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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. (Full article...)
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Image 1Interstate 229 (I-229) is an auxiliary Interstate Highway located entirely within Sioux Falls, South Dakota, United States. It runs for approximately 11 miles (18 km) around the southern and eastern sides of the city, providing a bypass route and connecting I-29 and I-90. The freeway is generally four-to-six lanes wide and follows the Big Sioux River through parts of the city. I-229 also has a business route that provides access to downtown Sioux Falls from the freeway.
An eastern bypass of Sioux Falls was proposed in the 1940s by the city government and developed over the following decade by the state government. It was incorporated into plans for the Interstate Highway System, which was approved by the federal government in 1956, and assigned the designation of I-229 in 1958. Construction began that year and was completed in two sections: the southern half in 1961 and the northern half in 1962. (Full article...) -
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The Lincoln Alexander Parkway, nicknamed The Linc, is a municipal expressway in the city of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, which connects Highway 403 with the Red Hill Valley Parkway, which continues north to the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW). Collectively, the two expressways form a southern and eastern bypass of Hamilton. Located on the Hamilton mountain, atop the Niagara Escarpment, the freeway was named after the former Progressive Conservative MP and first black Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, Lincoln Alexander in July 1997, despite him never holding a driver's license.
Although planning for the Red Hill Creek Expressway began in 1963, construction did not begin until 1991, by which point the project had become a contentious issue. The province agreed to split the cost for the east–west portion of the planned expressway, but opposed the north–south link. Nevertheless, construction continued throughout the mid-1990s, and the expressway opened on October 15, 1997, just over a decade before the controversial Red Hill Valley Parkway, which opened on November 17, 2007. The speed limit along the parkway is 90 kilometres per hour (56 mph). (Full article...) -
Image 3Route 27 is a state highway in New Jersey, United States. It runs 38.53 mi (62.01 km) from U.S. Route 206 (US 206) in Princeton, Mercer County northeast to an interchange with Route 21 (McCarter Highway) and Broad Street in Newark, Essex County. The route passes through many communities along the way, including New Brunswick, Highland Park, Edison, Metuchen, Rahway, and Elizabeth. Route 27 is a two- to four-lane undivided highway for most of its length, passing through a variety of urban and suburban environments. It intersects many roads along the way, including Route 18 in New Brunswick, Interstate 287 (I-287) in Edison, the Garden State Parkway in Woodbridge Township, Route 35 in Rahway, Route 28 in Elizabeth, and U.S. Route 22 in Newark. Route 27 crosses the Raritan River on the Albany Street Bridge, which connects Highland Park on the east with New Brunswick on the west.
Route 27 was part of the alignment through New Jersey of the Lincoln Highway, the United States' first transcontinental highway that was established in 1913. Route 27 is still referred to as the Lincoln Highway in many municipalities, such as Edison Township. The Lincoln Highway became part of pre-1927 Route 1 between New Brunswick and Elizabeth in 1916 and pre-1927 Route 13 between Trenton and New Brunswick in 1917. In 1927, the Lincoln Highway was renumbered as Route 27 between Trenton and Newark. U.S. Route 1 was designated on this portion of the road until it was relocated by the 1940s. U.S. Route 206 followed the route from Trenton to Princeton until 1953, when the southern terminus of Route 27 was cut back to Princeton to avoid the concurrency with U.S. Route 206. (Full article...) -
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The Airbus A380 is a very large wide-body airliner that was developed and produced by Airbus. It is the world's largest passenger airliner and the only full-length double-deck jet airliner. Airbus studies started in 1988, and the project was announced in 1990 to challenge the dominance of the Boeing 747 in the long-haul market. The then-designated A3XX project was presented in 1994; Airbus launched the €9.5–billion ($10.7–billion) A380 programme on 19 December 2000. The first prototype was unveiled in Toulouse on 18 January 2005, with its first flight on 27 April 2005. It then obtained its type certificate from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on 12 December 2006.
Due to difficulties with the electrical wiring, the initial production was delayed by two years and the development costs almost doubled. It was first delivered to Singapore Airlines on 15 October 2007 and entered service on 25 October. Production peaked at 30 per year in 2012 and 2014. Airbus ended production of the A380 in 2021. The A380's estimated $25 billion development cost was not recouped by the time Airbus ended production. (Full article...) -
Image 5K-23 is a 199.117-mile-long (320.448 km) south–north state highway in the U.S. State of Kansas. It starts as a continuation of Oklahoma State Highway 23 (SH-23) and it runs northward to U.S. Route 83 (US-83) and K-383 near Selden. Along the way it intersects several major east–west highways, including US-54 and US-160 in Meade, US-50 and US-400 in Cimarron, US-56 near Montezuma, K-4 near Healy, and Interstate 70 (I-70) and US-40 south of Grainfield. All but about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) of K-23's alignment is maintained by the Kansas Department of Transportation. The entire section within Cimarron is maintained by the city and a section in Hoxie from Utah Street to Queen Street is maintained by the city.
