History Of Chemistry ... Early attempts to explain the nature of matter and its transformations failed. The protoscience of chemistry, Alchemy, was also unsuccessful in explaining the nature of matter...
Information Technology ... Technological capacity and growth Hilbert and Lopez identify the exponential pace of technological change (a kind of Moore's law): machines’ application-specific capacity to compute information per capita has roughly doubled every 14 months between 1986-2007; the per capita capacity of the world’s general-purpose computers has doubled every 18 months during the same two decades; the global telecommunication capacity per capita doubled every 34 months; the world’s storage capacity per capita required roughly 40 months to double (every 3 years); and per capita broadcast information has doubled roughly every 12.3 years...
Graphics ... Graphics can be functional or artistic. The latter can be a recorded version, such as a photograph, or an interpretation by a scientist to highlight essential features, or an artist, in which case the distinction with imaginary graphics may become blurred...
Electronics ... Electronics is distinct from electrical and electro-mechanical science and technology, which deals with the generation, distribution, switching, storage and conversion of electrical energy to and from other energy forms using wires, motors, generators, batteries, switches, relays, transformers, resistors and other passive components. This distinction started around 1906 with the invention by Lee De Forest of the triode, which made electrical amplification of weak radio signals and audio signals possible with a non-mechanical device...
Mobile Device ... Early pocket sized ones were joined in the late 2000s by larger but otherwise similar tablet computers... Types Mobile devices have been designed for many applications and include: Mobile computers Mobile collaboration Mobile internet device Mobile Web Smartphone, Tablet computer Personal digital assistant/enterprise digital assistant Calculator Handheld game console Portable media player Digital still camera (DSC) Digital video camera (DVC or digital camcorder) Mobile phone Smartphone, Feature phone Pager Personal navigation device (PND) Tablet computer Uses Handheld devices have become ruggedized for use in mobile field management...
Database ... The term database is correctly applied to the data and their supporting data structures, and not to the database management system (DBMS). The database data collection with DBMS is called a database system...
Mobile Phone ... In addition to telephony, modern mobile phones also support a wide variety of other services such as text messaging, MMS, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications (infrared, Bluetooth), business applications, gaming and photography. Mobile phones that offer these and more general computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones...
History Of Technology ... Technological artifacts are products of an economy, a force for economic growth, and a large part of everyday life. Technological innovations affect, and are affected by, a society's cultural traditions...
Federated Database System ... McLeod and Heimbigner were among the first to define a federated database system, as one which "define the architecture and interconnect databases that minimize central authority yet support partial sharing and coordination among database systems". Through data abstraction, federated database systems can provide a uniform user interface, enabling users and clients to store and retrieve data in multiple noncontiguous databases with a single query -- even if the constituent databases are heterogeneous...
IBM ... The company was founded in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation through a merger of three companies: the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company, and the Computing Scale Corporation. CTR adopted the name International Business Machines in 1924, using a name previously designated to CTR's subsidiary in Canada and later South America...
Molecular Nanotechnology ... A roadmap for the development of MNT is an objective of a broadly based technology project led by Battelle (the manager of several U. S. National Laboratories) and the Foresight Institute...
Intel ... Intel was an early developer of SRAM and DRAM memory chips, and this represented the majority of its business until 1981. Although Intel created the world's first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971, it was not until the success of the personal computer (PC) that this became its primary business...
Speech Recognition ... Speech recognition applications include voice user interfaces such as voice dialing (e.g., "Call home"), call routing (e.g., "I would like to make a collect call"), domotic appliance control, search (e.g., find a podcast where particular words were spoken), simple data entry (e.g., entering a credit card number), preparation of structured documents (e.g., a radiology report), speech-to-text processing (e.g., word processors or emails), and aircraft (usually termed Direct Voice Input). The term voice recognition refers to finding the identity of "who" is speaking, rather than what they are saying...
History Of Robots ... Chinese accounts relate a history of automata back to the 10th century BC when Yan Shi is credited with making an automaton resembling a human in an account from the Lie Zi text. Western and Eastern civilisations have concepts of artificial servants and companions with a long history...
Linux Adoption ... Several national governments have passed policies moving governmental computers to Linux from proprietary systems in the last few years... History Gartner claimed that Linux-powered personal computers accounted for 4% of unit sales in 2008... Lenovo announced it would ship select models with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop pre-installed HP announced that it would begin shipping computers preinstalled with Red Hat Enterprise Linux in Australia ASUS launched the Linux-based ASUS Eee PC 2008 Dell announced it would begin shipping Ubuntu-based computers to Canada and Latin America Dell began shipping systems with Ubuntu pre-installed in China Acer launched the Linux-based Acer Aspire One In June 2008 the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT), a bulk computer buyer for students in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, decided to switch entirely to supplying Linux after Microsoft attempted to use its monopoly position to sell the organization Windows bundled with Micr...
Machine Learning ... In addition to performance bounds, computational learning theorists study the time complexity and feasibility of learning. In computational learning theory, a computation is considered feasible if it can be done in polynomial time...
Search Engine Technology ... Some search engines go through the indexing process every few weeks and refresh the complete index used for web search requests while others keep updating small fragments of the index continuously. Before web pages can be indexed, an algorithm decides which node (a server in a distributed service) will index any given page and makes the information available as metadata for other components in the search engine...
Natural Language Processing ... Whether NLP is distinct from, or identical to, the field of computational linguistics is a matter of perspective. The Association for Computational Linguistics defines the latter as focusing on the theoretical aspects of NLP...
Robotics ... The concept and creation of machines that could operate autonomously dates back to classical times, but research into the functionality and potential uses of robots did not grow substantially until the 20th century. Today, robotics is a rapidly growing field, as we continue to research, design, and build new robots that serve various practical purposes, whether domestically, commercially, or militarily...
Engineering ... The American Engineers' Council for Professional Development (ECPD, the predecessor of ABET) has defined "engineering" as: The creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property.. ...