Electronic devices have significantly influenced the development of many aspects of modern society, such as telecommunications, entertainment, education, health care, industry, and security. The main driving force behind the advancement of electronics is the semiconductor industry, which continually produces ever-more sophisticated electronic devices and circuits in response to global demand. The semiconductor industry is one of the global economy's largest and most profitable industries, with annual revenues exceeding $481 billion in 2018. (Full article...)
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The impedance analogy is a method of representing a mechanical system by an analogous electrical system. The advantage of doing this is that there is a large body of theory and analysis techniques concerning complex electrical systems, especially in the field of filters. By converting to an electrical representation, these tools in the electrical domain can be directly applied to a mechanical system without modification. A further advantage occurs in electromechanical systems: Converting the mechanical part of such a system into the electrical domain allows the entire system to be analysed as a unified whole.
The mathematical behaviour of the simulated electrical system is identical to the mathematical behaviour of the represented mechanical system. Each element in the electrical domain has a corresponding element in the mechanical domain with an analogous constitutive equation. All laws of circuit analysis, such as Kirchhoff's circuit laws, that apply in the electrical domain also apply to the mechanical impedance analogy. (Full article...)
Passive linear electronic analogue filters are those filters which can be described with linear differential equations (linear); they are composed of capacitors, inductors and, sometimes, resistors (passive) and are designed to operate on continuously varying analogue signals. There are many linear filters which are not analogue in implementation (digital filter), and there are many electronic filters which may not have a passive topology– both of which may have the same transfer function of the filters described in this article. Analogue filters are most often used in wave filtering applications, that is, where it is required to pass particular frequency components and to reject others from analogue (continuous-time) signals. (Full article...)
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Staggered tuning is a technique used in the design of multi-stage tuned amplifiers whereby each stage is tuned to a slightly different frequency. In comparison to synchronous tuning (where each stage is tuned identically) it produces a wider bandwidth at the expense of reduced gain. It also produces a sharper transition from the passband to the stopband. Both staggered tuning and synchronous tuning circuits are easier to tune and manufacture than many other filter types.
The function of stagger-tuned circuits can be expressed as a rational function and hence they can be designed to any of the major filter responses such as Butterworth and Chebyshev. The poles of the circuit are easy to manipulate to achieve the desired response because of the amplifier buffering between stages. (Full article...)
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The first-generation iPad (/ˈaɪpæd/; EYE-pad; retrospectively referred to unofficially as the iPad 1 or original iPad) is a tablet computer designed and marketed by Apple as the first device in the iPad lineup of tablet computers. It features an Apple A4SoC, a 9.7in (250mm) touchscreen display, and, on certain variants, the capability of accessing cellular networks. Using the iOS operating system, the iPad can play music, send and receive emails and browse the web. Other functions, which include the ability to play games and access references, GPS navigation software and social network services, can be enabled by downloading apps.
The device was announced and unveiled on January 27, 2010 by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at an Apple press event. On April 3, 2010, the Wi-Fi variant of the device was released in the United States, followed by the release of the "Wi-Fi + 3G" variant on April 30. On May 28, 2010, it was released in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Italy, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. (Full article...)
Filters are required to operate at many different frequencies, impedances and bandwidths. The utility of a prototype filter comes from the property that all these other filters can be derived from it by applying a scaling factor to the components of the prototype. The filter design need thus only be carried out once in full, with other filters being obtained by simply applying a scaling factor. (Full article...)
The actual impedance may vary quite considerably from the nominal figure with changes in frequency. In the case of cables and other transmission lines, there is also variation along the length of the cable, if it is not properly terminated. (Full article...)
Numerically controlled oscillators offer several advantages over other types of oscillators in terms of agility, accuracy, stability and reliability. NCOs are used in many communications systems including digital up/down converters used in 3G wireless and software radio systems, digital phase-locked loops, radar systems, drivers for optical or acoustic transmissions, and multilevel FSK/PSK modulators/demodulators. (Full article...)
This approach is especially useful in the design of mechanical filters—these use mechanical devices to implement an electrical function. However, the technique can be used to solve purely mechanical problems, and can also be extended into other, unrelated energy domains. Nowadays, analysis by analogy is a standard design tool wherever more than one energy domain is involved. It has the major advantage that the entire system can be represented in a unified, coherent way. Electrical analogies are particularly used by transducer designers, by their nature they cross energy domains, and in control systems, whose sensors and actuators will typically be domain-crossing transducers. A given system being represented by an electrical analogy may conceivably have no electrical parts at all. For this reason domain-neutral terminology is preferred when developing network diagrams for control systems. (Full article...)
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The circuit topology of an electronic circuit is the form taken by the network of interconnections of the circuit components. Different specific values or ratings of the components are regarded as being the same topology. Topology is not concerned with the physical layout of components in a circuit, nor with their positions on a circuit diagram; similarly to the mathematical concept of topology, it is only concerned with what connections exist between the components. Numerous physical layouts and circuit diagrams may all amount to the same topology.
Strictly speaking, replacing a component with one of an entirely different type is still the same topology. In some contexts, however, these can loosely be described as different topologies. For instance, interchanging inductors and capacitors in a low-passfilter results in a high-pass filter. These might be described as high-pass and low-pass topologies even though the network topology is identical. A more correct term for these classes of object (that is, a network where the type of component is specified but not the absolute value) is prototype network. (Full article...)
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Air stripline is a form of electrical planar transmission line whereby a conductor in the form of a thin metal strip is suspended between two ground planes. The idea is to make the dielectric essentially air. Mechanical support of the line may be a thin substrate, periodical insulated supports, or the device connectors and other electrical items.
