Portal:Technology

The Technology Portal

P:TECHP:TECH

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 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 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...)

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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The A303 is a trunk road in southern England, running between Basingstoke in Hampshire and Honiton in Devon via Stonehenge. Connecting the M3 and the A30, it is part of one of the main routes from London to Devon and Cornwall. It is a primary A road throughout its length, passing through five counties.

The road has evolved from historical routes, some of which are thousands of years old, including the Harrow Way and the Fosse Way. The modern route was first laid out in the early 19th century as the New Direct Road, a faster coaching route from London to Exeter. It was initially in demand but fell into disuse as railways became popular from the 1840s onwards. It was not thought of as a significant through route when roads were initially numbered, but was revived as a major road in 1933, eventually becoming a trunk road in 1958. Since then, the A303 has gradually been upgraded to modern standards, though there are still several unimproved parts with longstanding plans to fix them. (Full article...)
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New Mill in 2008, part of the Murrays' Mills complex.

Murrays' Mills is a complex of former cotton mills on land between Jersey Street and the Rochdale Canal in the district of Ancoats, Manchester, England. The mills were built for brothers Adam and George Murray.

The first mill on the site, Old Mill, was begun in 1797, and is the world's oldest surviving urban steam-powered cotton spinning factory. After Old Mill opened, the company continued to expand and prosper, and by 1806 the complex was the largest in the world, employing about 1,000 people at its peak: Decker Mill was opened in 1802, New Mill in 1804, Little Mill in 1822, and Doubling and Fireproof Mill in 1842. The main complex formed a quadrangle surrounding a private canal basin linked under the road to the Rochdale Canal, which opened in 1804. The canal basin was used to deliver raw cotton and coal and to transport spun cotton away from the complex. (Full article...)
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Stoppelman in 2013

Jeremy Stoppelman (born November 10, 1977) is an American business executive. He is the CEO of Yelp, which he co-founded in 2004. Stoppelman obtained a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1999. After briefly working for @Home Network, he worked at X.com and later became the VP of Engineering after the company was renamed PayPal. Stoppelman left PayPal to attend Harvard Business School. During a summer internship at MRL Ventures, he and others came up with the idea for Yelp Inc. He turned down an acquisition offer by Google and took the company public in 2012. (Full article...)
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Maryland Route 170 (MD 170) is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. The state highway runs 12.98 miles (20.89 km) from MD 175 in Odenton north to MD 2 in Brooklyn Park. MD 170 connects the western Anne Arundel County communities of Odenton and Severn and the North County communities of Linthicum, Pumphrey, and Brooklyn Park with Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI Airport). The highway connects BWI Airport with Interstate 695 (I-695) and MD 100 and forms part of the Airport Loop, a circumferential highway that connects the airport and I-195 with many airport-related services.

MD 170 originally served as the main highway between Baltimore and Fort George G. Meade. This highway, which included part of modern MD 174 west of Severn, was mostly constructed shortly after Camp Meade was established during World War I in the late 1910s. The Odenton–Severn portion of MD 170 was originally built as MD 554 in the 1930s, but became part of MD 170 in the mid-1940s. MD 170 went through another round of upgrades in the early 1940s due to its strategic importance during World War II. The highway originally passed through the area now occupied by BWI Airport. MD 170 was relocated north of MD 176 in the late 1940s during the construction of the airport and south of MD 176 in the late 1950s. The highway has been expanded to four lanes around its interchanges with I-195, I-695, MD 32, and MD 100 and along the perimeter of BWI Airport since the 1960s. (Full article...)
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State Route 432 (SR 432) is a 10.32-mile-long (16.61 km) state highway in the U.S. state of Washington, serving the cities of Longview and Kelso in Cowlitz County. The highway travels east along the Columbia River from an intersection with SR 4 in West Longview through the Port of Longview and the termini of SR 433 and SR 411 in Longview. SR 432 crosses the Cowlitz River on a divided highway and ends at an interchange with Interstate 5 (I-5) in Kelso. SR 432 was established during the 1964 highway renumbering as SR 832, replacing a branch of Primary State Highway 12 (PSH 12) that had been routed through Longview and Kelso since 1937. SR 432 was established in 1968 and originally routed on Nichols Boulevard within Longview and was re-aligned onto its current route in 1991 after the opening of Industrial Way. (Full article...)
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Oxford Circus in November 2009

Oxford Circus is a road junction connecting Oxford Street and Regent Street in the West End of London. It is also the entrance to Oxford Circus tube station.

