Electronic devices have hugely 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 in response to global demand continually produces ever-more sophisticated electronic devices and circuits. The semiconductor industry is one of the largest and most profitable sectors in the global economy, with annual revenues exceeding $481 billion in 2018. The electronics industry also encompasses other sectors that rely on electronic devices and systems, such as e-commerce, which generated over $29 trillion in online sales in 2017. (Full article...)
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Analogue filters are a basic building block of signal processing much used in electronics. Amongst their many applications are the separation of an audio signal before application to bass, mid-range, and tweeterloudspeakers; the combining and later separation of multiple telephone conversations onto a single channel; the selection of a chosen radio station in a radio receiver and rejection of others.
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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Late version Quad "ESL-57" loudspeaker with black grilles and rosewood end caps
The Quad Electrostatic Loudspeaker (ESL) is the world's first production full-range electrostatic loudspeaker, launched in 1957 by Quad Electroacoustics, then known as the Acoustical Manufacturing Co. Ltd. The speaker is shaped somewhat like a home electric radiator curved slightly on the vertical axis. They are widely admired for their clarity and precision, but known to be difficult speakers to run and maintain.
The original ESL, in production between 1957 and 1985, has been hailed in Sound & Vision as one of the most important speakers of the 20th century. It was succeeded in 1981 by the ESL-63, which remained in production until 1999. As of 2013, Quad maintains four electrostatic speakers in its range. (Full article...)
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The Nakamichi Dragon is an audio cassette deck that was introduced by Nakamichi in 1982 and marketed until 1994. The Dragon was the first Nakamichi model with bidirectional replay capability and the world's first production tape recorder with an automatic azimuth correction system; this feature, which was invented by Philips engineers and improved by Niro Nakamichi, continuously adjusts the azimuth of the replay head to minimize apparent head skew and correctly reproduce the treble signal present on the tape. The system allows the correct reproduction of mechanically skewed cassettes and recordings made on misaligned decks. Apart from the Dragon, similar systems have only been used in the Nakamichi TD-1200 car cassette player and the Marantz SD-930 cassette deck.
At the time of its introduction, the Dragon had the lowest-ever wow and flutter and the highest-ever dynamic range, losing marginally to the former Nakamichi flagship the 1000ZXL in frequency response. Competing models by Sony, Studer, Tandberg and TEAC that were introduced later in the 1980s sometimes surpassed the Dragon in mechanical quality and feature set but none could deliver the same mix of sound quality, flexibility and technological advancement. The Dragon, despite inherent issues with long-term reliability, remained the highest point of compact cassette technology. (Full article...)
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The Sinclair Sovereign was a high-end calculator introduced by Clive Sinclair's company Sinclair Radionics in 1976. It was an attempt to escape from the unprofitable low end of the market, and one of the last calculators Sinclair produced. Made with a case of pressed steel that a variety of finishes, it cost between £30 and £60 at a time when other calculators could be purchased for under £5. A number of factors meant that the Sovereign was not a commercial success, including the cost, high import levies on components, competition from cheaper calculators manufactured abroad, and the development of more power-efficient designs using liquid-crystal displays. Though it came with a five-year guarantee, issues such as short battery life limited its usefulness. The company moved on to producing computers soon afterwards.
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...)
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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Figure 1. Waveguide slotted line Slotted lines are used for microwave measurements and consist of a movable probe inserted into a slot in a transmission line. They are used in conjunction with a microwave power source and usually, in keeping with their low-cost application, a low cost Schottky diode detector and VSWR meter rather than an expensive microwave power meter.
Slotted lines can measure standing waves, wavelength, and, with some calculation or plotting on Smith charts, a number of other parameters including reflection coefficient and electrical impedance. A precision variable attenuator is often incorporated in the test setup to improve accuracy. This is used to make level measurements, while the detector and VSWR meter are retained only to mark a reference point for the attenuator to be set to, thus eliminating entirely the detector and meter measurement errors. The parameter most commonly measured by a slotted line is SWR. This serves as a measure of the accuracy of the impedance match to the item under test. This is especially important for transmitting antennas and their feed lines; high standing wave ratio on a radio or TV antenna can distort the signal, increase transmission line loss and potentially damage components in the transmission path, possibly even the transmitter. (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 Inc. as the first device in the iPad lineup of tablet computers. It features an Apple A4SoC, a 9.7 in (250 mm) 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 Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, 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...)