Air stripline is most commonly used at microwave frequencies, especially in the C band. Its advantage over standard stripline and other planar technologies is that its air dielectric avoids dielectric loss. Many useful circuits can be constructed with air stripline and it is also easier to achieve strong coupling between components in this technology than with other planar formats. It was invented by Robert M. Barrett in the 1950s. (Full article...)
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The Electro-Dynamic Light Company of New York was a lighting and electrical distribution company organized in 1878. The company held the patents for the first practical incandescent electric lamp and electrical distribution system of incandescent electric lighting. They also held a patent for an electric meter to measure the amount of electricity used. The inventions were those of Albon Man and William E. Sawyer. They gave the patent rights to the company, which they had formed with a group of businessmen. It was the first company in the world formally established to provided electric lighting and was the first company organized specifically to manufacture and sell incandescent electric light bulbs.
Man, an attorney from New York City, supplied money for experimentation to Sawyer, an electrical engineer. This partnership developed into the Electro-Dynamic Light Company that brought in other investors that became partners. Sawyer devised a unique electrical distribution system where electrical power could be obtained anywhere in the city from an electrical generator with the turn of a switch to light up electric lamps to produce glowing light like a gas lamp. It was unique in that it produced this power without consumers having to maintain local galvanic batteries and at a fraction of the cost of producing the same lighting as from gas lamps. Other features of the system were that safety devices were built in to prevent the early destroying of the other electric lamps in the circuit should there be a power surge due to a lamp burning up early and leaving the distribution circuit. The patents for the Man and Sawyer system were in place before any other electrical companies had similar systems. (Full article...)
The project began with two aims: to prove the practicality of the Williams tube, an early form of computer memory based on standard cathode-ray tubes (CRTs); and to construct a machine that could be used to investigate how computers might be able to assist in the solution of mathematical problems. The first of the series, the Manchester Baby, ran its first program on 21 June 1948. As the world's first stored-program computer, the Baby, and the Manchester Mark 1 developed from it, quickly attracted the attention of the United Kingdom government, who contracted the electrical engineering firm of Ferranti to produce a commercial version. The resulting machine, the Ferranti Mark 1, was the world's first commercially available general-purpose computer. (Full article...)
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A Leslie speaker in a clear plastic cabinet The Leslie speaker is a combined amplifier and loudspeaker that modifies the sound of an electric musical instrument by rotating a baffle chamber (drum) in front of the loudspeaker. A similar effect is provided by a rotating system of horns in front of the treble driver. It is most commonly associated with the electric Hammond organ, though it was later used for the electric guitar and other instruments. A typical Leslie speaker contains an amplifier, a treble horn and a bass speaker—though specific components depend upon the model. Some models have two speed settings, known as chorale and tremolo.
The speaker is named after its inventor, Donald Leslie, who began working in the late 1930s to get a speaker for a Hammond organ that better emulated a pipe or theatre organ, and discovered that baffles rotating along the axis of the speaker cone gave the best effect. Hammond was not interested in marketing or selling the speakers, so Leslie sold them himself as an add-on, targeting other organs as well as Hammond, beginning in 1941. The sound of the organ being played through his speaker received national radio exposure across the US, and it became a commercial and critical success, becoming popular with jazz organists. In 1965, Leslie sold his business to CBS who, in 1980, sold it to Hammond. Suzuki Musical Instrument Corporation subsequently acquired the Hammond and Leslie brands. (Full article...)
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Constant k filters, also k-type filters, are a type of electronic filter designed using the image method. They are the original and simplest filters produced by this methodology and consist of a ladder network of identical sections of passive components. Historically, they are the first filters that could approach the ideal filter frequency response to within any prescribed limit with the addition of a sufficient number of sections. However, they are rarely considered for a modern design, the principles behind them having been superseded by other methodologies which are more accurate in their prediction of filter response. (Full article...)
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The Yamaha NS-10M studio monitor, identifiable by its horizontal lettering and white-coloured mid–bass drive unit The Yamaha NS-10 is a loudspeaker that became a standard nearfield studio monitor in the music industry among rock and pop recording engineers. Launched by Yamaha in 1978, the NS-10 was intended as a hi-fibookshelf speaker for domestic environments. It was received poorly by its intended audience, but became a staple for recording studios and freelance audio engineers due to its perceived ability to reveal poor quality in recordings.
The speaker is known for its exaggerated treble response, which some engineers, such as Bob Clearmountain, sought to dull by hanging tissue paper in front of its tweeter. The NS-10 has been used to monitor a large number of successful recordings by numerous artists, leading Gizmodo to refer to it as "the most important speaker you've never heard of". (Full article...)
Carl Friedrich Gauss (Gauß) (30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855) was a Germanmathematician and scientist of profound genius who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, magnetism, astronomy and optics. Sometimes known as "the prince of mathematicians" and "greatest mathematician since antiquity", Gauss had a remarkable influence in many fields of mathematics and science and is ranked as one of history's most influential mathematicians. Gauss was a child prodigy, and made his first ground-breaking mathematical discoveries while still a teenager. The cgsunit for magnetic induction was named gauss in his honor.
Early development was prompted by a 1936 memo from Henry Tizard on the topic of night fighting. The memo was sent to Robert Watson-Watt, director of the radar research efforts, who agreed to allow physicist Edward George "Taffy" Bowen to form a team to study the problem of air interception. The team had a test bed system in flights later that year, but progress was delayed for four years by emergency relocations, three abandoned production designs and Bowen's increasingly adversarial relationship with Watt's replacement, Albert Rowe. Ultimately, Bowen was forced from the team just as the system was finally maturing. (Full article...)
... that police investigating rapist Zhenhao Zou had to develop custom computer code to examine more than 9million WeChat messages on his electronic devices?
... that the music video for Alan Walker's song "Faded" is the first EDM song to reach 3billion views on YouTube?