Portal:Technology
- Alemannisch
- አማርኛ
- العربية
- Авар
- Azərbaycanca
- تۆرکجه
- বাংলা
- 閩南語 / Bân-lâm-gú
- Башҡортса
- Беларуская
- Беларуская (тарашкевіца)
- Български
- Boarisch
- Bosanski
- Català
- Cebuano
- الدارجة
- Deutsch
- ދިވެހިބަސް
- Eesti
- Ελληνικά
- Español
- Esperanto
- فارسی
- Français
- Frysk
- Gĩkũyũ
- 한국어
- Hausa
- हिन्दी
- Bahasa Indonesia
- IsiZulu
- עברית
- ქართული
- Қазақша
- Kurdî
- Кыргызча
- Latina
- Lëtzebuergesch
- Lietuvių
- Magyar
- Македонски
- Bahasa Melayu
- Монгол
- မြန်မာဘာသာ
- नेपाली
- 日本語
- Нохчийн
- Occitan
- ଓଡ଼ିଆ
- Oʻzbekcha / ўзбекча
- پښتو
- Polski
- Português
- Română
- Русский
- Seeltersk
- Shqip
- සිංහල
- کوردی
- Suomi
- Svenska
- தமிழ்
- Taclḥit
- Татарча / tatarça
- ၽႃႇသႃႇတႆး
- Тоҷикӣ
- Türkçe
- Basa Ugi
- Українська
- Tiếng Việt
- Wolof
- 粵語
- Zazaki
- 中文
- Tolışi
- ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ ⵜⴰⵏⴰⵡⴰⵢⵜ
Portal maintenance status: (November 2018)
|
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...)
Recognized articles - load new batch
-
Image 1
Stone Street is a short street in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. It runs in two sections between Whitehall Street in the west and Hanover Square in the east. The street originally was one continuous roadway from Whitehall Street to Hanover Square, but the section between Broad Street and Coenties Alley was eliminated in 1980 to make way for the Goldman Sachs building at 85 Broad Street. The one-block-long western section between Whitehall and Broad Streets carries vehicular traffic, while the two-block-long eastern section between Coenties Alley and Hanover Square is a pedestrian zone.
Stone Street is one of New York's oldest streets, incorporating two 17th-century roads in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. In 1658 it became the first cobbled street in New Amsterdam. After the British conquered the colony, the street was called Duke Street before being renamed Stone Street, for its cobblestone paving, in 1794. Many of the early structures around Stone Street were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1835, after which Stone Street was redeveloped with stores and lofts for dry-goods merchants and importers. Following many decades of neglect, Stone Street was restored in the late 20th century and the eastern section became a restaurant area. (Full article...) -
Image 2
Bright Hill MRT station is an underground Mass Rapid Transit station on the Thomson–East Coast line (TEL). Situated along Sin Ming Avenue in western Bishan, Singapore, it serves various residential estates around the station. It also serves landmarks such as Peirce Secondary School, Ai Tong School, Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park and the Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery.
First announced as Sin Ming MRT station in August 2012, the station was constructed as part of TEL Phase 2 (TEL 2). Since the station was built in a heavily developed area, the bored piles were installed using specialised machinery due to hard granite at the site. In January 2019, it was announced that the station will become an interchange with the future Cross Island line (CRL). (Full article...) -
Image 3
The Wheeling Tunnel is a set of twin tunnels named for and located in Wheeling, West Virginia. The tunnels are 0.27 miles (430 m) long each, cutting through Wheeling Hill, and each carries two lanes of Interstate 70 and U.S. Route 250. The tunnels originally took three years to construct, costing $6.9 million. Reconstruction of the tunnel, originally planned to take a total of 6 months, took over three years to complete between 2007 and 2010, at a cost of $13.7 million. (Full article...) -
Image 4King's Highway 16, commonly referred to as Highway 16 and historically as the Prescott Highway, is a provincially maintained highway in the Canadian province of Ontario. The highway once travelled from near Prescott to Ottawa, traversing the distance between the St. Lawrence River and the Ottawa River. However, its length was truncated significantly when most of the route was twinned with a second roadway, and renumbered as Highway 416. A short stub remains through Johnstown, providing access to the Ogdensburg–Prescott International Bridge across the St. Lawrence River to Ogdensburg, New York, where New York State Route 812 continues south.
