Portal:Technology
The Technology Portal
Technology is the application of conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word technology can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible products such as tools 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 prehistory, followed by the control of fire—which in turn contributed to the growth of the human brain and the development of language during the Ice Age, according to the cooking hypothesis. 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...)
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Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.
New York State Route 99 (NY 99) was a state highway in Franklin County. The western terminus of the route was at an intersection with NY 30 in Duane. Its eastern terminus was at a junction with NY 3 near the Franklin community of Merrillsville. The narrow, winding route passed through isolated and heavily wooded areas of Adirondack Park. NY 99 was known as the Port Kent–Hopkinton Turnpike and maintained by Franklin County as a county highway. The state highway had been co-designated, and is signed today solely as County Route 26 (CR 26).
The routing of NY 99 was originally part of the Port Kent and Hopkinton Turnpike, a 19th-century toll road that began in the town of Hopkinton and passed through central Franklin County on its way to the hamlet of Port Kent on the shores of Lake Champlain. The portion of the turnpike between Duane Center and Merrillsville was designated as NY 99 as part of the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York. It remained unchanged until September 26, 1994, when the NY 99 designation was removed from the highway. (Full article...)- Route 124 is a state highway in the northern part of New Jersey in the United States that is 14.74 mi (23.72 km) long. It is the eastern section of what used to be Route 24 before that road was realigned to its current freeway alignment. The western end is at an intersection with U.S. Route 202 (US 202) and County Route 510 (CR 510) in Morristown, Morris County; the eastern end continues as CR 603 on Springfield Avenue at the border between Maplewood and Irvington in Essex County. The route runs through suburban areas of Morris County, passing through Madison and Chatham. It intersects Route 24 on the border of Millburn, Essex County and Summit, Union County, and serves as a frontage road for that route. Upon splitting from Route 24, Route 124 continues east through Springfield Township, Union Township, and Maplewood to its eastern terminus.
The alignment of today's Route 124 was first designated as a part of pre-1927 Route 5 in 1916, a route that was to run from Delaware, Warren County, to Newark. In 1927, this portion of the route became a part of Route 24, a route that was to run from Phillipsburg to Newark. A freeway, which is the current alignment of Route 24, was proposed for this portion of the route in the 1950s that was approved in 1960. Route 24 was moved to the new freeway between the John F. Kennedy Parkway on the Millburn/Summit border and Interstate 78 (I-78) in 1972, with Route 124 being designated along the former alignment of Route 24 east of this point. In 1992, the Route 24 freeway was completed between I-287 in Hanover Township and the John F. Kennedy Parkway. As a result, Route 124 was extended west along the former Route 24 to US 202 in Morristown. (Full article...)
SS Empire Simba was a British steam-powered cargo ship. She was originally an American ship, launched in 1918 as SS West Cohas. During a stint in the United States Navy from 1918 to 1919, she was called USS West Cohas (ID-3253).
West Cohas was built in 1918 for the United States Shipping Board (USSB) as part of the West boats, a series of steel-hulled cargo ships built on the West Coast of the United States for the World War I war effort. She was the 24th ship built by Skinner & Eddy of Seattle, Washington, and was completed in 88 calendar days. She was commissioned into the Naval Overseas Transportation Service (NOTS) of the United States Navy as USS West Cohas (ID-3253) in June 1918. After several overseas trips for the Navy, she was decommissioned in May 1919 and returned to the USSB. (Full article...)
Outram Park MRT station is an underground Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) interchange station in Singapore. The station is on the East–West, North East and Thomson–East Coast lines, and is located near the junction of Outram Road, Eu Tong Sen Street and New Bridge Road on the boundary of Bukit Merah and Outram planning areas. It is the closest MRT station to Singapore General Hospital, the Police Cantonment Complex, Outram Community Hospital and the Health Promotion Board. The station was included in the early plans of the MRT network in 1982; the East–West Line platforms were constructed as part of the Phase I MRT segment from Novena, and were completed in December 1987.
Outram Park station was planned to be the southern terminus of the North East Line before it was extended to the World Trade Centre. Construction of the North East Line station involved a significant traffic diversion at a nearby road intersection, with building works of a linkway connecting both station taking place close to the East–West Line platforms. A tunnel connecting the East–West and North East Line stations was constructed below the former, which involved partially destroying existing platforms while keeping them intact. North East Line platforms opened on 20 June 2003. When the Thomson–East Coast Line opened on 13 November 2022, Outram Park station became a triple-line interchange. (Full article...)