Before state highways were numbered in Kansas there were auto trails. In Meade K-23 crosses the former Atlantic and Pacific Highway. Then in Cimarron it crosses the former National Old Trails Road, Old Santa Fe Trail, New Santa Fe Trail and Albert Pike Highway. Further north in Dighton it crosses the former Kansas-Colorado Boulevard. Then the overlap with K-4 follows the former Bee Line. By Grainfield, the section that follows old US-40 is the former Golden Belt. A section from Hoxie southward along K-23 follows the former Roosevelt National Highway. Farther north in Hoxie, it crosses the former Kansas White Way and former Blue Line. The northern terminus connects to the former Pikes Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway. (Full article...) -
Image 6M-53 is a north–south state trunkline highway in the US state of Michigan that connects Detroit to The Thumb region. The highway starts in Detroit at a connection with M-3 and ends in Port Austin, Michigan at M-25. In between, the trunkline passes through the northern suburbs of Metro Detroit, connects to freeways like Interstate 69 (I-69) and provides access to rural farmland. In Macomb County, M-53 follows the Christopher Columbus Freeway and POW/MIA Memorial Freeway, while the remainder of the highway is known as Van Dyke Avenue in the metro area or Van Dyke Road elsewhere. The highway has also been named the Earle Memorial Highway for one of the pioneers of the Good Roads Movement and Michigan's highway system.
When the first state highways were signed in the field in 1919, M-53 was one of them, running from Detroit to Elkton. In the 1920s, the highway was extended northward to connect with Port Austin. Later improvements through 1940 realigned a section of the roadway near Imlay City and completed paving. With planning and construction during the 1950s and 1960s, the state converted portions of the road north of Detroit to have divided highway and freeway segments. The freeway bypass of Romeo was started in the 1990s and finished to its current state in 2003. (Full article...) -
Image 7K-170 is a 21.759-mile-long (35.018 km) state highway in the U.S. State of Kansas. K-170's western terminus is at K-99 about 12 miles (19 km) north of Emporia, and the eastern terminus is at K-31 on the west side of Osage City, a mile south of the K-31 intersection with U.S. Route 56 (US-56). K-170 provides access, via county roads, to Lyons County State Fishing Lake.
The highway that became K-170 was first designated by 1930 as K-70, from K-11 and K-22 east to Reading. K-11 was renumbered to K-99, and K-22 was decommissioned in 1938. Then in 1946, the highway was extended east to end in Osage City. In 1957, K-70 was renumbered to K-170 to avoid a numbering confusion with Interstate 70 (I-70). (Full article...)
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Image 1Photo: Benh Lieu SongThe 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 2Photo: Arthur Rothstein; Restoration: Lise BroerA portrait of George Washington Carver, American scientist, botanist, educator and inventor, from 1942. Much of Carver's fame is based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes. In addition to his work on agricultural extension education for purposes of advocacy of sustainable agriculture and appreciation of plants and nature, Carver's important accomplishments also included improvement of racial relations, mentoring children, poetry, painting, and religion. One of his most important roles was in undermining, through the fame of his achievements and many talents, the widespread stereotype of the time that the black race was intellectually inferior to the white race.
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Image 3Photo 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.
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Image 4Photo: Evan AmosThe Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced in 1982 by Commodore International. Its low retail price and easy availability led to the system becoming the market leader for three years. It remains the best-selling single personal computer model of all time.
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Image 5Photo: Drew Jacksich; edit: Bruce1eeUnion 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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Image 6A 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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Image 7A 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.
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Image 8The Australia Telescope Compact Array is a radio telescope operated by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) at the Paul Wild Observatory, 25 km (16 mi) west of the town of Narrabri in New South Wales, Australia. The telescope is an array of six identical dishes each 22 metres (72 ft) in diameter, which commonly operate in aperture synthesis mode to produce images from radio waves. Five of the dishes can be moved along a 3-kilometre (2 mi) railway track; the sixth is situated three kilometres west of the end of the main track. Each dish weighs about 270 tonnes (270 long tons; 300 short tons).
This photograph, showing five of the Australia Telescope Compact Array's dishes, was taken around 1984, in the late phase of the construction process. It is a long-exposure photograph taken in darkness in the late evening; during the exposure, the photographer, John Masterson, walked around the dishes firing off over 130 flashes using a hand-held flash gun. -
Image 9Photo credit: Christian KuhnaThe 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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Image 10Image credit: Lewis HineA 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 11Photograph: 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.