The Ottawa–Prescott Road, designated in 1918, was one of the first three highways designated in Ontario. By the time the route was numbered as Provincial Highway 16 in August 1925, it was mostly paved, except for portions south of Kemptville, which were paved by 1930. It immediately became the primary route between Toronto and Ottawa, via Highway 2, and as such saw many improvements and realignments carried out over the next three decades. In the 1960s, plans arose for a controlled-access highway to connect Highway 401 with Ottawa, which resulted in the construction of a complete realignment of Highway 16 north of Johnstown. This two-lane highway, known as Highway 16 New, was built between 1969 and 1983; enough land was purchased to build a second two-lane roadway to twin the highway. The twinned roadway was completed between 1989 and 1999, after which the route was renumbered with a 400-series designation. (Full article...) -
Image 5
The Kauai Plantation Railway is a heritage railroad on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. Built in 2006 and opened in January 2007, the railroad operates on a 2.5-mile (4 km) long track within the Kilohana Plantation and offers passenger rides around the plantation, pulled by a 1940s diesel locomotive. It was the first new railroad to be built on the Hawaiian islands in 100 years.
The railway was designed and built as part of a larger project to bring tourists to the Kilohana Plantation, and the train travels through a variety of agricultural areas intended to showcase the variety of agriculture in Hawaii. Initial plans called for two antique steam locomotives from Oahu to pull trains, but due to the significant cost of restoration, vintage diesel locomotives bought from the Philippines are used instead. (Full article...) -
Image 6The Virtual Theatre is a computer game engine designed by Revolution Software to produce adventure games for computer platforms. The engine allowed their team to script events, and move animated sprites against a drawn background with moving elements using a point-and-click style interface. Upon its first release, it rivaled competing engines like LucasArts' SCUMM and Sierra's Creative Interpreter, due to its then high level of artificial intelligence. The engine was first proposed in 1989, while the first game to use it, Lure of the Temptress, was released in 1992, followed by Beneath a Steel Sky (1994), Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (1996) and Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror (1997).
It allowed in-game characters to wander around the gameworld independently of each other, performing "everyday life" actions, which was not previously possible, and all characters and objects occupied space; consequently, non-player characters had to side-step the player's protagonist and any other object they came across, as well as the player having to side-step them, achieving a more realistic game world that previous engines were unable to provide, though non-player characters could unwittingly block a path as the player was traversing the game scene. Non-player characters performed much simpler tasks with each release due to size constraints. (Full article...) -
Image 7
Coal supplies a quarter of Turkey's primary energy. The heavily subsidised coal industry generates over a third of the country's electricity and emits a third of Turkey's greenhouse gases.
Coal is a major contributor to air pollution, and damages health across the nation, being burnt even in homes and cities. It is estimated that a phase out of coal power in Turkey by 2030 instead of by the 2050s would save over 100 thousand lives. Flue gas emission limits are in place, but data from mandatory reporting is not made public. (Full article...)
Selected picture
-
Image 1Image credit: Prolineserver/TomiaThis diagram of four pulley systems illustrates how increasing the number of pulleys increases the mechanical advantage, making the load easier to lift. MA is the factor by which a mechanism multiplies the force put into it. In this diagram, 100 newtons is required to lift the weight off the ground. Each additional pulley increases the MA such that the four-pulley system only needs 25 newtons to accomplish the same task, but the rope must be pulled four times as far.
-
Image 2Credit: 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.
