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The Technology Portal

P:TECH

Technology is the application of scientific conceptual knowledege for practical purposes and achieving practical goals, especially 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...)

Outline of technology

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Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

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Mississippi Highway 5 (MS 5) is a state highway in Benton County, Mississippi, United States. It runs 24.3 mi (39.107 km) from MS 178 in Hickory Flat north to U.S. Route 72 (US 72) to the south of Michigan City. The route runs through the Holly Springs National Forest for much of its length and passes through Ashland. To the south of Ashland, MS 5 has a concurrency with MS 4. The MS 5 designation was first used by 1932 for an unpaved road between Hickory Flat and the Tennessee border in Michigan City. In 1943, the northern terminus was cut back to US 72. MS 5 was completely paved by 1951 and has retained its current alignment since then. (Full article...)
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The Nock volley gun

Henry Nock (1741–1804) was a British inventor and engineer of the Napoleonic period, best known as a gunmaker. Nock produced many innovative weapons including the screwless lock and the seven-barrelled volley gun, although he did not invent the latter despite it commonly being known as the Nock gun. He was a major supplier to the military during the Napoleonic wars. His high quality duelling pistols and double-barrelled shotguns were much sought after and it is largely through Nock that the latter became the weapon of choice for hunters.

As well as supplying the military and civilian markets, Nock made expensive pieces for the aristocracy and royalty and was an appointed gunmaker to the king. Nock's business eventually became Wilkinson Sword, a company which today makes razor blades and other shaving equipment and, until 2005, made officer's swords for the British Army. (Full article...)
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2006 Porsche RS Spyder - Porsche Museum

The RS Spyder (Type 9R6) is a racing car designed by Porsche in conjunction with Penske to compete in Le Mans Prototype Class 2 (LMP2) racing. The car takes its name from the legendary Porsche 550 Spyder of the 1950s (combined with Porsche's common "RennSport" (lit.: racing sports) designation). The car marked Porsche's first return to the top level of sports prototype racing since the firm abandoned its Porsche LMP in 1999.

The RS Spyder made its debut in the final event of the 2005 American Le Mans Series (ALMS) at Laguna Seca winning its class. Since then the RS Spyder has won the ALMS LMP2 Championship in 2006, 2007 and 2008 and took class honours at Le Mans in 2008 and 2009. The outright victory at the 2008 12 Hours of Sebring was the first major victory for Porsche in endurance racing for five years and it was also the first time in 14 years that the non-premier class won the 12 Hours of Sebring overall. Regulation changes for the 2011 season rendered the RS Spyder obsolete but the car has left a legacy in the Porsche 918 Spyder, which uses a development of the RS Spyder's engine and the Porsche 919 Hybrid which carried Porsche's racing program on into the LMP1 category starting in 2014. (Full article...)
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AIX Connect, formerly known as AirAsia India, is an Indian low-cost airline headquartered in Bangalore (Bengaluru), Karnataka and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Air India Limited which in turn is owned by Tata Group. The airline was founded as a joint venture between Tata Sons and AirAsia Bhd and commenced operations in June 2014 with Bangalore as its primary operating base. From 2020 to 2022, AirAsia Bhd gradually disinvested its shares in the joint venture and sold them to Tata Sons. In December 2022, after the entire shares of AirAsia India was acquired by Tata Sons, the airline was renamed AIX Connect ahead of its merger with Air India Express.

The AirAsia India brand was retired on 31 October 2023, and the airline now operates flights for Air India Express. (Full article...)
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M-48 is an east–west state trunkline highway in the Upper Peninsula (UP) of the US state of Michigan. It connects Rudyard with Pickford and continues to the far eastern end of the UP. The highway runs for 43.723 miles (70.365 km) through rural parts of Chippewa County, including along the county line with Mackinac County. Between 580 and 1,800 vehicles a day use the roadway daily.