On the morning of December 1, 2013, a Metro-North Railroad Hudson Line passenger train derailed near the Spuyten Duyvil station in the New York City borough of the Bronx. Four of the 115 passengers were killed and another 61 injured; the accident caused $9 million worth of damage. It was the deadliest train accident within New York City since a 1991 subway derailment in Manhattan, and the first accident in Metro-North's history to result in passenger fatalities. The additional $60 million in legal claims paid out as of 2020[update] have also made it the costliest accident in Metro-North's history.
Early investigations found that the train had gone into the curve where it derailed at almost three times the posted speed limit. The engineer, William Rockefeller, later admitted that before reaching the curve he had gone into a "daze", a sort of highway hypnosis. (Full article...)
State Route 516 (SR 516) is a 16.49-mile-long (26.54 km) state highway in the U.S. state of Washington, serving communities in southern King County. The highway travels east as the Kent-Des Moines Road and the Kent-Kangley Road from a concurrency with SR 509 in Des Moines through Kent and Covington to an intersection with SR 169 in Maple Valley. SR 516, designated as part of the National Highway System within Kent, intersects three major freeways in the area: Interstate 5 (I-5) in western Kent, SR 167 in downtown Kent, and SR 18 in Covington. The roadway, built in the 1890s, was codified in 1937 as Secondary State Highway 1K (SSH 1K) from Des Moines to Kent and SSH 5A from Kent to Maple Valley. The two highways were combined during the 1964 highway renumbering to form SR 516 on its current route. (Full article...)
Terrence Andrew Davis (December 15, 1969 – August 11, 2018) was an American electrical engineer, computer programmer, and outsider artist best known for creating and designing TempleOS, a public-domain operating system, written in a programming language developed by himself called HolyC. He believed God had commanded him to create TempleOS as the Third Temple prophesied in the Bible. In 1996, Davis began experiencing regular manic episodes, some of which led to hospitalization. Initially diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he was later declared to have schizophrenia. Eight months before his death, he struggled with periods of homelessness. His fans brought him supplies, but Davis refused their offers of housing. He recorded a video in which he said that he deleted most of his content to not make the Internet dirty and that he was extremely ill. In August 2018, he was struck by a train and died at the age of 48. (Full article...)
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Photograph: David ShankboneDavid Faiman is an Israeli engineer and physicist recognized for his expertise on solar power. He is the director of the Ben-Gurion National Solar Energy Center and Chairman of the Department of Solar Energy & Environmental Physics at Ben-Gurion University's Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research in Sde Boker.- 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.
Photo: Benh Lieu SongThe Eiffel Tower as seen from the Champ de Mars. At 324 metres (1,063 ft) tall, the tower, an iron lattice tower, is the tallest building in Paris, the most-visited paid monument in the world, as well as one of the most recognizable structures in the world. Named after its designer, Gustave Eiffel, it was built as an entrance arch for the 1889 Exposition Universelle and has since become the most prominent symbol of both Paris and France.
Photo credit: Marshall Space Flight CenterA test firing of twin linear XRS-2200 aerospike engines, originally built for the Lockheed Martin X-33, a next-generation, commercially operated reusable launch vehicle. The aerospike engine is a type of rocket engine that maintains its efficiency across a wide range of altitudes through the use of an aerospike nozzle. A vehicle with an aerospike engine uses 25-30% less fuel at low altitudes, where most missions have the greatest need for thrust.
Photo credit: Christian KuhnaThe 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.
Daguerreotype credit: UnknownA 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.
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.
A 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.
The semi-submersible oil platform P-51, operated by Brazilian energy company Petrobras, being positioned by tugboats. Semisubs sit on pontoons located under the ocean surface, with the operating deck atop columns, above the sea level. In this manner, they are relatively protected from wave action.
The Trojan Room coffee pot was the inspiration for the world's first webcam. The coffee pot was located in the corridor just outside the so-called Trojan Room within the old Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. The webcam was created in 1991 to help people working in other parts of the building avoid pointless trips to the coffee pot by providing, on the user's desktop computer, a live 128×128 pixel greyscale picture of the state of the coffee pot. The webcam was shut down on 22 August 2001, following the Computer Laboratory's move to the William Gates Building.- 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.
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.
Photograph: MyrabellaThe Nice tramway crossing Place Garibaldi, Nice, where it lowers its pantograph and is powered by batteries. This 8.7-kilometre (5.4 mi), single-line tramway is operated by Veolia Transdev. It opened on 24 November 2007, replacing bus lines 1, 2, 5 and 18.
Credit: Mike McGregorThe OLPC XO-1 is an inexpensive subnotebook laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries.
