Portal:Technology

The Technology Portal

Technology is the application of conceptual knowledge for achieving 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.

While technology contributes to economic development and improves human prosperity, it can also have negative impacts like pollution and resource depletion, and can cause social harms like technological unemployment resulting from automation. As a result, there are ongoing philosophical and political debates about the role and use of technology, the ethics of technology, and ways to mitigate its downsides. (Full article...)

Selected articles

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  Simplified diagram of the process

  
  Injection moulding (U.S. spelling: injection molding) is a manufacturing process for producing parts by injecting molten material into a mould, or mold. Injection moulding can be performed with a host of materials mainly including metals (for which the process is called die-casting), glasses, elastomers, confections, and most commonly thermoplastic and thermosetting polymers. Material for the part is fed into a heated barrel, mixed (using a helical screw), and injected into a mould cavity, where it cools and hardens to the configuration of the cavity. After a product is designed, usually by an industrial designer or an engineer, moulds are made by a mould-maker (or toolmaker) from metal, usually either steel or aluminium, and precision-machined to form the features of the desired part. Injection moulding is widely used for manufacturing a variety of parts, from the smallest components to entire body panels of cars. Advances in 3D printing technology, using photopolymers that do not melt during the injection moulding of some lower-temperature thermoplastics, can be used for some simple injection moulds.
  
  Injection moulding uses a special-purpose machine that has three parts: the injection unit, the mould and the clamp. Parts to be injection-moulded must be very carefully designed to facilitate the moulding process; the material used for the part, the desired shape and features of the part, the material of the mould, and the properties of the moulding machine must all be taken into account. The versatility of injection moulding is facilitated by this breadth of design considerations and possibilities. (Full article...)
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  The interim Lynn station in December 2023

  
  Lynn station (signed as Central Square–Lynn) is an intermodal transit station in downtown Lynn, Massachusetts. It is a station on the MBTA Commuter Rail Newburyport/Rockport Line and a hub for the MBTA bus system. The rail station and parking garage temporarily closed on October 1, 2022, pending a reconstruction project, while the busway remained open. Interim platforms nearby opened in December 2023.
  
  Service on the Eastern Railroad through Lynn began on August 27, 1838. The original wooden station was replaced by a larger structure in 1848, and the Saugus Branch began serving Lynn in 1855. In the "Great Lynn Depot War", a local disagreement in 1865 about where to place a replacement station became a major court case. It ended in 1872 with the construction of stations at two closely spaced sites, though one was soon torn down. The other station burned in 1889; it was replaced in 1895 by a depot with a large clock tower. (Full article...)
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  A portion of the viaduct crosses 42nd Street at Grand Central Terminal.

  
  The Park Avenue Viaduct, also known as the Pershing Square Viaduct, is a roadway in Manhattan, New York City. It carries vehicular traffic on Park Avenue from 40th to 46th Streets. The viaduct is composed of two sections: a steel viaduct with two roadways from 40th to 42nd Streets, as well as a pair of roadways between 42nd and 46th Streets. The section from 40th to 42nd Streets was designated a New York City landmark in 1980 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. The street-level service roads of Park Avenue, which flank the viaduct between 40th and 42nd Streets, are called Pershing Square. The section of the viaduct between 42nd and 46th Streets travels around Grand Central Terminal and the MetLife Building, then through the Helmsley Building; all three buildings lie across the north–south axis of the avenue.
  
  The viaduct was first proposed by New York Central Railroad president William J. Wilgus in 1900 as part of the construction of Grand Central Terminal. Construction on the viaduct's western leg began in 1917, after the terminal had opened, and was completed in 1919. The western leg initially carried two-way traffic, so the eastern leg was completed for northbound traffic in 1928, and the western leg was reconfigured to carry southbound traffic only. An information booth was established in 1939 beneath the viaduct, and the city renovated the viaduct in the early 1990s. (Full article...)
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  Mississippi Highway 364 (MS 364) is a state highway in northeastern Mississippi, separated in two segments. The route starts at MS 30 southeast of Booneville and travels northeastward. The road travels through Altitude and ends at MS 365 in Cairo. The other segment begins in Holcut and travels eastward to its terminus at MS 25 at Midway. The route was designated in 1950, from a former segment of MS 30 between MS 365 and MS 25. The route was extended southwestwards to MS 30 around 1960, and the highway was completely paved by 1984. The section of MS 364 near the Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway were removed by the same year, and another section from MS 365 to the waterway was removed ten years later. (Full article...)
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  Interstate 81 (I-81) is part of the Interstate Highway System that runs 855.02 miles (1,376.02 km) northward from Dandridge, Tennessee, to the Thousand Islands Bridge at the Canadian border near Fishers Landing, New York. In Tennessee, I-81 serves the northeastern part of the state, running 75.66 miles (121.76 km) from its southern terminus with I-40 in Dandridge to the Virginia state line in Bristol. The route serves the Tri-Cities region of the state and the eastern parts of the Knoxville metropolitan area, terminating about 35 miles (56 km) east of Knoxville. I-81 bypasses most cities that it serves, instead providing access via interchanges with state and federal routes. It remains in the Ridge-and-Valley topographic region of the Appalachian Mountains for its entire length in Tennessee, and runs in a northeast to southwest direction.
  