The highway was designated by 1919 along a route that ran much farther west in the UP. Within its first decade, M-48 was extended to end at a point north of Newberry. Since the 1960s, it has had its current configuration. A section of roadway that was previously used as part of the western end of the highway was redesignated as a section H-40 in the 1970s. (Full article...)
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M-113 is a state trunkline highway in the US state of Michigan that runs in southern Grand Traverse County, connecting M-37 in Mayfield Township to US Highway 131 (US 131) near Walton Junction. Running through rural farmland and dense woodland, M-113 provides access to the village of Kingsley, as well as offering a route from US 131 to Traverse City. First designated in November 1927, the highway was extended in 1940 by adding the southernmost section near Walton Junction, which was originally part of US 131. (Full article...)
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Guam Highway 1 (GH-1), also known as Marine Corps Drive, is one of the primary automobile routes in the United States territory of Guam. It runs in a southwest-to-northeast direction, from the main gate of Naval Base Guam in the southwestern village of Santa Rita in a northeasterly direction to the main gate of Andersen Air Force Base in the village of Yigo. It passes through Guam's capital, Hagåtña, as well as intersecting other territorial highways. The highway runs through tropical forest, urbanized commercial areas, and residential neighborhoods. The US military upgraded and extended the road starting in 1941. Construction ceased with the Japanese invasion in December 1941 and resumed after the Second Battle of Guam in 1944. The highway was formally dedicated to the U.S. Marine Corps by the governor in 2004. (Full article...)

