Portal:Technology

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The Technology Portal

P:TECH

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 prehistory, followed by the control of fire—which in turn contributed to the growth of the human brain and the development of language during the Ice Age, according to the cooking hypothesis. 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...)

Outline of technology

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Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

Image 1

The Bull and Whistle Bar at the corner of Caroline Street (left) and Duval Street (right)

Caroline Street is an iconic and historically significant local road on the island of Key West, Florida. It extends approximately 0.5 miles (0.80 km) northeastward to Grinnell Street from Whitehead Street at its southwest end. One of the oldest roads on the island, Caroline Street is surrounded by many old houses, inns, and historic landmarks, which are known for their seclusion from the street by dense landscaping. From its mostly residential origins between Whitehead and Elizabeth streets, Caroline becomes more commercial, punctuated by numerous businesses. Situated within the historic "Old Town" district, Caroline Street was part of the original infrastructural layout of the island at the time of its 1829 mapping by William Whitehead. Other than changes to both its termini, the majority of its route has remained unaltered since then. Caroline Street was named for a sibling of Whitehead; his brother, John, became interested in the island after a shipwreck left him stranded in 1819. The street and some of its surrounding area have been subject to long-term improvement and beautification efforts, beginning chiefly in 1996. (Full article...)
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The IRT New Lots Line or Livonia Avenue Line is a rapid transit line in the A Division of the New York City Subway. Located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the line runs from the Crown Heights–Utica Avenue station in Crown Heights and continues to the New Lots Avenue station in East New York.

The New Lots Line is entirely elevated and consists of seven stations; most of the line has two tracks, except for Junius Street station, which has three tracks. It runs mostly above Livonia Avenue in Brownsville and East New York, except for a short section above East 98th Street in Brownsville. The line is served by the 3 train at all times except late nights, when the 4 train takes over service. During rush hours, occasional 2, 4, and 5 trains also serve the line. (Full article...)
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Nutshell Bridge on the Stroudwater Navigation

The Stroudwater Navigation is a canal in Gloucestershire, England which linked Stroud to the River Severn. It was authorised in 1776, although part had already been built, as the proprietors believed that an Act of Parliament (3 Geo. 2. c. 13) obtained in 1730 gave them the necessary powers. Opened in 1779, it was a commercial success, its main cargo being coal. It was 8 miles (13 km) in length and had a rise of 102 ft 5 in (31.22 m) through 12 locks. Following the opening of the Thames and Severn Canal in 1789, it formed part of a through route from Bristol to London, although much of its trade vanished when the Kennet and Avon Canal provided a more direct route in 1810. Despite competition from the railways, the canal continued to pay dividends to shareholders until 1922, and was not finally abandoned until 1954.

Even before its closure, there was interest in retaining the canal for its amenity value. The Stroudwater Canal Society, which later became the Cotswold Canals Trust, was formed in 1972. Following initial hostility from the Proprietors, who had not been stripped of their powers when the canal had closed, agreement was reached and work began on restoration of the waterway. The project gained popularity, and in 2003, a bid was made to the Heritage Lottery Fund for £82 million to restore both the Stroudwater Navigation and the Thames and Severn Canal. The project had to be split into smaller parts, and only the first phase has so far been funded in this way, when a grant of £11.9 million was confirmed in 2006. With match funding, this enabled the section from 'The Ocean' at Stonehouse to Wallbridge to be reopened, together with the Wallbridge to Hope Mill section of the Thames and Severn. (Full article...)
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County Route 149 (CR 149) is a 8.69-mile (13.99 km) county route in northern Sullivan County, New York, in the United States. The route runs from an intersection with New York State Route 52 (NY 52) in the Callicoon community of Youngsville to an intersection with CR 178 in the Rockland community of Livingston Manor. CR 149 was originally designated as New York State Route 284 in 1930. (Full article...)
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Mississippi Highway 604 (MS 604) is a 5.071-mile-long (8.161 km) state highway on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Its southern terminus is at U.S. Route 90 (US 90). MS 604 travels northward through Pearlington to its northern terminus at MS 607. The route was designated in 1950, after US 90 was realigned off of it in 1939 onto a new road built in 1936. (Full article...)
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Belmont Park program (1910)

The Belmont Park aviation meet was an international air show that took place in 1910. The Belmont Racetrack in Elmont, New York, United States, was the site of the aviation meet. The event took place over nine days and featured aerial races, and contests involving duration, distance, speed and altitude.

