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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Palo Alto station (also called Palo Alto Transit Center) is an intermodal transit center in Palo Alto, California. It is served by Caltrain regional rail service, SamTrans and Santa Clara VTA local bus service, Dumbarton Express regional bus service, the Stanford University Marguerite Shuttle, and several local shuttle services. Palo Alto is the second-busiest Caltrain station after San Francisco, averaging 7,764 weekday boardings by a 2018 count. The Caltrain station has two side platforms serving the two tracks of the Peninsula Subdivision and a nearby bus transfer plaza.
The San Francisco and San Jose Railroad was built through then-empty land north of Mayfield in 1863. The first Palo Alto station was opened in 1890 to serve the then-newly established Stanford University. It was replaced by a larger depot in 1896. The Southern Pacific Railroad opened a new station in 1941 as part of a grade separation project. Designed by John H. Christie, it was constructed in the Streamline Moderne style to match the railroad's Daylight series of streamlined passenger trains. Intercity service to Palo Alto ended in 1971; the Peninsula Commute service continued and was renamed Caltrain in 1985. The station building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Palo Alto Southern Pacific Railroad Depot in 1996. (Full article...) - Image 2New York State Route 210 (NY 210) is a state highway in Orange County, New York, in the United States. It runs north from the New Jersey state line—where it continues south as Passaic County Route 511 (CR 511)—along the west shore of Greenwood Lake to the eponymous village of Greenwood Lake, where it ends at a junction with NY 17A. It was once much longer, as it originally extended east along NY 17A and CR 106 in Orange and Rockland counties to Stony Point when it was assigned as part of the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York. The route was truncated to its current length in 1982. Prior to becoming NY 210 in 1930, the road alongside Greenwood Lake was part of NY 55, a route connecting New Jersey to Goshen, in the 1920s. (Full article...)
- Image 3King's Highway 400A was a 400-series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario that was unsigned and is now the southern end of Highway 11. The short 1.1-kilometre (0.7 mi) freeway link connected Highway 400 with Highway 11 and Simcoe County Road 93, formerly Highway 93. The route was created as a result of an original segment being bypassed by an extension of Highway 400 to Coldwater that opened in late 1959. The Highway 400A route number was only used internally as the road has always featured Highway 400 signage in the southbound direction and Highway 11 signage northbound. In 1997, Highway 400A was eliminated when the road was redesignated as an extension of Highway 11, resulting in Highway 11's southern terminus being directly at Highway 400, while the rest of Highway 11 south from Barrie to Toronto was downloaded to municipal authorities. (Full article...)
- Image 4Tux Racer is a 2000 open-source winter sports racing video game starring the Linux mascot, Tux the penguin. It was originally developed by Jasmin Patry as a computer graphics project at the University of Waterloo. Later on, Patry and the newly founded Sunspire Studios, composed of several former students of the university, expanded it. In the game, the player controls Tux as he slides down a course of snow and ice collecting herrings.
Tux Racer was officially downloaded over one million times as of 2001. It also was well received, often being acclaimed for the graphics, fast-paced gameplay, and replayability, and was a fan favorite among Linux users and the free software community. The game's popularity secured the development of a proprietized release that included enhanced graphics and multiplayer, and it also became the first GPL-licensed game to receive an arcade adaptation. It is the only product that Sunspire Studios developed and released, after which the company liquidated. (Full article...) - Image 5State Route 21 (SR 21) is a 191.34-mile-long (307.93 km) state highway in the U.S. state of Washington that traverses four counties: Franklin, Adams, Lincoln and Ferry. The highway extends from an intersection with SR 260 in Kahlotus north through Lind, Odessa, Clark, Keller, Republic and Curlew before becoming Highway 41 (BC 41) at the Canadian border in Danville. SR 21 is concurrent with U.S. Route 2 (US 2) in Wilbur and SR 20 in Republic and has two diamond interchanges at US 395 in Lind and Interstate 90 (I-90) south of Odessa. Between Lincoln and Ferry counties, the roadway crosses Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake on the Keller Ferry, operated fare free by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) and the Department of Highways (DoH) since 1930.
Since 1899, at least one segment of the current highway has been in the state highway system. In 1899, the Marble Mount Road was established and later numbered State Road 4 in 1905 and renamed to the Sans Poil-Loomis Road in 1907. In 1915, a branch to the Canadian border was added to the highway, but was removed in 1923. In 1937, the Primary state highways were established and State Road 4 became Primary State Highway 4 (PSH 4), while the former Canadian branch became Secondary State Highway 4A (SSH 4A). Another highway, extending from Lind to Wilbur, became SSH 4B. In 1964, PSH 4 was split into SR 20 and SR 21 while SSH 2A and SSH 2B also became SR 21. In 1983, a road between Lind and Kahlotus became part of SR 21. (Full article...) - Image 6State Route 365 (SR 365) is a very short two-lane east–west state highway in western Ohio. It is currently the shortest signed state route in Ohio. Its western terminus is at a T-intersection with the SR 235/SR 366 concurrency one mile (1.6 km) north of the village of Lakeview. After running east and south for less than 980 feet (300 m), the highway arrives at its eastern terminus in Indian Lake State Park, serving a boat launch on the western shore of Indian Lake.
This spur route was created in 1934, and runs exclusively in Logan County. At a length of just 0.16 miles (260 m), SR 365 is one of the shortest state highways in Ohio. (Full article...) - Image 7from the University Heights Metro-North station (2014)
The University Heights Bridge is a steel-truss revolving swing bridge across the Harlem River in New York City. It connects West 207th Street in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan with West Fordham Road in the University Heights neighborhood of the Bronx. The bridge is operated and maintained by the New York City Department of Transportation.
