Even as the initial sales receipts for the first transistors to hit the market were being tallied up in 1948, the next generation of transistors had already been invented (see “The First Transistor and How it Worked.”) Since then, engineers have reinvented the transistor over and over again, raiding condensed-matter physics for anything that might […]
This month we’re celebrating the launch of our second PDF collection of Hands On articles, which IEEE members can download from IEEE Spectrum’s website and share with friends. So we thought we’d take a look at the relative popularity of Hands On articles published over the last five years and share the top 15 projects […]
It’s been a couple of years, but the IEEE Spectrum Robot Gift Guide is back for 2022! We’ve got all kinds of new robots, and right now is an excellent time to buy one (or a dozen), since many of them are on sale this week. We’ve tried to focus on consumer robots that are […]
Earlier this year, friend-of-IEEE-Spectrum and fashiontech designer Anouk Wipprecht gave a peek of what it’s like to be a competitor on Battlebots, the 22-year-old robot combat competition, from the preparation “pit” to the arena. Her team, Ghostraptor, was knocked out of the regular competition after losing its first and second fights, though they regained some […]
How much does a tech professional in the United States earn? In 2021, the median income of U.S. engineers and other tech professionals who were IEEE members hit US $160,097, up from $154,443 in 2020. That bump in pay was revealed in the IEEE-USA 2022 Salary & Benefits Survey. This apparent increase turns into a […]
The hot, humid environment of tropical marine areas such as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef can wreak havoc on the marine autonomous systems. Underwater and surface MAS are used for marine monitoring, locating objects such as mines on the seafloor, and rescuing swimmers. “Tropical conditions can cause systems to overheat or prevent high-density lithium batteries from […]
First released in 2005, the Arduino microcontroller turbo charged the maker movement. While more advanced boards have joined the Arduino line since, the basic Uno microcontroller remains popular. Inexpensive, simple to program, and robust enough for beginners while still having enough capacity to do interesting things for more advanced users, it forms the basis of […]
AT&T shut down its 3G network in the United States on 22 February—a process called “sunsetting.” It’s the first of the three major carriers in the country to do so. T-Mobile will be shutting down its 3G network on 1 July, while Verizon has announced it will be doing the same on 31 December. All […]
Vannevar Bush was the first trained electrical engineer to publicly proclaim in influential circles that EE’s are one engine of innovation and the driving in digital technology. As the early the 1930s, he viewed the entrepreneur and the engineer as twin forces for progress and technological advancement. Born in 1890 in Massachusetts, he came to […]
Nobody should be surprised that the man who called the unraveling of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century” has been trying to reverse history. He took the first step in Crimea in 2014, and in the early morning hours of 24 February he ordered a large-scale invasion of Ukraine. This […]