Portal:Technology
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Technology is the application of conceptual knowledge to achieve 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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- Image 1George Armitage Miller (February 3, 1920 – July 22, 2012) was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of cognitive psychology, and more broadly, of cognitive science. He also contributed to the birth of psycholinguistics. Miller wrote several books and directed the development of WordNet, an online word-linkage database usable by computer programs. He authored the paper, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two," in which he observed that many different experimental findings considered together reveal the presence of an average limit of seven for human short-term memory capacity. This paper is frequently cited by psychologists and in the wider culture. Miller won numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science.
Miller began his career when the reigning theory in psychology was behaviorism, which eschewed the study of mental processes and focused on observable behavior. Rejecting this approach, Miller devised experimental techniques and mathematical methods to analyze mental processes, focusing particularly on speech and language. Working mostly at Harvard University, MIT and Princeton University, he went on to become one of the founders of psycholinguistics and was one of the key figures in founding the broader new field of cognitive science, c. 1978. He collaborated and co-authored work with other figures in cognitive science and psycholinguistics, such as Noam Chomsky. For moving psychology into the realm of mental processes and for aligning that move with information theory, computation theory, and linguistics, Miller is considered one of the great twentieth-century psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Miller as the 20th most cited psychologist of that era. (Full article...) - Image 2
County Route 41 (CR 41) in Onondaga County, New York is a 6.20-mile (9.98 km) highway in the Finger Lakes towns of Skaneateles and Marcellus. The route is unsigned, like most of Onondaga County's routes, serving as a connector between the villages. The route begins at an intersection with U.S. Route 20 (US 20) in Skaneateles and heads northeast for most of its length. Route 41 does not intersect with another state-maintained highway, but does follow the former alignment of two. The highway ends at an intersection with CR 83 (South Street) and CR 150 (Platt Road).
Route 41 was once part of a realignment of a 19th-century turnpike, the Seneca Turnpike. Being a newer alignment, the signs along the highway read "New Seneca Turnpike". The route, when the 1930 New York State Route renumbering occurred, was designated as part of New York State Route 175 (NY 175) from US 20 to NY 174, which is now part of CR 41. The highway then followed an older alignment of Route 174 southward, out of Marcellus. Route 175 was decommissioned and realigned several times along that alignment, and the Route 174 alignment came in the 1970s. By 1989, Route 41 was assigned along its entire alignment. (Full article...) - Image 3
The 169th Street station is a local station on the IND Queens Boulevard Line of the New York City Subway. Located at the intersection of 169th Street and Hillside Avenue in Queens, it is served by the F train at all times, the <F> train during rush hours in the reverse peak direction, and a few rush-hour E trains to Jamaica–179th Street during p.m. rush hours.
169th Street station opened on April 24, 1937, as the terminal station of the Independent Subway System's Queens Boulevard Line. This station was once heavily used because of the many bus connections available for riders heading further east within Queens. It became the closest subway station to the 165th Street Bus Terminal after the closure and demolition of the nearby 168th Street BMT station on Jamaica Avenue in 1977. Ridership at 169th Street station declined significantly following the opening of the Archer Avenue lines in 1988. (Full article...) - Image 4
The Macintosh Classic is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from October 1990 to September 1992. It was the first Macintosh to sell for less than US$1,000.
Production of the Classic was prompted by the success of the original Macintosh 128K, then the Macintosh Plus, and finally the Macintosh SE. The system specifications of the Classic are very similar to those of its predecessors, with the same 9-inch (23 cm) monochrome CRT display, 512 × 342 pixel resolution, and 4 megabyte (MB) memory limit of the older Macintosh computers. Apple's decision to not update the Classic with newer technology such as a newer CPU, higher RAM capacity or color display resulted in criticism from reviewers, with Macworld describing it as having "nothing to gloat about beyond its low price" and "unexceptional". However, it ensured compatibility with the Mac's by-then healthy software base, as well as enabled it to sell for the lower price, as planned. The Classic also featured several improvements over the aging Macintosh Plus, which it replaced as Apple's low-end Mac computer. It is up to 25 percent faster than the Plus and included an Apple SuperDrive 3.5-inch (9 cm) floppy disk drive as standard. Unlike the Macintosh SE/30 and other compact Macs before it, the Classic did not have an internal Processor Direct Slot, making it the first non-expandable desktop Macintosh since the Macintosh Plus. Instead, it had a memory expansion slot. (Full article...) - Image 5New York State Route 446 (NY 446) is a state highway in the Southern Tier of New York in the United States. The highway extends for 6.76 miles (10.88 km) on a northeast–southwest alignment from an intersection with NY 16 north of the hamlet of Hinsdale to a junction with NY 305 in the village of Cuba. It parallels the Southern Tier Expressway (NY 17 and Interstate 86 or I-86) very closely for its entire length. NY 446 was originally designated as part of Route 4, an unsigned legislative route, in 1908. The Hinsdale–Cuba highway received its first posted designation in 1924 when it was included as part of NY 17. It was renumbered twice, becoming part of NY 63 in 1930 and NY 408 in the 1940s, before gaining its current designation on July 1, 1974. (Full article...)