The junction opened in 1819 as part of the Regent Street development under John Nash, and was originally known as Regent Circus North. After the original lease expired, it was redesigned around a series of four quadrant buildings by Henry Tanner between 1913 and 1928, the north-eastern of which has been used by Peter Robinson, Topshop, the BBC and the London Co-operative Society; these are now Grade II listed buildings. (Full article...)
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Maryland Route 150 (MD 150) is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. Known for most of its length as either Eastern Avenue or Eastern Boulevard, the highway runs 13.01 miles (20.94 km) from U.S. Route 40 (US 40) in Baltimore east to Graces Quarters Road in Chase in eastern Baltimore County. MD 150 connects Baltimore with its southeastern suburbs of Dundalk, Essex, and Middle River. The state highway also links those communities with Interstate 95 (I-95), I-695, I-895, and Martin State Airport. MD 150 was constructed from Baltimore to Middle River and in Chase in the mid-1920s. The road was completed through Middle River in the early 1930s. Between 1942 and 1944, MD 150 was reconstructed as a four-lane divided highway with interchanges to improve access between Baltimore and the Glenn L. Martin Company aircraft manufacturing plant in Middle River. The highway has followed several routes since it was extended west into the city of Baltimore in the mid-1940s; the present route in East Baltimore was established shortly after 2000. (Full article...)

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Curiosity (rover)
Photograph: NASA
A self-portrait by the Mars rover Curiosity on October 31, 2012. The mosaic is stitched from a set of 55 images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager at "Rocknest," the spot in Gale crater where the mission's first scoop sampling took place. Self-portraits such as this help NASA document the state of the rover and track changes, such as dust accumulation and wheel wear.
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Assut de l'Or Bridge
Photograph: Diego Delso
The Assut de l'Or Bridge is a white single-pylon cable-stayed bridge in the City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia, Spain. Completed in 2008, it was designed by Valencian architect and civil engineer Santiago Calatrava as a variant of his cantilever spar cable-stayed bridge in Seville.
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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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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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Let L-410 Turbolet
Photo: Łukasz Golowanow
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.
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Fuel injection
Image credit: WikipedianProlific
An animated cut-away diagram of a typical fuel injector, which is used to spray controlled amounts of petrol (gasoline) into an internal combustion engine. A solenoid is activated when fuel is intended to be delivered to the engine, causing the plunger to become pulled toward the solenoid by magnetic force. This uncovers the valve opening, allowing fuel to flow into the atomiser and out the spray tip. The route of fuel is shown in orange; grey/blue indicates no fuel present.
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BMW S1000RR
Photograph credit: Stefan Krause
The 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.
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Stockwell Garage
Photograph: David Iliff
An interior view of Stockwell Garage, a large bus garage in Stockwell, London, designed by Adie, Button and Partners and opened in 1952. The 393-foot-long (120 m) roof structure, seen here, is supported by ten very shallow "two-hinged" arched ribs, between which are cantilevered barrel vaults topped by large skylights. The garage, which could originally hold 200 buses, has been a Grade II* Listed Building since 1988.
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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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Burj Khalifa
Photograph: Donald Y Tong
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.
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Windmills
Photograph: Uberprutser
A windmill is a mill that converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Traditional windmills were often used to mill grain, pump water, or both. Most modern windmills take the form of wind turbines used to generate electricity, or windpumps used to pump water, either for land drainage or to extract groundwater.

Here, the smock mill Goliath is viewed in front of the wind farm Growind in Eemshaven in the Netherlands.
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Image 12
Mars rovers
Photograph: NASA
Two Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers stand with three vehicles, providing a size comparison of three generations of Mars rovers. Front and center is the flight spare for the first Mars rover, Sojourner, which landed on Mars in 1997 as part of the Mars Pathfinder Project. On the left is a Mars Exploration Rover test vehicle, a working sibling to Spirit and Opportunity, which landed on Mars in 2004. On the right is a test rover for the Mars Science Laboratory, which landed Curiosity on Mars in 2012.
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Sukhoi Su-30
Photo: Sergey Krivchikov
The Sukhoi Su-30 is a twin-engine, two-seat supermanoeuverable fighter aircraft developed by Russia's Sukhoi Aviation Corporation. It is a multirole fighter for all-weather, air-to-air and air-to-surface deep interdiction missions. Its primary users are Russia, India, China, Venezuela, and Malaysia.
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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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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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Nesjavellir
Photo credit: Gretar Ívarsson
The Nesjavellir geothermal power plant, located near Þingvellir, Iceland is the largest of five such plants in the country. Because of the high concentration of volcanoes in Iceland, geothermal energy is so inexpensive that in the wintertime, some pavements in Reykjavík and Akureyri are heated.
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Image 17
George Washington Carver
Photo: Arthur Rothstein; Restoration: Lise Broer
A portrait of George Washington Carver, American scientist, botanist, educator and inventor, from 1942. Much of Carver's fame is based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes. In addition to his work on agricultural extension education for purposes of advocacy of sustainable agriculture and appreciation of plants and nature, Carver's important accomplishments also included improvement of racial relations, mentoring children, poetry, painting, and religion. One of his most important roles was in undermining, through the fame of his achievements and many talents, the widespread stereotype of the time that the black race was intellectually inferior to the white race.
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Empire State Building
Image credit: Lewis Hine
A structural worker bolts beams on the framework during the construction of the Empire State Building in New York City. The 1,250-foot (380 m) building opened on May 1, 1931, at the time the tallest building in the world, overtaking the Chrysler Building (seen to the right), which had just been completed the year before. The addition of a pinnacle and antennas later increased its overall height to 1,472 feet (449 m).
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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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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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Main topics

