Technology
Inventions from the wheel to the internet, and the people behind them.
Featured in Technology
Start with these, then follow the links inside each article wherever they lead.
Internet
The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that comprises private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies.
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a global interconnected information system that enables content sharing over the Internet. It facilitates access to documents and other web resources according to specific rules of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
Computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to automatically carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs, which enable computers to perform a wide range of tasks.
Transistor
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electrical signals and power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics.
Smartphone
A smartphone is a mobile device that combines the functionality of a traditional mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multimedia playback and streaming.
Steam engine
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder.
Printing press
A printing press is a machine that applies pressure to transfer ink onto a surface made of paper, cloth, or a similar material. It marked a significant improvement on earlier methods, in which the paper was rubbed by hand to transfer applied ink to the printing surface.
Electric power
Electric power is the rate of transfer of electrical energy within a circuit. Its SI unit is the watt, the general unit of power, defined as one joule per second.
Telephone
A telephone, commonly shortened to phone, is a telecommunications device that enables two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into electronic signals that are transmitted via cables and other communication channels to another telephone which reproduces the sound to the receiving user.
Airplane
An airplane, or aeroplane (Commonwealth English), also plane, is a fixed-wing aircraft that is propelled forward by thrust from a jet engine, propeller, or rocket engine. Airplanes come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and wing configurations.
Car
A car, or an automobile, is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of cars state that they run primarily on roads, seat 1-8 people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people rather than cargo.
Satellite
A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation, broadcasting, scientific research, and Earth observation.
Apollo 11
Apollo 11 was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon, and the fifth crewed mission of NASA's Apollo program. The mission was crewed by Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, all of whom were on their second and final spaceflight.
International Space Station
The International Space Station is a space station in low Earth orbit (LEO). It is the product of the International Space Station program and is operated by five partner space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), ESA (Europe), JAXA (Japan), and CSA (Canada).
Global Positioning System
The Global Positioning System is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide geolocation and time information to a GPS receiver anywhere on or near the Earth where signal quality permits.
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions.
Solar power
Solar power, also known as solar electricity, is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Solar panels use the photovoltaic effect to convert light into an electric current.
Semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities to its crystal structure.
Wheel
A wheel is a rotating component intended to turn on an axle bearing. The wheel is one of the key components of the wheel and axle, which is one of the six simple machines.
Writing
Writing is the act of creating a persistent, usually visual representation of language on a surface. As a structured system of communication, writing is also known as written language.
Compass
A compass is a device that shows the cardinal directions used for navigation and geographic orientation. It typically consists of a magnetized needle or another element, such as a compass card or compass rose, that pivots to align itself with magnetic north.
Radio
Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz and 300 gigahertz (GHz).
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission.
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer.
Wright brothers
The Wright brothers, Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867, May 30, 1912), were American aviation pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful airplane. They made the first controlled, sustained flight of an engine-powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, four miles (6 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, at what is now known as Kill Devil Hills.
Electric battery
An electric battery is a source of electric power consisting of one or more electrochemical cells with external connections for powering electrical devices. When a battery is supplying power, its positive terminal is the cathode and its negative terminal is the anode.
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information in a way that, ideally, only authorized parties can decode. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext.
Integrated circuit
An integrated circuit, also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a compact assembly of electronic circuits formed from various electronic components, such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors, and their interconnections. These components are fabricated onto a thin, flat piece ("chip") of semiconductor material, most commonly silicon.
Light-emitting diode
A light-emitting diode is an electronic component that uses a semiconductor to emit light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, thereby releasing energy in the form of photons.
Wind power
Wind power is the use of wind energy to generate useful work. Historically, wind power was used by sails, windmills and windpumps, but today it is mostly used to generate electricity.
Rail transport
Rail transport is a mode of transport using wheeled vehicles running on tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of land transport, next to road transport.
Refrigeration
Refrigeration is the artificial cooling of a space, substance, or system to lower and/or maintain its temperature below the ambient temperature. Early refrigeration uses consumable coolants such as ice and dry ice, while modern refrigeration is a self-sustaining heat exchanger process by which thermal energy is transferred against the temperature gradient via the use of a heat-transfer working fluid (also known as refrigerant), which absorbs heat from a low-temperature medium and releases it to another higher-temperature medium, typically involving active phase change via a compressor and aided by a radiator system.
Camera
A camera is an instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photography and videography, cameras have played a significant role in the progression of visual arts, media, entertainment, surveillance, and scientific research.
Robot
A robot is a machine, especially one programmable via a computer, capable of automatically carrying out a complex series of actions. A robot can be guided by an external or internal control device.
3D printing
3D printing, also called additive manufacturing, is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer control, with the material being added together (e.g.
Microscope
A microscope is a laboratory instrument used to examine objects that are too small to be seen by the naked eye. Microscopy is the science of investigating small objects and structures using a microscope.
Guides in Technology
How the internet works
Packets, addresses, routers and protocols: what actually happens between typing an address and seeing a page.
How computers work
From transistors and binary to processors, memory and software, the layers inside every computer.
The printing press and the information revolution
How Gutenberg's movable type made books cheap and helped drive the Reformation, the scientific revolution and mass literacy.
Electricity and the power grid
How electricity is generated, sent across countries and delivered to a wall socket, and why the grid must balance every second.
How GPS works
How a phone works out where you are from timing signals sent by satellites 20,000 kilometres overhead, with a little help from Einstein.
Batteries and energy storage
How chemical reactions store electricity, why lithium-ion took over, and what limits the batteries in phones and cars.
Encryption and online security
How secret codes evolved from Caesar's shifts to public-key cryptography that protects every online payment.
The history of flight
From balloons and gliders to the Wright brothers, jet engines and mass air travel, and the physics that keeps a plane up.