisco, California, and has more than 25 offices around the world. Tweets were originally restricted to 140 characters, but the limit was doubled to 280 for non-CJK languages in November 2017. Audio and video tweets remain limited to 140 seconds for most accounts. (Full article...)
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- July 7, 2021 – Political impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi dismisses 12 cabinet ministers, including Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, following intense criticisms over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ravi Shankar Prasad, who held multiple concurrent positions as Law, Information Technology, and Communications Minister, also resigns. (South China Morning Post)
- June 15, 2021 – Censorship in India, Violence against Muslims in India
- The Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology strips Twitter of legal protection from prosecution after the social media site refuses to take down a tweet featuring a video of an elderly Muslim man in Ghaziabad being assaulted by a Hindu mob and being forced to chant "Jai Shri Ram". Uttar Pradesh police, who demanded the removal of the tweet, alleges the video was "misleading". (NDTV)
- June 10, 2021 – COVID-19 pandemic
- Researchers from the University of Strathclyde and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay announce that they have developed a low-cost, portable sensor that can detect fragments of the virus responsible for COVID-19 within wastewater in concentrations as low as 10 picograms per microlitre using the Polymerase Chain Reaction test. (The New Indian Express)
- June 4, 2021 –
- United Airlines announces it has ordered 15 supersonic jets from the Denver-based aircraft startup Boom Technology, provided the jets meet safety standards, with plans to put them into service in 2029. This is the first time that an airline will use supersonic jets in their service since Air France and British Airways retired Concorde in 2003. (BBC News)
- June 3, 2021 – China–United States relations
- U.S. President Joe Biden signs an executive order banning Americans from investing in nearly a dozen Chinese companies and their subsidiaries, such as China General Nuclear Power Group, either for their ties to the People's Liberation Army or for selling surveillance technology that is used to spy on the country's religious minorities or dissidents. The ban will go into effect on August 2, and current investors have a year to fully divest from these companies. (South China Morning Post)
- May 22, 2021 – COVID-19 pandemic
- India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology writes to all social media companies asking them to remove content referring to an "Indian variant" of COVID-19. (Reuters)
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