  I-81 roughly follows the corridors of U.S. Routes 11E and 11W in Tennessee, but unlike many stretches of Interstate Highways, does not closely parallel any U.S. Numbered Highway until it reaches Bristol. The first parts of I-81 in the state were constructed in the early 1960s, with additional progress made on the Interstate throughout that decade. However, most of the route was constructed later than the other Interstate Highways initially allocated to Tennessee, and did not open until after 1970. The last stretch of I-81 in Tennessee, which was more than half of the entire route in the state, was completed in 1975. From 1985 to 2007, the Interstate had one auxiliary route, I-181, which was renumbered as part of I-26. (Full article...)
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  Delaware Route 261 (DE 261) and Pennsylvania Route 261 (PA 261), also known as Foulk Road, is a 6.63-mile (10.67 km) state highway running through Delaware and Pennsylvania. DE 261 runs 4.37 miles (7.03 km) through New Castle County, Delaware from an interchange with U.S. Route 202 (US 202) and DE 141 north of Interstate 95 (I-95) near Fairfax, Delaware, a community north of Wilmington, northeast to the Pennsylvania state line. The road runs through suburban areas of Brandywine Hundred as a four-lane road south of DE 92 and a two-lane road north of DE 92. At the Pennsylvania state line, Foulk Road becomes PA 261 and continues 2.26 miles (3.64 km) through Bethel Township in Delaware County, intersecting PA 491 in Booths Corner before ending at an interchange with US 322.
  
  DE 261 was originally designated along Foulk Road in the 1930s. In the 1960s, most of the route was widened into a four-lane road. The southern terminus at US 202 was reconstructed into an interchange in the 2000s. PA 261 was first designated in 1928 along Foulk Road between the Delaware state line and PA 61 and PA 161 in Chelsea. The route was extended north along Valley Brook Road to US 1 in Chester Heights by 1940. The northern terminus of PA 261 was moved to its current location by 1980. (Full article...)
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  Station platforms on reopening day, facing north.

  
  The WTC Cortlandt station (signed as World Trade Center on walls and historically known as Cortlandt Street and Cortlandt Street–World Trade Center) is a station on the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line of the New York City Subway in the Financial District of Manhattan. The station is located under the intersection of Greenwich Street and Cortlandt Way within the World Trade Center. It is served by the 1 train at all times.
  
  The original Cortlandt Street station was built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) and opened in 1918 as part of the Dual Contracts. The station was renovated in the 1960s when the original World Trade Center was built. Around that time, the portion of Cortlandt Street above the station was demolished to make way for the World Trade Center. The Cortlandt Street station was destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. Although service on the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line through the area was restored in September 2002, the station's reconstruction was delayed until 2015 because the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had to first rebuild the World Trade Center PATH station beneath it. After an extensive reconstruction, the Cortlandt Street station reopened on September 8, 2018, as WTC Cortlandt. (Full article...)
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  Route 158 (also known as the Centre Street Bridge) was a short state highway in Newark and Harrison, New Jersey, in the counties of Essex and Hudson, which are located in the United States. The Centre Street Bridge was first constructed in 1834 as a single-level railroad bridge. However, in 1911, almost eight decades later, a second, upper level was constructed for rapid transit. In 1937, the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, now part of the Port Authority Trans-Hudson line, was realigned onto railroad tracks along New Jersey Route 21. The upper level of the bridge was abandoned for this purpose, and was later converted to roadway. At the western end in Newark it ran just south of Park Place, beginning at Center Street. The route headed eastward, crossing over Route 21 and the Passaic River before entering Harrison, where it terminated at Second Street north of New Jersey Railroad Avenue.
  
  Eventually, the upper level roadway was designated by the New Jersey State Highway Department as Route 25AD. A spur of the recently designated State Highway Route 25A, the highway department made the roadway a suffixed spur of the highway because of the close proximity. Route 25A later became New Jersey Route 58 and is now an alignment of Interstate 280. The designation remained intact until the 1953 New Jersey state highway renumbering on January 1, 1953, when it was changed to New Jersey Route 158. Route 158 appeared on the state map for New Jersey until up to 1960, when it disappeared from the maps as a public highway. After 1960, Route 158 did not appear on maps, and the bridge was torn down around 1979. (Full article...)
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  The Brill Tramway, also known as the Quainton Tramway, Wotton Tramway, Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad and Metropolitan Railway Brill Branch, was a six-mile (10 km) rail line in the Aylesbury Vale, Buckinghamshire, England. It was privately built in 1871 by the 3rd Duke of Buckingham as a horse tram line to transport goods between his lands around Wotton House and the national railway network. Lobbying from residents of the nearby town of Brill led to the line's extension to Brill and conversion to passenger use in early 1872. Two locomotives were bought for the line, but as it had been designed and built with horses in mind, services were very slow; trains travelled at an average speed of only 4 miles per hour (6.4 km/h).
  