-
Image 3Image credit: Joaquim Alves GasparAn animation showing how to use a vernier caliper, which is a caliper that uses a vernier scale to interpolate linear measurements. Vernier calipers can measure internal and external dimensions using, respectively, the uppermost and lower jaws, and also depths, using the depth probe (located at the right end). In this example, the first two digits (2.4) are decided by the location of the zero of the vernier scale in the centimeter scale, and the last digit (0.07), by the first line of the vernier scale that exactly matches a line of the centimeter scale above.
-
Image 4Photograph credit: Dllu
The N700 Series Shinkansen is a Japanese Shinkansen high-speed train with tilting capability developed jointly by JR Central and JR West. It has been used on the Tokaido and San'yō Shinkansen lines since 2007. This photograph shows the train travelling at approximately 300 km/h through Himeji Station, and was captured with a line scan camera using strip photography. -
Image 5Photograph: UberprutserA windmill is a mill that converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Traditional windmills were often used to mill grain, pump water, or both. Most modern windmills take the form of wind turbines used to generate electricity, or windpumps used to pump water, either for land drainage or to extract groundwater.
Here, the smock mill Goliath is viewed in front of the wind farm Growind in Eemshaven in the Netherlands. -
Image 6Photograph credit: Unknown; restored by Adam CuerdenGeorge Washington Carver (1860s–1943) was an American agricultural scientist and inventor. Born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, he was raised by his master Moses Carver after being emancipated, having been separated from his parents as an infant during a kidnapping incident. After college, Carver became a professor at Tuskegee Institute, where he developed techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, as a source of their own food and to improve their quality of life. Carver spent years developing and promoting products made from peanuts, although none became commercially successful. Apart from his work to improve the lives of farmers, he was also a leader in promoting environmentalism. Carver received numerous honors for his work, including the NAACP's Spingarn Medal. In an era of very high racial polarization, his fame reached beyond the black community; he was widely recognized and praised in the white community for his many achievements and talents. In 1941, Time magazine dubbed Carver a "black Leonardo".
This picture of Carver was taken around 1910 and is in the collection of the Tuskegee University archives. -
Image 7Photograph credit: Diego DelsoThe Walchensee Hydroelectric Power Station is a storage power station in Bavaria, Germany. The turbines, seen here, are fed by water from the Walchensee which is then released into the Kochelsee. The power station uses the hydraulic head of about 200 metres (660 ft) between the two natural lakes, and water from the Rißbach river is also used to augment the supply. The installed capacity is 124 MW with an annual production of 300 GWh; this is one of the largest of such power plants in Germany.
-
Image 8A 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.
-
Image 9Photograph credit: Langley Research Center; restored by Adam CuerdenMary Jackson (1921–2005) was an African American mathematician and aerospace engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which was succeeded by NASA in 1958. For most of her career, she worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia; starting as a computer at the segregated West Area Computing division, she later took advanced engineering classes and, in 1958, became NASA's first black female engineer.
After 34 years at NASA, Jackson had earned the most senior engineering title available. Realizing that she could not earn further promotions without becoming a supervisor, she accepted a demotion to become a manager of the Federal Women's Program in the NASA Office of Equal Opportunity Programs, as well as of the Affirmative Action Program. In this role, she worked to influence both the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, engineering and mathematics careers. She was portrayed by Janelle Monáe as a lead character in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. This picture, taken in 1980, shows Jackson working at NASA Langley. -
Image 10Credit: Mike McGregorThe OLPC XO-1 is an inexpensive subnotebook laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries.
-
Image 11Photo credit: Michael ReevePitstone Windmill, believed to be the oldest windmill in the British Isles
A windmill is an engine powered by wind energy. In Europe, windmills have been used since the Middle Ages. They were developed from the 12th century, apparently from technology gained by crusaders who came into contact with windmills in the Middle East. Persian sources indicate windmill use as early as the 7th century BC. In the United States, the development of water-pumping windmills was a major factor in allowing the farming of vast areas of North America. -
Image 12Photo: 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.