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Image 12An 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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Image 13Credit: 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.
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Image 14The Trojan Room coffee pot was the inspiration for the world's first webcam. The coffee pot was located in the corridor just outside the so-called Trojan Room within the old Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. The webcam was created in 1991 to help people working in other parts of the building avoid pointless trips to the coffee pot by providing, on the user's desktop computer, a live 128×128 pixel greyscale picture of the state of the coffee pot. The webcam was shut down on 22 August 2001, following the Computer Laboratory's move to the William Gates Building.
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Image 15Photo credit: Eric PierceThe pin tumbler lock is a lock mechanism that utilizes a group of pins of varying lengths to prevent opening the lock without the correct key. Pin tumblers are most commonly employed in cylinder locks, but may also be found in tubular or radial locks.
When the correct key is inserted, the gaps between the key pins (red) and driver pins (blue) align with the edge of the plug (yellow). -
Image 17A 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.
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Image 18Photograph: 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.
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Image 19Credit: Mike McGregorThe OLPC XO-1 is an inexpensive subnotebook laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries.
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Image 20Photo credit: HeptagonA multiple exposure composite image of the implosion of a chimney at the former brewery "Henninger" in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. This controlled demolition technique involves strategically placing explosive material and timing its detonation so that a structure collapses on itself in a matter of seconds, minimizing the physical damage to its immediate surroundings.
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Image 2Ford assembly line, 1913. The magneto assembly line was the first. (from History of technology)
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Image 4Walls at Sacsayhuaman (from History of technology)
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Image 6Self-replicating 3D printer (from Emerging technologies)
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Image 7Top 30 AI patent applicants in 2016 (from Emerging technologies)
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Image 9The 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)
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Image 10'BUILD YOUR OWN TELEVISION RECEIVER.' Science and Invention magazine cover, November 1928 (from Invention)
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Image 14Eric M. C. Tigerstedt (1887–1925) was known as a pioneer of sound-on-film technology. Tigerstedt in 1915. (from Invention)
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Image 16Edison electric light bulbs 1879–80 (from History of technology)
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Image 173D printer (from Emerging technologies)
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Image 19The preserved Rocket (from History of technology)
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Image 21Thomas Edison with his second phonograph, photographed by Levin Corbin Handy in Washington, April 1878 (from History of technology)
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Image 22Agriculture preceded writing in the history of technology. (from History of technology)
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Image 23A 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)
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Image 25Newcomen steam engine for pumping mines (from History of technology)
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Image 26Alessandro Volta with the first electrical battery. Volta is recognized as an influential inventor. (from Invention)
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Image 27A variety of stone tools (from History of technology)
Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch
- ... that Justin Yu, the current Classic Tetris World Champion, is also a cellist in MIT's video game orchestra?
- ... that Henry E. Sigerist felt "depressed" after reading A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 16th and 17th Centuries?
- ... that Guy Parmelin, now President of Switzerland, opened the study program of cyber security of the Lucerne School of Information Technology in 2018?
- ... that Turkey's Anadolu Shipyard signed a contract with India's Hindustan Shipyard to transfer technology for the building of five fleet support ships for the Indian Navy?
- ... that Research Policy is regarded as the leading journal in the field of innovation studies?
- ... that Suresh Jadhav led the development of the COVID-19 vaccine marketed as Covishield?
- ... that when Chorus Systèmes SA was founded in 1986, French technology start-up companies were rare?
- ... that ice XVII (structure shown) potentially has a use in green technology as a medium for storing hydrogen?
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 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...) -
Image 2Facebook 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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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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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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X, commonly referred to by its former name Twitter, is a social networking service based in the United States. With over 500 million users, 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...) -
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Elon Reeve Musk (/ˈiːlɒn/; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman and investor. He is the founder, chairman, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, product architect, and former chairman of Tesla, Inc.; owner, executive chairman, and CTO of X Corp.; founder of The Boring Company and xAI; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the Musk Foundation. 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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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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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...) -
Image 9Artificial intelligence (AI), in its broadest sense, is intelligence exhibited by machines, particularly computer systems. It is a field of research in computer science that develops and studies methods and software that enable machines to perceive their environment and uses learning and intelligence to take actions that maximize their chances of achieving defined goals. Such machines may be called AIs. (Full article...)
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Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple languages. (Full article...)
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- May 10, 2024 – Israel–Hamas war protests
- Police dismantle encampments and arrest dozens of students protesting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Reuters)
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