Photograph 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 17Movable typePhoto credit: Willi HeidelbachA composing stick and movable type, the system of printing and typography using pieces of metal type, made by casting from matrices struck by letterpunches. The text on the stick reads, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and feels as if he were in the seventh heaven of typography together with Hermann Zapf, the most famous artist of the" [sic].More selected pictures](https://en.wikipedia.org//thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Metal_movable_type.jpg/120px-Metal_movable_type.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=parser&utm_content=thumbnail)
Photo credit: Willi HeidelbachA composing stick and movable type, the system of printing and typography using pieces of metal type, made by casting from matrices struck by letterpunches. The text on the stick reads, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and feels as if he were in the seventh heaven of typography together with Hermann Zapf, the most famous artist of the" [sic].
Photograph credit: Stefan KrauseThe BMW S1000RR is a sport bike made by BMW Motorrad. It was introduced in 2008, initially for competition in the 2009 Superbike World Championship, and has been in commercial production since then. Powered by a 999 cc (61.0 cu in) four-cylinder engine, redlined at 14,200 rpm, it delivers 133.6 kW (179.2 hp; 181.6 PS) to the rear wheel, making it the most powerful motorcycle in the class. Rubén Xaus and Troy Corser rode the bike for its inaugural Superbike World Championship in 2009, gaining highest finishes of fifth and seventh respectively, but it achieved greater success in the 2010 FIM Superstock 1000 championship season, with rider Ayrton Badovini winning every single race but one on the S1000RR.
Photograph: Raimond SpekkingBucket-wheel excavators (BWEs) are heavy equipment used in surface mining. The primary function of a BWE is to act as a continuous digging machine in large-scale open pit mining operations. These BWEs were photographed at the Garzweiler surface mine in Germany.
A woman using a Hollerith pantograph, a machine developed by Herman Hollerith for the punching of cards, providing data which could then be processed. Such tools were used in the 1890 United States census, the first time the country's census was tabulated by machine.
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![Image 17Movable typePhoto credit: Willi HeidelbachA composing stick and movable type, the system of printing and typography using pieces of metal type, made by casting from matrices struck by letterpunches. The text on the stick reads, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and feels as if he were in the seventh heaven of typography together with Hermann Zapf, the most famous artist of the" [sic].More selected pictures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Metal_movable_type.jpg)
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General images -
The following are images from various technology-related articles on Wikipedia.
Design for a flying machine (c.1488) by da Vinci (from History of technology)
A 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)
The compartmented water wheel, here its overshot version (from History of technology)
Agriculture preceded writing in the history of technology. (from History of technology)
Men of Progress by Christian Schussele, representing 19 contemporary American inventors, 1862 (from History of technology)
Dome of Florence Cathedral (from History of technology)
Pont du Gard in France, a Roman aqueduct (from History of technology)
Edison electric light bulbs 1879–80 (from History of technology)
A variety of stone tools (from History of technology)
The 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)
Walls at Sacsayhuaman (from History of technology)
Eric M. C. Tigerstedt (1887–1925) was known as a pioneer of sound-on-film technology. Tigerstedt in 1915. (from Invention)
Clock from Salisbury Cathedral, ca. 1386 (from History of technology)
Thomas Edison with his second phonograph, photographed by Levin Corbin Handy in Washington, April 1878 (from History of technology)
Ford assembly line, 1913. The magneto assembly line was the first. (from History of technology)
Self-replicating 3D printer (from Emerging technologies)
A water-powered mine hoist used for raising ore, ca. 1556 (from History of technology)
'BUILD YOUR OWN TELEVISION RECEIVER.' Science and Invention magazine cover, November 1928 (from Invention)
Johannes Gutenberg's printing press was voted the most important invention of the second millennium. (from Invention)
The preserved Rocket (from History of technology)
Top 30 AI patent applicants in 2016 (from Emerging technologies)
Alessandro Volta with the first electrical battery. Volta is recognized as an influential inventor. (from Invention)
3D printer (from Emerging technologies)
Newcomen steam engine for pumping mines (from History of technology)
A late Bronze Age sword or dagger blade (from History of technology)
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that Byrnihat was ranked by an air technology company as the world's most polluted city in 2024?
- ... that astrophysicist Alan C. Cummings has led more than 1,700 weekly birdwatching walks at Caltech since 1986?
- ... that scholars have described the 1946 book The Failure of Technology as a precursor to the environmental movement?
- ... that vehicles in Star Trucker still look like American semi-trucks from the 1970s, despite having technology such as warp drivers and maglocks?
- ... that Aileen Davies sang roles on the first two D'Oyly Carte Opera Company recordings using the new electrical-recording technology?
- ... that Criccieth Castle combined the "latest advances in military technology" with the "haphazard Welsh castle building style"?
- ... that Carmel Naughton, having been told that girls were "stupid and couldn't do maths", sponsored a STEM scholarship fund?
- ... that the 44 NASA astronauts educated at MIT include "Hubble's repairman" John Grunsfeld and moon walker Buzz Aldrin?