- Image 6The Thessaloniki Metro (Greek: Μετρό Θεσσαλονίκης, Metró Thessaloníkis, [meˈtro θesaloˈnicis]) is an underground rapid-transit system under construction in Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city. Estimates for the cost of the megaproject are €1.62 billion ($1.83 billion) for the main line and €640 million ($723 million) for the Kalamaria extension, for a total of €2.26 billion ($2.55 billion). The project is primarily funded with loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and funds from the Greek government. Construction by a Greek-Italian consortium is overseen by Elliniko Metro S.A., the Greek state-owned company which oversaw construction of the Athens Metro and Athens Tram. It will operated by the Thema S.A. Franco-Italian consortium.
Proposed during the 1910s and first seriously planned in the 1980s, construction of the main line began in 2006 and on the Kalamaria extension in 2013. The system under construction has 18 stations and 14.4 km (8.9 mi) of tunnels. (Full article...) - Image 7NTSB photo of crash scene
During the afternoon rush hour of June 22, 2009, a subway train wreck occurred between two southbound Red Line Washington Metro trains in Northeast, Washington, D.C., United States. A moving train collided with a train stopped ahead of it; the train operator along with eight passengers died, and 80 people were injured, making it the deadliest crash in the history of the Washington Metro.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation found that after a June 17 replacement of a track circuit component at what became the crash site, the track circuit had been suffering from parasitic oscillations which left it unable to reliably report when that stretch of track was occupied by a train. The struck train came to a stop because of traffic ahead. Because the entire train was within the faulty circuit, it became invisible to the Automatic Train Control (ATC) system. The train behind it was therefore commanded to proceed at 55 mph (89 km/h). The operator of the striking train applied the emergency brake after the stopped train came into full view, but there was not enough time to prevent the collision, which occurred at approximately 49 mph (79 km/h). (Full article...)
Selected picture
- Image 1Photograph: Uwe AranasA filling station in Sabah, Malaysia, operated by Royal Dutch Shell. Filling stations, also known under a wide variety of names, are facilities that sell fuel and engine lubricants for motor vehicles. They include one or more fuel dispensers, which distribute fuels such as gasoline and diesel into the tanks within vehicles and calculate the financial cost of the fuel transferred. Filling stations may also include air compressors and electricity sockets, which may inflate tyres or offer charging stations. Many filling stations also incorporate a convenience store, where customers can purchase snacks and other goods.
- Image 2The Bernina Express passing over the Brusio spiral viaduct. Located near Brusio, Graubünden, Switzerland, the single track nine-arched stone spiral railway viaduct was opened in 1908. It is part of the World Heritage-listed Bernina railway.
- Image 3Photograph: 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 4Photo 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.
- Image 5Image 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 6Photograph 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.
- Image 7Photograph: ULPower Aero EnginesThe ULPower UL260i, a flat-four engine produced by ULPower Aero Engines of Belgium. Flat-four engines are flat engines with four cylinders arranged horizontally in two banks of two cylinders on each side of a central crankcase; they can be used in cars, motorcycles, or aircraft. This type of engine tends to be well-balanced and have efficient cooling, but is expensive to manufacture and considerably wider than other engines.
- Image 8An 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 9Photograph credit: Diego DelsoThe Walchensee Hydroelectric Power Station is a storage power station in Bavaria, Germany. The turbines, seen here, are fed by water from the Walchensee which is then released into the Kochelsee. The power station uses the hydraulic head of about 200 metres (660 ft) between the two natural lakes, and water from the Rißbach river is also used to augment the supply. The installed capacity is 124 MW with an annual production of 300 GWh; this is one of the largest of such power plants in Germany.
- Image 10The 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. - Image 11Photograph: 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.
- Image 12The OLPC XO-1 is an inexpensive subnotebook laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries.
- Image 13Diagram: H Padleckas and Ju gatsu mikkaA diagram showing a side and underside view of an 18-wheeler semi-trailer truck with an enclosed cargo space. The underside view shows the arrangement of the wheels, and in blue, the axles, drive shaft, and differentials.
