Portal:Technology
The Technology Portal
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...)
Recognized articles -
Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.
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Tuas Link MRT station is an elevated Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station in western Singapore. Located in Tuas along Tuas West Drive, it is located close to Tuas Depot and Tuas Checkpoint. The station is the terminus of the East–West line (EWL) and the westernmost station in Singapore.
First announced in 2011 as part of the Tuas West Extension (TWE), the station began operations on 18 June 2017. The station is operated by SMRT Trains. It is the only elevated station in Singapore to feature a concourse above the platforms, due to space constraints at the ground level. (Full article...)
King's Highway 77, commonly referred to as Highway 77, is a provincially maintained highway in the Canadian province of Ontario. One of three highways within Essex County, Highway 77 serves to interconnect Highway 3 near Leamington with Highway 401 near Tilbury. Prior to 1998, the highway extended south into Leamington, ending at the former routing of Highway 3 and Highway 18. This section was turned over to Essex County and renamed Erie Street. The speed limit on Highway 77 is 80 km/h (50 mph) in most places, dropping to 50 km/h in built-up areas. It is patrolled by the Ontario Provincial Police. (Full article...)
Boon Lay MRT station is a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station on the East West line (EWL) in Jurong West, Singapore. Situated along Boon Lay Way, the station is integrated with the Boon Lay Bus Interchange and Jurong Point as part of the Boon Lay Integrated Transport Hub. Other landmarks surrounding the station include the SAFRA Clubhouse and Jurong West Public Library.
Initially announced as Jurong West MRT station, the station was briefly shelved before the decision was reversed in August 1987. The EWL station opened on 6 July 1990 and was the last station to be completed on the initial MRT network. It was the terminus of the EWL until the line's extension to Joo Koon station in 2009. In May 2018, it was announced that the station would be an interchange with the Jurong Region line when the first stage opens in 2027. (Full article...)
SHODAN (/ˈʃɒdən/ ), an acronym for Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network, is the main antagonist of Looking Glass Studios's cyberpunk-horror themed video game System Shock. An artificial intelligence originally in charge of a research and mining space station, after her ethical constraints are removed, she develops a god complex and goes rogue, killing almost everyone on board before being stopped by the hacker that originally removed her limitations. In the game's sequel System Shock 2, SHODAN returns, temporarily allying herself with a soldier to stop her rampaging creations. She is defeated again afterward by the soldier when she attempts to remake all reality in her vision, but not before transferring her consciousness into a human woman's body. In all appearances, SHODAN is voiced by Terri Brosius.
SHODAN has been praised as one of the best villains in video games for her persistent presence and taunting nature coupled with Brosius's emotionless portrayal, and how it drove the player to defeat her. The character's themes and relationship with the player have also been the subject of discussion, particularly in her role as a temporary ally in System Shock 2. SHODAN character's themes have been analyzed through the scope of similar characters in fiction and pulp fiction as a whole. (Full article...)
SHODAN has been praised as one of the best villains in video games for her persistent presence and taunting nature coupled with Brosius's emotionless portrayal, and how it drove the player to defeat her. The character's themes and relationship with the player have also been the subject of discussion, particularly in her role as a temporary ally in System Shock 2. SHODAN character's themes have been analyzed through the scope of similar characters in fiction and pulp fiction as a whole. (Full article...)
The Metropolitan District Railway, also known as the District Railway, was a passenger railway that served London, England, from 1868 to 1933. Established in 1864 to complete an "inner circle" of lines connecting railway termini in London, the first part of the line opened using gas-lit wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives. The Metropolitan Railway operated all services until the District Railway introduced its own trains in 1871. The railway was soon extended westwards through Earl's Court to Fulham, Richmond, Ealing and Hounslow. After completing the inner circle and reaching Whitechapel in 1884, it was extended to Upminster in Essex in 1902.
To finance electrification at the beginning of the 20th century, American financier Charles Yerkes took it over and made it part of his Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) group. Electric propulsion was introduced in 1905, and by the end of the year electric multiple units operated all of the services. On 1 July 1933, the District Railway and the other UERL railways were merged with the Metropolitan Railway and the capital's tramway and bus operators to form the London Passenger Transport Board. (Full article...)
The Parsons Boulevard station is an express station on the IND Queens Boulevard Line of the New York City Subway. Located at the intersection of Parsons Boulevard 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.
This station opened on April 24, 1937 as part of an extension of the Independent Subway System's Queens Boulevard Line, and served as a terminal for F trains until the line was extended to 179th Street in 1950. Ridership at this station decreased sharply after the opening of the Archer Avenue lines in 1988. (Full article...)
Pocinho railway station is located on the Iberian gauge Douro line, which serves the town of Pocinho, in the municipality of Vila Nova de Foz Coa, in northern Portugal. It also served as a junction with the Sabor line from its opening in 1911 until its closure in 1988. Since 1988 the station has been the terminus of the Douro Line, following the closure of the section that extended to Barca d'Alva and the Spanish border. There have been calls for this section to be reopened. (Full article...)
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Credit: Berthold WernerA 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. -
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. -
Photograph: Donald Y TongBurj Khalifa is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and currently the tallest man-made structure in the world, at 829.8 m (2,722 ft). It was designed to be the centerpiece of a large-scale, mixed-use development known as Downtown Dubai. Construction took over five years, and the skyscraper was officially opened in January 2010. -
Photo: IkiwanerAn Agusta A109 rescue helicopter leaves Mount Pilatus, near Lucerne, Switzerland, after recovering a patient. Later renamed AgustaWestland AW109, the A109 is a helicopter manufactured by Agusta (now AgustaWestland) of Italy. It is a light-weight, twin-engine, eight-seat multi-purpose craft. -
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. -
Image credit: FastfissionSchematic 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). -
Photograph: David ShankboneDavid Faiman is an Israeli engineer and physicist recognized for his expertise on solar power. He is the director of the Ben-Gurion National Solar Energy Center and Chairman of the Department of Solar Energy & Environmental Physics at Ben-Gurion University's Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research in Sde Boker. -
Photo: Sergey KrivchikovThe 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. -
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. -
Photo credit: Hans HillewaertWind 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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A billet of enriched uranium, which is uranium where the percent composition of uranium-235 (U) 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. -
Photograph: MyrabellaThe Nice tramway crossing Place Garibaldi, Nice, where it lowers its pantograph and is powered by batteries. This 8.7-kilometre (5.4 mi), single-line tramway is operated by Veolia Transdev. It opened on 24 November 2007, replacing bus lines 1, 2, 5 and 18. -
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 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. -
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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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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Credit: Mike McGregorThe OLPC XO-1 is an inexpensive subnotebook laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries. -
Photograph: Diego DelsoThe 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. -
Photograph: David IliffAn interior view of Stockwell Garage, a large bus garage in Stockwell, London, designed by Adie, Button and Partners and opened in 1952. The 393-foot-long (120 m) roof structure, seen here, is supported by ten very shallow "two-hinged" arched ribs, between which are cantilevered barrel vaults topped by large skylights. The garage, which could originally hold 200 buses, has been a Grade II* Listed Building since 1988.
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