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Escalator
Credit: Stig Nygaard
An escalator is a moving staircase for carrying people between floors of a building. The device consists of a motor-driven chain of individual, linked steps that move up or down on tracks, allowing the step treads to remain horizontal.
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Laptop computer
Credit: Mike McGregor
The OLPC XO-1 is an inexpensive subnotebook laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries.
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Telephone
Credit: Berthold Werner
A 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.
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Union Pacific 844
Photo: Drew Jacksich; edit: Bruce1ee
Union Pacific 844 at Painted Rocks, Nevada, on a run from Elko to Sparks, on September 15, 2009. Built in 1944, it was the last steam locomotive delivered to Union Pacific and is the only steam locomotive never retired by a North American Class I railroad.
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Mechanical advantage
Image credit: Prolineserver/Tomia
This 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.
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Overhead power line
Credit: Simon Koopmann
An 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.
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Paddle steamer
Daguerreotype credit: Unknown
A daguerreotype from the 1850s of the Ben Campbell, a paddle steamer—a ship or boat driven by a steam engine that uses one or more paddle wheels to develop thrust for propulsion. The paddle wheel was the first form of mechanical propulsion for a boat, but has now been almost entirely superseded by more modern forms of marine propulsion.
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Wiesen Viaduct
Photograph: David Gubler
The Wiesen Viaduct is a single-track railway viaduct (concrete blocks with dimension stone coverage) which spans the Landwasser southwest of the hamlet of Wiesen, Switzerland. Designed by Henning Friedrich, then the chief engineer of the Rhaetian Railway, it was built between 1906 and 1909 by the contractor G. Marasi (Westermann & Cie, Zürich) under the supervision of P. Salaz and Hans Studer (RhB). The Rhaetian Railway still owns and uses the viaduct today for regular service with 29 passenger trains per day. An important element of the Davos–Filisur railway, the viaduct is 88.9 metres (292 ft) high, 210 metres (690 ft) long, and has a main span of 55 metres (180 ft). In 1926, the viaduct was the inspiration for Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's painting Brücke bei Wiesen.
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N700 Series Shinkansen
Photograph 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.
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New York City Subway
Map: CountZ
A transit map of the New York City Subway, one of the oldest and most extensive public transportation systems in the world. Operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York, it has 468 stations in operation on 209 mi (337 km) of routes, with 842 miles (1,355 km) of track. It is the busiest rapid transit rail system by annual ridership in the Western Hemisphere, and fifth busiest in the world. Its stations are located throughout the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Staten Island has its own rail line which is not part of the system, but is included in the map as well.
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Commodore 64
Photo: Evan Amos
The 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.
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Flat-four engine
Photograph: ULPower Aero Engines
The 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.
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Jet engine
Diagram: Jeff Dahl
A diagram of a typical turbojet engine. Air is compressed as it enters the engine, and is mixed with fuel that burns in the combustion section. Released through the exhaust, the resulting hot gases provide forward thrust and turn the turbines that drive the fan blades of the compressor.
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Nuclear weapon
Image credit: Fastfission
Schematic representation of the two methods with which to assemble an atomic bomb. An A-bomb produces its explosive energy through nuclear fission reactions alone. A mass of fissile material (enriched uranium or plutonium) is assembled into a supercritical mass—the amount of material needed to start an exponentially growing nuclear chain reaction—either by shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another (the "gun" method, shown on top here), or by compressing a sub-critical sphere of material using chemical explosives to many times its original density (the "implosion" method, at bottom).
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Caliper
Image credit: Joaquim Alves Gaspar
An 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.
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Wheel
Credit: fir0002
A 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.
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Brusio spiral viaduct
Photo: David Gubler
The Bernina Express passing over the Brusio spiral viaduct. Located near Brusio, Graubünden, Switzerland, the single track nine-arched stone spiral railway viaduct was opened in 1908. It is part of the World Heritage-listed Bernina railway.
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GameCube
Photo: Evan Amos
The GameCube is a sixth generation video game console released by Nintendo beginning in 2001. Meant as a successor to the Nintendo 64, the GameCube sold approximately 22 million units worldwide. It was the third most-successful console of its generation, behind Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox. The GameCube was succeeded by the Wii in 2006.
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Rail transport
Photograph: David Gubler
Rail transport is a means of conveyance of passengers and goods by way of wheeled vehicles running on rail tracks. The oldest, man-hauled railways date to the 6th century B.C.; the method grew more popular after the introduction of steam locomotives in the 19th century. Here we can see four BNSF GE C44-9W diesel locomotives hauling a mixed freight train along the Columbia River in the US.
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Red telephone box
Photograph: Christoph Braun
A 'K6' model red telephone box outside of St Paul's Cathedral in London. These kiosks for a public telephone were designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and painted "currant red" for easy visibility. Although such telephone boxes ceased production when the KX series was introduced in 1985, they remain a common sight in Britain and some of its colonies, and are considered a British cultural icon.
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The following are images from various technology-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Newcomen steam engine for pumping mines (from History of technology)
Image 2Thomas Edison with his second phonograph, photographed by Levin Corbin Handy in Washington, April 1878 (from History of technology)
Image 3Dome of Florence Cathedral (from History of technology)
Image 4Walls at Sacsayhuaman (from History of technology)
Image 5Clock from Salisbury Cathedral, ca. 1386 (from History of technology)
Image 6A variety of stone tools (from History of technology)
Image 7Ford assembly line, 1913. The magneto assembly line was the first. (from History of technology)
Image 8A late Bronze Age sword or dagger blade (from History of technology)
Image 9Solid-state air batteries
Li-Air composition (from Emerging technologies)
Image 10A 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 11The 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 12Design for a flying machine (c.1488) by da Vinci (from History of technology)
Image 13Top 30 AI patent applicants in 2016 (from Emerging technologies)
Image 14A water-powered mine hoist used for raising ore, ca. 1556 (from History of technology)
Image 153D printer (from Emerging technologies)
Image 16The preserved Rocket (from History of technology)
Image 17Edison electric light bulbs 1879–80 (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 compartmented water wheel, here its overshot version (from History of technology)
Image 20The Gutenberg press was voted the most important invention of the second millennium. (from Invention)
Image 21'BUILD YOUR OWN TELEVISION RECEIVER.' Science and Invention magazine cover, November 1928 (from Invention)
Image 22Pont du Gard in France, a Roman aqueduct (from History of technology)
Image 23An axehead made of iron, dating from the Swedish Iron Age (from History of technology)
Image 24Agriculture preceded writing in the history of technology. (from History of technology)
Image 25Alessandro Volta with the first electrical battery. Volta is recognized as an influential inventor. (from Invention)
Image 26Self-replicating 3D printer (from Emerging technologies)
Image 27NASA Fuel cell stack
Direct-methanol cell. (from Emerging technologies)

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Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that Peter Corby's electric trouser press used technology designed for Concorde?
... that Thomas Hall made an electric train that received power from the rails on which it travelled instead of onboard batteries, a new technology at the time?
... that Małgorzata Kalinowska-Iszkowska was awarded a Polish Gold Cross of Merit for her work in information technology?
... that Flathead Lake Biological Station can detect invasive aquatic species in real-time using eDNA technology?
... that touch-screen technology, pay-at-the-pump, car phones, and Coca-Cola Cherry were shown at the 1982 World's Fair?
... that Criccieth Castle combined the "latest advances in military technology" with the "haphazard Welsh castle building style"?
... that when Chorus Systèmes SA was founded in 1986, French technology start-up companies were rare?
... that racing driver James Sofronas worked as a salesman for a technology company to buy the Nissan NX 2000 required for his first competitive race?