The show was managed and organized by the Aero Club of America and it took place over nine days, October 22–31, 1910. Featured aviators included Wilbur Wright, Alfred Leblanc, Émile Aubrun, René Simon, John Moisant and Claude Grahame-White. The show awarded prize money of US$72,300 (equivalent to $2,354,400 in 2023); revenue from gate gate receipts for the show totaled US$188,000 (equivalent to $6,147,600 in 2023). (Full article...)
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Southbound view from Platform 2 as seen in August 2008

Kensington (Olympia) is an interchange station between the Mildmay line of the London Overground and National Rail services operated by Southern, located in Kensington, West London. Limited services on the District line of the London Underground also operate to here.

The station is located in Travelcard Zone 2. On the Underground it is the terminus of a short District line branch from Earl's Court, originally built as part of the Middle Circle. On the main-line railway it is on the West London line from Clapham Junction to Willesden Junction, by which trains bypass inner London. The station's name is drawn from its location in Kensington and the adjacent Olympia exhibition centre in West Kensington. (Full article...)

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Eiffel Tower
Photo: Benh Lieu Song
The Eiffel Tower as seen from the Champ de Mars. At 324 metres (1,063 ft) tall, the tower, an iron lattice tower, is the tallest building in Paris, the most-visited paid monument in the world, as well as one of the most recognizable structures in the world. Named after its designer, Gustave Eiffel, it was built as an entrance arch for the 1889 Exposition Universelle and has since become the most prominent symbol of both Paris and France.
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Image 2
Assut de l'Or Bridge
Photograph: Diego Delso
The Assut de l'Or Bridge is a white single-pylon cable-stayed bridge in the City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia, Spain. Completed in 2008, it was designed by Valencian architect and civil engineer Santiago Calatrava as a variant of his cantilever spar cable-stayed bridge in Seville.
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Brusio spiral viaduct
Photo: David Gubler
The 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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Laptop computer
Credit: Mike McGregor
The OLPC XO-1 is an inexpensive subnotebook laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries.
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Aerospike engine
Photo credit: Marshall Space Flight Center
A test firing of twin linear XRS-2200 aerospike engines, originally built for the Lockheed Martin X-33, a next-generation, commercially operated reusable launch vehicle. The aerospike engine is a type of rocket engine that maintains its efficiency across a wide range of altitudes through the use of an aerospike nozzle. A vehicle with an aerospike engine uses 25-30% less fuel at low altitudes, where most missions have the greatest need for thrust.
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William Crooks
Photograph: National Photo Company, Restoration: Adam Cuerden
The William Crooks is a 4-4-0 steam locomotive that was the first locomotive to operate in the U.S. state of Minnesota, beginning in 1861. It was named after William Crooks, the chief mechanical engineer for the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, who earlier served as a colonel in the 6th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War. Crooks laid out the initial ten-mile track between Minneapolis and St. Paul on which the locomotive operated. It was retired from regular service in 1897, but operated special services for several further decades. It is now in the Lake Superior Railroad Museum in Duluth.
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Image 7
Caliper
Image credit: Joaquim Alves Gaspar
An 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.
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Image 8
N700 Series Shinkansen
Photograph credit: Dllu

The N700 Series Shinkansen is a Japanese Shinkansen high-speed train with tilting capability developed jointly by JR Central and JR West. It has been used on the Tokaido and San'yō Shinkansen lines since 2007. This photograph shows the train travelling at approximately 300 km/h through Himeji Station, and was captured with a line scan camera using strip photography.
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Overhead power line
Credit: Simon Koopmann
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.
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Sukhoi Su-30
Photo: Sergey Krivchikov
The Sukhoi Su-30 is a twin-engine, two-seat supermanoeuverable fighter aircraft developed by Russia's Sukhoi Aviation Corporation. It is a multirole fighter for all-weather, air-to-air and air-to-surface deep interdiction missions. Its primary users are Russia, India, China, Venezuela, and Malaysia.
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Image 11
Bucket-wheel excavators
Photograph: Raimond Spekking
Bucket-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.
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Image 12
Walchensee Hydroelectric Power Station
Photograph credit: Diego Delso
The 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.
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Telephone
Credit: Berthold Werner
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.
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Thorntonbank Wind Farm
Photo credit: Hans Hillewaert
Wind turbines belonging to the Thorntonbank Wind Farm located in the North Sea, 28 km (17 mi) off the coast of Belgium. Electricity generation started in early 2009, with an initial capacity of 30 MW, and that number is expected to rise to 300 MW by 2015. A 37 km (23 mi) 150 kV undersea cable connects the wind farm to the shore.
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Image 15
Blender (software)
Image credit: Michael Otto
A 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.
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Image 16
Nuclear weapon
Image credit: Fastfission
Schematic representation of the two methods with which to assemble an atomic bomb. An A-bomb produces its explosive energy through nuclear fission reactions alone. A mass of fissile material (enriched uranium or plutonium) is assembled into a supercritical mass—the amount of material needed to start an exponentially growing nuclear chain reaction—either by shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another (the "gun" method, shown on top here), or by compressing a sub-critical sphere of material using chemical explosives to many times its original density (the "implosion" method, at bottom).
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Image 17
Wheel
Credit: fir0002
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.
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Escalator
Credit: Stig Nygaard
An escalator is a moving staircase for carrying people between floors of a building. The device consists of a motor-driven chain of individual, linked steps that move up or down on tracks, allowing the step treads to remain horizontal.
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Empire State Building
Image credit: Lewis Hine
A structural worker bolts beams on the framework during the construction of the Empire State Building in New York City. The 1,250-foot (380 m) building opened on May 1, 1931, at the time the tallest building in the world, overtaking the Chrysler Building (seen to the right), which had just been completed the year before. The addition of a pinnacle and antennas later increased its overall height to 1,472 feet (449 m).
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Image 20
Steam turbine
Photo credit: Christian Kuhna
The 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.
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Main topics