The numbered parts are:
'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000019-QINU`"'
#tractor unit
#semi-trailer (detachable)
#engine compartment
#cabin
#sleeper (not present in all trucks)
#air dam
#fuel tanks
#fifth-wheel coupling
#enclosed cargo space
#landing gear (legs for when semi-trailer is detached)
#tandem axles - Image 14A 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 15Photo 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). - Image 16A 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 18A billet of enriched uranium, which is uranium where the percent composition of uranium-235 (235U) has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Enriched uranium is a critical component for both civil nuclear power generation and military nuclear weapons.
- Image 19A woman using a Hollerith pantograph, a machine developed by Herman Hollerith for the punching of cards, providing data which could then be processed. Such tools were used in the 1890 United States Census, the first time the country's census was tabulated by machine.
- Image 20A 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.
Main topics
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- Image 1Alessandro Volta with the first electrical battery. Volta is recognized as an influential inventor. (from Invention)
- Image 2Top 30 AI patent applicants in 2016 (from Emerging technologies)
- Image 6'BUILD YOUR OWN TELEVISION RECEIVER.' Science and Invention magazine cover, November 1928 (from Invention)
- Image 7Edison electric light bulbs 1879–80 (from History of technology)
- Image 8The 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 9Self-replicating 3D printer (from Emerging technologies)
- Image 11Thomas Edison with his second phonograph, photographed by Levin Corbin Handy in Washington, April 1878 (from History of technology)
- Image 13Ford assembly line, 1913. The magneto assembly line was the first. (from History of technology)
- Image 14The preserved Rocket (from History of technology)
- Image 163D printer (from Emerging technologies)
- Image 17A 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 18A variety of stone tools (from History of technology)
- Image 19Walls at Sacsayhuaman (from History of technology)
- Image 22Eric M. C. Tigerstedt (1887–1925) was known as a pioneer of sound-on-film technology. Tigerstedt in 1915. (from Invention)
- Image 23Newcomen steam engine for pumping mines (from History of technology)
- Image 26Agriculture preceded writing in the history of technology. (from History of technology)
Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Nuvola_apps_filetypes.svg/47px-Nuvola_apps_filetypes.svg.png)
- ... 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 Henry E. Sigerist felt "depressed" after reading A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 16th and 17th Centuries?
- ... that the Atari 410 Program Recorder was used to store programs on the Atari 8-bit family, but was also used for computer aided instruction?
- ... that Pamela McCorduck, who chronicled the evolution of artificial intelligence, regretted not recognizing the technology's potential for misuse?
- ... that Kathanar – The Wild Sorcerer is being shot on a custom-built studio spanning 45,000 square feet (4,200 m2), utilizing the virtual production technology?
- ... 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 when Chorus Systèmes SA was founded in 1986, French technology start-up companies were rare?
Top 10 WikiProject Technology popular articles of the month
- Image 1
YouTube is an American online video sharing platform owned by Google. Accessible worldwide, YouTube 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. As of January 2024, YouTube has more than 2.7 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 2ChatGPT is a chatbot and virtual assistant 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 3
Elon Reeve Musk FRS (/ˈiːlɒn/; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman and investor known for his key roles in space company SpaceX and automotive company Tesla, Inc. Other involvements include ownership of X Corp., formerly Twitter, and his role in the founding of The Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink and OpenAI. He is one of the wealthiest people in the world; , Forbes estimates his net worth to be US$221 billion. (Full article...) - Image 4Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by 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 third-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...)
- Image 5Headquarters in Santa Clara, California, in 2023
Nvidia Corporation (/ɛnˈvɪdiə/, en-VID-ee-ə) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It is a software and fabless company which designs and supplies graphics processing units (GPUs), application programming interfaces (APIs) for data science and high-performance computing, as well as system on a chip units (SoCs) for the mobile computing and automotive market. Nvidia is also a dominant supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and software. (Full article...) - Image 6
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 7The Google logo used since 2015
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 8
Video views per week of a viral video (Gangnam Style), illustrating viral growth to peak weekly viewership, in this case, in the eleventh week after it was posted.
A viral video is a video that becomes popular through a viral process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites such as YouTube as well as social media and email. For a video to be shareable or spreadable, it must focus on the social logics and cultural practices that have enabled and popularized these new platforms. (Full article...) - Image 9
X, commonly referred to by its former name Twitter, is a social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media websites and the seventh-most visited website in the world. Users can share short text messages, images, and videos in posts (formerly "tweets") and like or repost/retweet other users' content. 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 10OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) research organization founded in December 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. Its mission is to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence, which it defines as "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work". As a leading organization in the ongoing AI boom, OpenAI is known for the GPT family of large language models, the DALL-E series of text-to-image models, and a text-to-video model named Sora. Its release of ChatGPT in November 2022 has been credited with catalyzing widespread interest in generative AI. (Full article...)
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