-
Image 13Photo credit: Richard BartzA parabolic antenna, a high-gain reflector antenna used for radio, television and data communications, at Erdfunkstelle Raisting, the largest facility for satellite communication in the world, based in Raisting, Bavaria, Germany. Parabolic antennas work by reflecting electromagnetic radiation off the paraboloid dish to or from the feed horn (center), for reception or transmission respectively.
-
Image 14Photo 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.
-
Image 15Photograph: ULPower Aero EnginesThe ULPower UL260i, a flat-four engine produced by ULPower Aero Engines of Belgium. Flat-four engines are flat engines with four cylinders arranged horizontally in two banks of two cylinders on each side of a central crankcase; they can be used in cars, motorcycles, or aircraft. This type of engine tends to be well-balanced and have efficient cooling, but is expensive to manufacture and considerably wider than other engines.
-
Image 16An 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.
-
Image 17A 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.
-
Image 19Photograph: NACAKitty Joyner (1916–1993) was an American electrical engineer with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and then the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She was hired in 1939 as the organization's first woman engineer, shortly after she had become the first woman to graduate from the University of Virginia's engineering program.
-
Image 20Photo: 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.
Main topics
Technology and related concepts | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
General images - load new batch
-
Image 1'BUILD YOUR OWN TELEVISION RECEIVER.' Science and Invention magazine cover, November 1928 (from Invention)
-
Image 2Agriculture preceded writing in the history of technology. (from History of technology)
-
Image 3A 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)
-
Image 5Edison electric light bulbs 1879–80 (from History of technology)
-
Image 9A variety of stone tools (from History of technology)
-
Image 123D printer (from Emerging technologies)
-
Image 15Self-replicating 3D printer (from Emerging technologies)
-
Image 16Walls at Sacsayhuaman (from History of technology)
-
Image 17Thomas Edison with his second phonograph, photographed by Levin Corbin Handy in Washington, April 1878 (from History of technology)
-
Image 18Eric M. C. Tigerstedt (1887–1925) was known as a pioneer of sound-on-film technology. Tigerstedt in 1915. (from Invention)
-
Image 19The 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)
-
Image 21Ford assembly line, 1913. The magneto assembly line was the first. (from History of technology)
-
Image 22Newcomen steam engine for pumping mines (from History of technology)
-
Image 23Alessandro Volta with the first electrical battery. Volta is recognized as an influential inventor. (from Invention)
-
Image 24The preserved Rocket (from History of technology)
-
Image 27Top 30 AI patent applicants in 2016 (from Emerging technologies)
Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch
- ... 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 when Chorus Systèmes SA was founded in 1986, French technology start-up companies were rare?
- ... that Flathead Lake Biological Station can detect invasive aquatic species in real-time using eDNA technology?
- ... that Criccieth Castle combined the "latest advances in military technology" with the "haphazard Welsh castle building style"?
- ... that touch-screen technology, pay-at-the-pump, car phones, and Coca-Cola Cherry were shown at the 1982 World's Fair?
- ... that Henry E. Sigerist felt "depressed" after reading A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 16th and 17th Centuries?
- ... that the Atari 410 Program Recorder was used to store programs on the Atari 8-bit family, but was also used for computer aided instruction?
- ... that Justin Yu, the current Classic Tetris World Champion, is also a cellist in MIT's video game orchestra?
Top 10 WikiProject Technology popular articles of the month
-
Image 1
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...)
-
Image 3
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...) -
Image 4
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...) -
Image 5
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...) -
Image 6
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...) -
Image 7
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...) -
Image 8
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...)
-
Image 10
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...)
Categories
News
- 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)
Related portals
WikiProjects
- Parent project
- Related projects
Things you can do
|
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wikivoyage
Free travel guide -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus
- Pages using the Phonos extension
- Pages including recorded pronunciations
- Wikipedia semi-protected portals
- Portals with triaged subpages from November 2018
- All portals with triaged subpages
- Portals with no named maintainer
- Automated article-slideshow portals with over 1000 articles in article list
- Automated article-slideshow portals with 501–1000 articles in article list