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The following are images from various technology-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Clock from Salisbury Cathedral, ca. 1386 (from History of technology)
Image 2Alessandro Volta with the first electrical battery. Volta is recognized as an influential inventor. (from Invention)
Image 3A variety of stone tools (from History of technology)
Image 4Design for a flying machine (c.1488) by da Vinci (from History of technology)
Image 5Pont du Gard in France, a Roman aqueduct (from History of technology)
Image 6Edison electric light bulbs 1879–80 (from History of technology)
Image 7Johannes Gutenberg's printing press was voted the most important invention of the second millennium. (from Invention)
Image 83D printer (from Emerging technologies)
Image 9Newcomen steam engine for pumping mines (from History of technology)
Image 10The preserved Rocket (from History of technology)
Image 11A water-powered mine hoist used for raising ore, ca. 1556 (from History of technology)
Image 12'BUILD YOUR OWN TELEVISION RECEIVER.' Science and Invention magazine cover, November 1928 (from Invention)
Image 13NASA Fuel cell stack
Direct-methanol cell (from Emerging technologies)
Image 14A 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 15Dome of Florence Cathedral (from History of technology)
Image 16Eric M. C. Tigerstedt (1887–1925) was known as a pioneer of sound-on-film technology. Tigerstedt in 1915. (from Invention)
Image 17Solid-state air batteries
Li-Air composition (from Emerging technologies)
Image 18The compartmented water wheel, here its overshot version (from History of technology)
Image 19The 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 20Self-replicating 3D printer (from Emerging technologies)
Image 21A late Bronze Age sword or dagger blade (from History of technology)
Image 22Thomas Edison with his second phonograph, photographed by Levin Corbin Handy in Washington, April 1878 (from History of technology)
Image 23An axehead made of iron, dating from the Swedish Iron Age (from History of technology)
Image 24Top 30 AI patent applicants in 2016 (from Emerging technologies)
Image 25Ford assembly line, 1913. The magneto assembly line was the first. (from History of technology)
Image 26Walls at Sacsayhuaman (from History of technology)
Image 27Agriculture preceded writing in the history of technology. (from History of technology)

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

... that Flathead Lake Biological Station can detect invasive aquatic species in real-time using eDNA technology?
... that Criccieth Castle combined the "latest advances in military technology" with the "haphazard Welsh castle building style"?
... that Kathanar – The Wild Sorcerer is being shot on a custom-built studio spanning 45,000 square feet (4,200 m²), utilizing the virtual production technology?
... that Carmel Naughton, having been told that girls were "stupid and couldn't do maths", sponsored a STEM scholarship fund?
... that vehicles in Star Trucker still look like American semi-trucks from the 1970s, despite having technology such as warp drivers and maglocks?
... that Byrnihat was ranked by an air technology company as the world's most polluted city in 2024?
... that Aileen Davies sang roles on the first two D'Oyly Carte Opera Company recordings using the new electrical-recording technology?
... that several science fiction critics praised "Rock Diver", the first short story by American writer Harry Harrison, for its compelling take on technology for passing through matter?

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October 28, 2025 – AI boom, Workplace impact of artificial intelligence: Multinational technology and e-commerce company Amazon announces it will lay off 14,000 corporate positions as it invests more in building AI and cloud computing infrastructure. (DW) (CNBC)
September 5, 2025 –: The European Commission fines Google €2.95 billion (US$3.47 billion) for allegedly abusing its position as the leading search engine to commit anti-trust violations in the advertising technology space. (DW)
September 4, 2025 – Chromebook procurement scandal: Former Indonesian education minister and Gojek co-founder Nadiem Makarim is detained after prosecutors name him as a suspect in a corruption case over the alleged unauthorized procurement of Chromebook laptops that resulted in state losses estimated at Rp 1.98 trillion (US$121.85 million). (Reuters)