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An antimetric electrical network is an electrical network that exhibits anti-symmetrical electrical properties. The term is often encountered in filter theory, but it applies to general electrical network analysis. Antimetric is the diametrical opposite of symmetric; it does not merely mean "asymmetric" (i.e., "lacking symmetry"). It is possible for networks to be symmetric or antimetric in their electrical properties without being physically or topologically symmetric or antimetric. (Full article...)
There is a critical value of transformer coupling coefficient at which the frequency response of the amplifier is maximally flat in the passband and the gain is maximum at the resonant frequency. Designs frequently use a coupling greater than this (over-coupling) in order to achieve an even wider bandwidth at the expense of a small loss of gain in the centre of the passband. (Full article...)
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Rowhammer (also written as row hammer or RowHammer) is a computer security exploit that takes advantage of an unintended and undesirable side effect in dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) in which memory cells interact electrically between themselves by leaking their charges, possibly changing the contents of nearby memory rows that were not addressed in the original memory access. This circumvention of the isolation between DRAM memory cells results from the high cell density in modern DRAM, and can be triggered by specially crafted memory access patterns that rapidly activate the same memory rows numerous times.
Late model (c.1998) LS3/5A from Spendor, one of the BBC licensees The LS3/5A (each element pronounced separately, without the stroke) is a small studio monitor loudspeaker originated by the BBC for use by outside broadcast vans to ensure quality of their broadcasts. The speaker concept set out transparent and natural sound as the goal, and the achievement of the result is widely acknowledged.
The BBC granted licences to a small number of British firms, who first manufactured the product in 1975. The product underwent a change in 1987 due to consistency issues in manufacturing, and again in around 2003 when original parts from KEF ran out. Upwards of 60,000 pairs of the speaker have been sold. Reviewers have recognised its enormous importance as a bookshelf design. (Full article...)
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The Linn Isobarik DMS (with in-built crossover) in a domestic setting The Linn Isobarik, nicknamed "Bariks" or "Briks", is a loudspeaker designed and manufactured by Linn Products. The Isobarik is known for both its reproduction of low bass frequencies and being very demanding on amplifiers.
Launched in 1973, the Isobarik DMS, Linn's maiden and flagship loudspeaker was based on and named for the isobaric loading principle invented in the 1950s. The speaker exists also as the Isobarik PMS – destined for the professional market. Although discontinued in 1992, it remains popular among audiophiles. (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...)
Guglielmo Marchese Marconi, GCVO (25 April 1874-20 July 1937) was an Italian inventor, best known for his development of a practical radiotelegraph system, which served as the foundation for the establishment of numerous affiliated companies worldwide. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun, "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy". While growing up, Marconi had an intense early interest in science, and was especially fascinated by electricity.
For most purposes, the vacuum tube has been replaced by the much smaller, less power-hungry, and less expensive transistor, either as a discrete device or in an integrated circuit. However, tubes are still used in specialized applications, such as in high-end audio systems and high power RF transmitters. Cathode ray tubes are still used as a display device in television sets and computer monitors (although they face serious competition from LCD and plasma displays), and magnetrons are the source of microwaves in microwave ovens.
... that in 2019, Chinese electronics company Xiaomi posted a video of their third-quarterly financial report featuring a parody of the anime song "Renai Circulation"?
... that a 1982 court case established that video games may qualify for multiple types of U.S. copyright protection?
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Bose headphones are a family of headphone products sold by the Bose Corporation. The company pioneered the development of headphones that use active noise cancellation technology. It took Bose about 10 years to develop the first QuietComfort Headphones, released in 1989. The current revision provides active equalization as well as active noise reduction.
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