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The following are images from various technology-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Design for a flying machine (c.1488) by da Vinci (from History of technology)
Image 2Walls at Sacsayhuaman (from History of technology)
Image 3Thomas Edison with his second phonograph, photographed by Levin Corbin Handy in Washington, April 1878 (from History of technology)
Image 4Self-replicating 3D printer (from Emerging technologies)
Image 5Eric M. C. Tigerstedt (1887–1925) was known as a pioneer of sound-on-film technology. Tigerstedt in 1915. (from Invention)
Image 6Clock from Salisbury Cathedral, ca. 1386 (from History of technology)
Image 7A late Bronze Age sword or dagger blade (from History of technology)
Image 8The compartmented water wheel, here its overshot version (from History of technology)
Image 9Newcomen steam engine for pumping mines (from History of technology)
Image 10Johannes Gutenberg's printing press was voted the most important invention of the second millennium. (from Invention)
Image 11A water-powered mine hoist used for raising ore, ca. 1556 (from History of technology)
Image 12Solid-state air batteries
Li-Air composition (from Emerging technologies)
Image 13A variety of stone tools (from History of technology)
Image 14Edison electric light bulbs 1879–80 (from History of technology)
Image 15Top 30 AI patent applicants in 2016 (from Emerging technologies)
Image 163D printer (from Emerging technologies)
Image 17The 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 18The preserved Rocket (from History of technology)
Image 19A 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 20NASA Fuel cell stack
Direct-methanol cell (from Emerging technologies)
Image 21Pont du Gard in France, a Roman aqueduct (from History of technology)
Image 22Dome of Florence Cathedral (from History of technology)
Image 23'BUILD YOUR OWN TELEVISION RECEIVER.' Science and Invention magazine cover, November 1928 (from Invention)
Image 24Tech history timeline (from History of technology)
Image 25Agriculture preceded writing in the history of technology. (from History of technology)
Image 26Alessandro Volta with the first electrical battery. Volta is recognized as an influential inventor. (from Invention)
Image 27An axehead made of iron, dating from the Swedish Iron Age (from History of technology)
Image 28Ford assembly line, 1913. The magneto assembly line was the first. (from History of technology)

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... 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 Justin Yu, the current Classic Tetris World Champion, is also a cellist in MIT's video game orchestra?
... 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 OPTi Inc. won a patent suit against Apple for unauthorized use of "predictive snooping" technology?
... that ice XVII (structure shown) potentially has a use in green technology as a medium for storing hydrogen?
... 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 Peter Corby's electric trouser press used technology designed for Concorde?

News

See also: 2024 in science and technology

December 19, 2024 – Red Sea crisis: The United States Department of the Treasury announces sanctions on the governor of the Central Bank of Yemen in Sanaa, Yemen, and several Houthi officials and associated companies and vessels, accusing them of trafficking dual-use weapon components and Iranian petroleum to the Houthis. (Al Jazeera) (JNS)
December 4, 2024 – 2024 Cuba blackouts: Another round of blackouts in Cuba leave millions of households without power. The energy ministry says that it is prioritizing restoring electricity to hospitals and water pumping facilities. (Reuters)
November 16, 2024 – 2024 Wuxi stabbing attack: Eight people are killed and 17 others are injured in a stabbing spree at the Wuxi Institute of Technology in Yixing, Jiangsu, China. The suspect, a 21-year-old student, is arrested. (CNN) (Reuters)