  In 1883, the Duke of Buckingham announced plans to upgrade the route to main line railway standards and extend the line to Oxford, creating a through route from Aylesbury to Oxford. If built, the line would have been the shortest route between Aylesbury and Oxford at the time. Despite the backing of the wealthy Ferdinand de Rothschild, investors were deterred by the costly tunnelling proposed, and the Duke was unable to raise sufficient funds. In 1888 a cheaper scheme was proposed, in which the line would be built to a lower standard and wind around hills to avoid tunnelling. In anticipation of this, the line was named the Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad. Although the existing line was upgraded in 1894, the extension to Oxford was never built. Instead, the operation of the Brill Tramway was taken over by London's Metropolitan Railway, and Brill became one of their two north-western termini. The line was rebuilt a second time in 1910, and more advanced locomotives were introduced, allowing trains to run faster. (Full article...)
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  Union Pacific Big Boy No. 4014 idles in Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, during a servicing stop on July 3, 2023

  
  Union Pacific 4014 is a steam locomotive owned and operated by the Union Pacific (UP) as part of its heritage fleet. It is a four-cylinder simple articulated 4-8-8-4 "Big Boy" type built in 1941 by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) at its Schenectady Locomotive Works. It was assigned to haul heavy freight trains in the Wasatch mountain range. The locomotive was retired from revenue service in 1959 and was donated to the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society; thereafter, it was displayed in Fairplex at the RailGiants Train Museum in Pomona, California.
  
  In 2013, UP re-acquired the locomotive and launched a restoration project at its Steam Shop in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In May 2019, No. 4014 moved under its own power after sitting dormant for almost six decades, becoming the world's largest operational steam locomotive and the only operating Big Boy locomotive of the eight that remain in existence. It now operates in excursion service for the UP steam program. No. 4014 became the first mainline steam locomotive to be equipped with the positive train control (PTC) system in 2021. (Full article...)
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  M-186 is a state trunkline highway in the US state of Michigan. Entirely within Fife Lake Township, in southeastern Grand Traverse County, the highway serves as a short connector between M-113 near Kingsley and US Highway 131 (US 131) at the village of Fife Lake. The current incarnation of M-186 is the second usage of the designation, as it was originally used for a highway in Delta County in the 1930s. (Full article...)
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  State Road 538 (SR 538), also known as the Poinciana Parkway, is a 7.2-mile (11.6 km) controlled-access toll road built in Osceola and Polk Counties, Florida. Construction began in 2013 and was completed in 2016. The road had been planned for decades to provide a traffic outlet from Poinciana northwest to US 17/US 92 and Interstate 4. Costs skyrocketed after land along the planned route was converted to a mitigation bank, requiring a bridge to span most of the 1.2 miles (1.9 km) stretch through the restored wetland. The road was originally planned to be built by Avatar—the primary developer of Poinciana—as a four-lane, limited-access highway; after the decision was made to build the bridge across the mitigation bank a toll was planned for the bridge segment of the road, but the collapse of the 2000s housing bubble and increased costs forced Avatar to abandon their plans to build the private toll road. About the same time, Osceola County formed the Osceola County Expressway Authority to build a loop road around the Kissimmee-St.Cloud area, which would include the Poinciana Parkway. (Full article...)
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  Map of Perth with the Causeway highlighted in red

  
  The Causeway is an arterial traffic crossing in Perth, Western Australia, linking the inner-city suburbs of East Perth and Victoria Park. It is carried over the Swan River at the eastern end of Perth Water by two bridges on either side of Heirisson Island. The current Causeway is the third structure to have been built across the river at this point.
  
