Portal:Technology

An Agusta A109 rescue helicopter leaves Mount Pilatus, near Lucerne, Switzerland, after recovering a patient. Later renamed AgustaWestland AW109, the A109 is a helicopter manufactured by Agusta (now AgustaWestland) of Italy. It is a light-weight, twin-engine, eight-seat multi-purpose craft.

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) was an American inventor, scientist and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

The Let L-410 Turbolet is a twin-engined short-range transport aircraft, manufactured by the Czech aircraft manufacturer LET, mostly used for passenger transport. The L-410 first flew in 1969, and with more than 1100 produced, is the most popular 19-seat plane in history.

A pastoral scene of a lone house, composed using Blender, an open source 3D computer graphics software. Blender can be used for a number of applications and is available for a wide variety of operating systems.

George 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.

A billet of enriched uranium, which is uranium where the percent composition of uranium-235 (²³⁵U) has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Enriched uranium is a critical component for both civil nuclear power generation and military nuclear weapons.

Pitstone 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.

The rotor of a modern steam turbine , which converts steam (heat) energy into kinetic (mechanical) energy. The steam path is from the smallest blade, expanding through progressively larger blade elements. Steam turbines are used in power plants to extract mechanical work from pressurized steam and benefit from their high efficiency and high power-to-weight ratio compared to other technologies, leading to their widespread deployment from electricity generation to marine propulsion.

Burj Khalifa is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and currently the tallest man-made structure in the world, at 829.8 m (2,722 ft). It was designed to be the centerpiece of a large-scale, mixed-use development known as Downtown Dubai. Construction took over five years, and the skyscraper was officially opened in January 2010.

Nine Marines from Mike Battery, 4th Battalion, 14th Marines operate the 155mm M198 howitzer in November 2004. The battery was based at Camp Fallujah, Iraq and was supporting Operation Phantom Fury. All nine members of the M198 crew are present.

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.

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).

The Australia Telescope Compact Array is a radio telescope operated by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) at the Paul Wild Observatory, 25 km (16 mi) west of the town of Narrabri in New South Wales, Australia. The telescope is an array of six identical dishes each 22 metres (72 ft) in diameter, which commonly operate in aperture synthesis mode to produce images from radio waves. Five of the dishes can be moved along a 3-kilometre (2 mi) railway track; the sixth is situated three kilometres west of the end of the main track. Each dish weighs about 270 tonnes (270 long tons; 300 short tons).

This photograph, showing five of the Australia Telescope Compact Array's dishes, was taken around 1984, in the late phase of the construction process. It is a long-exposure photograph taken in darkness in the late evening; during the exposure, the photographer, John Masterson, walked around the dishes firing off over 130 flashes using a hand-held flash gun.

The Mark IV tank was introduced by the British in May 1917 to fight in World War I. The "female" version, as pictured here, was armed with five machine guns. Production of the Mark IV ceased at the end of the War in 1918. A small number served briefly with other combatants afterwards.

This Mark IV tank, on display in Ashford, Kent, was presented to the town after the end of World War I. The engine was removed to install an electricity substation inside it, though this substation was subsequently removed; the tank's interior is now empty.

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.