The bridge carries two lanes of traffic in each direction, along with a sidewalk on its southern side. The bridge has three masonry piers supporting the steel approach spans. The sidewalk features four shelters with cast-iron supports while the bridge deck has decorative iron railings and two stone pavilions. (Full article...)
Selected picture
- Image 1A 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 2A 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 3The GameCube is a sixth generation video game console released by Nintendo beginning in 2001. Meant as a successor to the Nintendo 64, the GameCube sold approximately 22 million units worldwide. It was the third most-successful console of its generation, behind Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox. The GameCube was succeeded by the Wii in 2006.
- Image 5Photograph 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 6Photograph: NASAA self-portrait by the Mars rover Curiosity on October 31, 2012. The mosaic is stitched from a set of 55 images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager at "Rocknest," the spot in Gale crater where the mission's first scoop sampling took place. Self-portraits such as this help NASA document the state of the rover and track changes, such as dust accumulation and wheel wear.
- Image 7An 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 8The OLPC XO-1 is an inexpensive subnotebook laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries.
- Image 9Image credit: Prolineserver/TomiaThis diagram of four pulley systems illustrates how increasing the number of pulleys increases the mechanical advantage, making the load easier to lift. MA is the factor by which a mechanism multiplies the force put into it. In this diagram, 100 newtons is required to lift the weight off the ground. Each additional pulley increases the MA such that the four-pulley system only needs 25 newtons to accomplish the same task, but the rope must be pulled four times as far.
- Image 10Photograph: Evan AmosThe Apple Bandai Pippin is a multimedia technology console designed by Apple Computer based on the Apple Pippin platform, and produced by Bandai. Only 100,000 of the consoles were produced between its 1996 release and 1997 discontinuation. The Bandai Pippin was intended to create an inexpensive computer aimed mostly at playing CD-based multimedia software, especially games, but also functioning as a thin client.
- Image 11Photograph 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 12Photograph: 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 13Photograph: 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 14Diagram credit: AstroBidulesThe Soyuz MS is the latest revision of the Russian spacecraft series Soyuz. It is an evolution of the Soyuz TMA-M, with modernization mostly concentrated on its communications and navigation subsystems. The spacecraft is used by Roscosmos for human spaceflight. The Soyuz MS has minimal external changes with respect to the Soyuz TMA-M, mostly limited to antennas and sensors, as well as the thruster placement. The first launch, Soyuz MS-01, took place on 7 July 2016 aboard a Soyuz-FG launch vehicle towards the International Space Station. This exploded-view diagram illustrates and labels various components of the Soyuz MS spacecraft and the Soyuz-FG rocket.
- Image 15A 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 16This photo of the International Space Station (ISS) was taken during STS-119, a Space Shuttle mission that delivered and assembled the fourth starboard Integrated Truss Segment, and the final set of solar arrays and batteries to the station. Construction of the ISS is still ongoing and is scheduled to complete in December 2011.
- Image 17Photo credit: Alfred T. Palmer"Big Pete" Ramagos, rigger at work on Douglas Dam, Tennessee, June 1942. A rigger is a person or company which specializes in the lifting and/or moving of extremely large and/or heavy objects. Riggers use equipment expressly designed for moving and lifting objects where ordinary material handling equipment cannot go.
- Image 18Photo 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 19The semi-submersible oil platform P-51, operated by Brazilian energy company Petrobras, being positioned by tugboats. Semisubs sit on pontoons located under the ocean surface, with the operating deck atop columns, above the sea level. In this manner, they are relatively protected from wave action.
- Image 20The 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.
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- Image 1'BUILD YOUR OWN TELEVISION RECEIVER.' Science and Invention magazine cover, November 1928 (from Invention)
- Image 2The preserved Rocket (from History of technology)
- Image 3The 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 53D printer (from Emerging technologies)
- Image 6A 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 7A variety of stone tools (from History of technology)
- Image 9Johannes Gutenberg's printing press was voted the most important invention of the second millennium. (from Invention)
- Image 10Top 30 AI patent applicants in 2016 (from Emerging technologies)
- Image 13Alessandro Volta with the first electrical battery. Volta is recognized as an influential inventor. (from Invention)
- Image 17Ford assembly line, 1913. The magneto assembly line was the first. (from History of technology)
- Image 18Agriculture preceded writing in the history of technology. (from History of technology)
- Image 19Eric M. C. Tigerstedt (1887–1925) was known as a pioneer of sound-on-film technology. Tigerstedt in 1915. (from Invention)
- Image 20Thomas Edison with his second phonograph, photographed by Levin Corbin Handy in Washington, April 1878 (from History of technology)
- Image 21Walls at Sacsayhuaman (from History of technology)
- Image 22Self-replicating 3D printer (from Emerging technologies)
- Image 23Newcomen steam engine for pumping mines (from History of technology)
- Image 26Edison electric light bulbs 1879–80 (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 Suresh Jadhav led the development of the COVID-19 vaccine marketed as Covishield?
- ... 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 Research Policy is regarded as the leading journal in the field of innovation studies?
- ... that Pamela McCorduck, who chronicled the evolution of artificial intelligence, regretted not recognizing the technology's potential for misuse?
- ... that touch-screen technology, pay-at-the-pump, car phones, and Coca-Cola Cherry were shown at the 1982 World's Fair?
- ... that several science fiction critics praised "Rock Diver", the first short story by American writer Harry Harrison, for its compelling take on technology for passing through matter?
- ... 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 it was Caltech experimental physicist Rana X. Adhikari's idea to build a gravitational-wave observatory in India?
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 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...)
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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., the company that operates the social media platform X (formerly known as 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 fifth-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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