That suggests that, even had Babbage succeeded, a Victorian computer revolution based on mechanical technology would not necessarily have followed.
Publicly traded Mechanical Technology has recruited Gillette to produce methanol fuel cartridges and has an agreement with Samsung Electronics to build prototypes.
Scary yes but inevitable because mechanical technology, muscle power, has barely budged while machine brain power has rocketed ahead, leaving the integration of the two grossly underexploited.
Publicly traded Mechanical Technology (nasdaq: MKTY - news - people ) has recruited Gillette to produce methanol fuel cartridges and has an agreement with Samsung Electronics to build prototypes.
Sensors include visible spectrum cameras, 3D laser scanners and a spectrometer analysis (just to name a few) that creates an accurate analysis of waste which has not been possible with mechanical technology or human labor before.
So now for something completely different: advanced technology for the last sixty years has meant computing power and its application but the interface with much of the 3 dimensional world is still extremely feeble because mechanical technology has been mostly overlooked since the mindset has been that mechanical has all been done plus it was never and will never be flashy.
In retrospect, for all the quantum leaps for CPUs and programming, there were no accompanying quantum leaps in mechanical or battery technology.
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The technology feels like a step backward, from big mechanical machines using nineteenth-century technology to a new system that involves people copying information by hand from one piece of paper to another.
Phosphor Reveal marks the world's first mechanical digital watches utilizing its proprietary Micro-Magnetic Mechanical DigitalTM (M3D) technology.
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New technology has allowed wonderful mechanical creations to be brought to life, but they still need to exist as members of an elite traditional watch making family.
In modern times, we mistakenly use the the word in a very limited sense to refer to electronic, digital, or mechanical tools because our thinking about technology is not very innovative.
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Chuck graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology with a degree in mechanical engineering 60 years ago and went to work for a large manufacturer designing hydraulic valves.
Gupta (63), born in Maniktala, India, graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and then went on to receive his MBA from the Harvard Business School.
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Jim Fletcher, a mechanical engineering doctoral student in fuel cell technology, said the bus is 10 percent more efficient than comparable diesel buses -- a first step in what researchers expect will one day be a far more efficient form of transportation.
Donald Duck was forever doing battle with dehumanising technology, from robot butlers to mechanical barbers.
Dais is one of about half a dozen companies that sell solid-state heat exchange technology in a market still dominated by mechanical systems that rely on moving parts.
Tewari graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 2000, then worked as a business analyst for McKinsey in Mumbai, where he had the opportunity to see Indian business magnate Mukesh Ambani launch Reliance Infocomm in 2002 and usher in a digital revolution in India.
That's where Matias's wireless Laptop Pro keyboard for Mac comes in. (The company makes a wired version for PC, too.) Its switch technology confers the tactile response of a traditional mechanical keyboard, but sounds no louder than the office standard issue.
"This is a fundamentally new technology that allows us to control electronic devices directly using mechanical agitation, " Prof Wang added.
Born in 1968 in the town of Hisar in the northern state of Haryana to middle-class parents, Mr Kejriwal graduated from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kharagpur with a degree in mechanical engineering.
It's also unclear why RIM bothered using fancy piezoelectric switches rather than simple mechanical ones, because they're not doing anything with the technology other than letting you click -- when you turn off the phone, the switches "harden" and prevent you from pressing the screen, but there's no option to keep that effect going when the device is on.
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"Based on our analysis, the performance of A123's new Nanophosphate EXT at high temperatures is unlike anything we've ever seen from lead acid, lithium ion or any other battery technology, " said Dr. Yann Guezennec, senior fellow at CAR and professor of mechanical engineering at the Ohio State University.
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It was not, he notes, because of new technology but because the scientific community organized itself differently and allowed machines to take over most of the mechanical work.
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