  Originally the site of mudflats which restricted river navigation, the Colony Government constructed a causeway and bridge across the site. The project was first planned in 1834 and opened in 1843. When floods in 1862 almost destroyed it, the structure was rebuilt using convict labour, and raised to better withstand future floods. Governor John Hampton officially opened the new Causeway on 12 November 1867. Over the following decades, the three bridges making up this second Causeway were widened several times, and they were eventually replaced in 1952. (Full article...)
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  The station's northbound platform in 2019

  
  Overlook Park is a light rail station in Portland, Oregon, United States, served by TriMet as part of the MAX Light Rail system. It is the eighth station southbound on the Yellow Line, which operates between North Portland, downtown Portland and Portland State University. The staggered side platform station is situated between the intersections of Fremont Street and Overlook Boulevard along the median of North Interstate Avenue, near the Interstate Medical Offices of Kaiser Permanente and a park with the same name. It is one of three stations serving North Portland's Overlook neighborhood along with North Prescott Street and North Killingsworth Street. Overlook Park station opened on May 1, 2004, as part of the Interstate MAX extension. Trains serve the station for approximately 21 hours per day on a headway of 15 minutes during most of the day. (Full article...)
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  Pennsylvania Route 222 (PA 222) is a 4.482 mi (7.213 km)-long state highway located in Allentown and its surrounding suburbs in the Lehigh Valley region in eastern Pennsylvania.
  
  Most of the route runs along Hamilton Boulevard. In Center City Allentown, the route is aligned along West Hamilton, West Linden, and West Walnut Streets. The southern terminus of the route is at Interstate 78 (I-78) and PA 309 in Dorneyville, where the roadway changes designation from PA 222 to U.S. Route 222 (US 222). The northern terminus is PA 145 in Allentown. (Full article...)

Selected picture

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  Windmills

  Photograph: Uberprutser

  A 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.
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  Australia Telescope Compact Array

  Photograph credit: John Masterson, CSIRO; restored by Bammesk

  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.
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  New York City Subway

  Map: CountZ

  A 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.
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  Hybrid-propellant rocket

  Photograph credit: Matt Steiner and Kees08

  A 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.
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  Apple Bandai Pippin

  Photograph: Evan Amos

  The 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.
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  Red telephone box

  Photograph: Christoph Braun

  A 'K6' model red telephone box outside of St Paul's Cathedral in London. These kiosks for a public telephone were designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and painted "currant red" for easy visibility. Although such telephone boxes ceased production when the KX series was introduced in 1985, they remain a common sight in Britain and some of its colonies, and are considered a British cultural icon.
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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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  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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  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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  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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  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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  Wiesen Viaduct

  Photograph: David Gubler

  The 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.
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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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  Pin tumbler lock

  Photo credit: Eric Pierce

  The 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).
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  Semi-submersible

  Photo: Agência Brasil

  The 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.
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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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  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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  Nesjavellir

  Photo credit: Gretar Ívarsson

  The Nesjavellir geothermal power plant, located near Þingvellir, Iceland is the largest of five such plants in the country. Because of the high concentration of volcanoes in Iceland, geothermal energy is so inexpensive that in the wintertime, some pavements in Reykjavík and Akureyri are heated.
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  Union Pacific 844

  Photo: Drew Jacksich; edit: Bruce1ee

  Union Pacific 844 at Painted Rocks, Nevada, on a run from Elko to Sparks, on September 15, 2009. Built in 1944, it was the last steam locomotive delivered to Union Pacific and is the only steam locomotive never retired by a North American Class I railroad.
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  Tugboat

  Image credit: Al2/Lycaon/Jeff Dahl

  A diagram showing the parts of a tugboat, a boat used to maneuver large ships in harbours, over the open sea, or through rivers and canals. They also tow barges, disabled ships, and oil rigs. Equipped with powerful engines producing thousands of horsepower, extensive rigging equipment, and a fender of tires for protection, tugboats can push or tow large vessels with high precision and speed.

Did you know...

• ... 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 Justin Yu, the current Classic Tetris World Champion, is also a cellist in MIT's video game orchestra?
• ... 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 OPTi Inc. won a patent suit against Apple for unauthorized use of "predictive snooping" technology?
• ... 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

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  Logo used since 2017

  
  YouTube is an American online video sharing platform owned by Google. Accessible worldwide, YouTube 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. YouTube has more than 2.5 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...)
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  ChatGPT 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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  Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the 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 3rd 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...)
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  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...)
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  The 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...)
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  Musk in 2022

  
  Elon Reeve Musk (/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$210 billion. (Full article...)
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  Meteor Lake is Intel's codename for the first generation of Intel Core Ultra mobile processors, and was officially launched on December 14, 2023. It is the first generation of Intel mobile processors to use a chiplet architecture which means that the processor is a multi-chip module. Tim Wilson led the system on a chip development for this generation microprocessor. (Full article...)
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  Final logo, used from 2012 to 2023

  
  Twitter was an American social networking service that was rebranded as X in 2023. Established in March 2006, it grew to become one of the world's largest social media websites and the fifth-most visited website in the world. It was launched in July 2006, and its creators Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams, established Twitter, Inc. in San Francisco, California, as its managing company in April 2007. (Full article...)
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  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...)
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  Portrait by Joseph Duplessis, 1778

  
  Benjamin Franklin FRS FRSA FRSE (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] – April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a leading writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Among the most influential intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States; a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence; and the first postmaster general. (Full article...)

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