Top 10 WikiProject Technology popular articles of the month
- ChatGPT is a generative AI chatbot developed by OpenAI. Originally released on November 30, 2022, the product uses large language models – specifically generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs) – to generate text, speech, and images in response to user prompts. ChatGPT accelerated the ongoing AI boom, a period marked by rapid investment and public attention toward the field of artificial intelligence (AI). OpenAI operates the service on a freemium model. Users can interact with ChatGPT through text, audio, and image prompts. (Full article...)
YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Steve Chen, all of whom were former employees at PayPal. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, it is the second-most-visited website in the world, after Google itself. In January 2024, YouTube had reached more than 2.7 billion monthly active users, who collectively watched more than one billion hours of video every day. As of May 2019[update], videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of video per minute, and as of mid-2024[update], there were approximately 14.8 billion videos in total. (Full article...)
Elon Reeve Musk (/ˈiːlɒn/ ⓘ EE-lon; born June 28, 1971) is an industrialist, technologist, and former public official who is the chief executive officer (CEO) and largest shareholder of Tesla and SpaceX. Musk has been the wealthiest person in the world since 2025, and became the only trillionaire (in terms of US dollars) in June 2026; as of October 2026, Forbes estimates his net worth to be $1.1 trillion. (Full article...)- Facebook is an American social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms. It was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, along with his Harvard College roommates and fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The name Facebook derives from the face book directories often given to American university students. (Full article...)
A QR code for the URL of the English Wikipedia main page
A QR code, short for quick-response code, is a type of two-dimensional matrix barcode invented in 1994 by Masahiro Hara of the Japanese company Denso Wave for labelling automobile parts. It features white ("0") and black ("1") squares within a square grid featuring fiducial markers on the corners, readable by imaging devices like cameras, and processed using Reed–Solomon error correction until the image can be appropriately interpreted. The required data is then extracted from patterns that are present in both the horizontal and the vertical components of the QR image. (Full article...)
Google LLC (also known simply as Google and pronounced /ˈɡuː.ɡəl/ ⓘ or GOO-gəl) is an American multinational technology corporation focused on information technology, online advertising, search engine technology, email, cloud computing, software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" by the BBC, and is one of the world's most valuable brands. Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., has been described as a Big Tech company. (Full article...)- WhatsApp Messenger, commonly known simply as WhatsApp, is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and Voice over IP (VoIP) service accessible via desktop and mobile app. Owned by Meta Platforms, the service allows users to send text messages, voice messages, and video messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content. The service requires a cellular mobile telephone number to register. WhatsApp was launched in May 2009. In January 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business app called WhatsApp Business which can communicate with the standard WhatsApp client. As of May 2025, the service had 3 billion monthly active users, making it the most popular messenger app. The name of the app is meant to sound like "what's up". (Full article...)
Musk in 2019 as SpaceX CEO; the company's IPO in 2026 led to him becoming the first US$ trillionaire.
Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in the world in terms of financial assets, with an estimated net worth of US$1.04 trillion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and $1.1 trillion according to Forbes, as of October 6, 2026, primarily from his ownership stakes of 42% of SpaceX and 20% of Tesla. He is eligible to receive additional Tesla and SpaceX equity awards subject to certain conditions. (Full article...)
Anthropic, PBC is an American artificial intelligence (AI) public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California. Its flagship product is Claude, a series of proprietary large language models (LLMs). In January 2021, with the goal of promoting AI safety, Anthropic was founded by former members of OpenAI, including siblings Daniela Amodei and Dario Amodei, who are president and CEO, respectively. The company is privately held but plans an initial public offering in November 2026. Valued at $965 billion in a May 2026 Series H capital raise, Anthropic is the world's most valuable AI pure play, rivaled by OpenAI. (Full article...)- Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is also a field of research spanning computer science, engineering, and mathematics that develops and studies methods and software enabling machines to perceive their environment and use learning and intelligence to take actions that maximise their chances of achieving defined goals. (Full article...)
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News
- October 27, 2026 – AI bubble
- China's Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market index, which focuses on science and technology companies, plummets 40% in less than four months. (Reuters)
- October 23, 2026 – Australia–North Korea relations, North Korean remote worker scheme
- The Australian Government imposes financial sanctions and travel bans on two North Koreans and sanctions two companies accused of supporting fraudulent overseas information technology work that funds North Korea's weapons programs. (AFP via RFI)
- September 15, 2026 –
- China implements new travel regulations allowing exit bans on citizens who violate technology import or export controls or commit national-security-related offences abroad. Returned citizens can face bans lasting six months to three years. (AFP via Dawn)
- August 31, 2026 – AI boom
- Adobe Inc. reaches a US$4 billion deal to offer free access to AI tools in Saudi Arabia with its Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Humain. (Reuters)
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