For computer pioneer Craig Partridge, pushing the envelope on interesting challenges has been his modus operandi. It’s what led him to make key contributions to the early Internet. Today he’s working on getting a better understanding of traffic flows in VPNs. In addition, he is trying to figure out what causes high rates of packet […]
The violet ray machine has an awesome name that conjures up images of cartoon supervillains taking out Gotham, but its actual history is even odder—and it includes a superhero, not a villain. The technology underpinning the machine begins with none other than Nikola Tesla and his eponymous coil. After Tesla and others made some refinements […]
Last year I picked up a Tandy Model 100 at the Vintage Computer Festival East for about US $90. Originally released in 1983, it was the forerunner of today’s notebook computers, featuring a good-quality keyboard and LCD display. It could run for 20 hours on four AA batteries and a month on standby. Thanks to […]
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 […]
When they met at a cocktail party in 1956, George Devol and Joseph Engelberger instantly bonded over their love of science fiction, happily chatting about Isaac Asimov and his theories on robotics. Then the conversation turned more serious. Two years earlier, Devol had filed a patent for a general-purpose manipulator for performing repetitive tasks, and […]
I’ve never had an interest in pursuing game such as deer or grouse. Hunting was never my thing. But I do enjoy a good technical challenge. And I recently found a challenge that involves hunting—with downed radiosondes as the quarry. Radiosondes are instrument packages carried aloft by weather balloons. They measure atmospheric conditions up to […]
Electric vehicles are gaining in popularity around the world, especially with the high cost of fuel. But some of the current EV models aren’t a good fit for owners who can’t wait around for hours for their batteries to charge, such as taxi drivers, delivery people, and ride-hailing services. One startup trying to solve this […]
“The Jetsons” premiered on ABC on 23 September 1962. Set 100 years in the future, the animated comedy series followed the Jetson family—George and Jane and their kids, Judy and Elroy—as they went about their futurist yet surprisingly relatable lives in Orbit City, in a tech-laden house on adjustable columns, commuting by flying car and […]
The spacecraft that took men to the surface of the moon and back relied on computers that pushed the state of the art when they were built. Designed by MIT, the Apollo Guidance Computers came with 72 kilobytes of ROM and 4 kilobytes of RAM. This memory used a form of magnetic core memory, where […]
The global semiconductor shortage has made life tough for anyone using microcontrollers, with lead times now sometimes quoted in years. But there has been one bright spot: the US $4 Pi Pico, a microcontroller based on the new RP2040 chip. Not only does the RP2040 have lots of compute power, it hasn’t suffered the kind […]