IBM outs integrated circuit that’s made from wafer-size graphene, smaller than a grain of salt
Lest you don’t care what your circuits are made of, listen up: graphene’s the thinnest electrical material, comprising just a single atomic layer. In addition to its electrical, thermal, mechanical, and optical properties, researchers dig it because it has the potential to be less expensive, more energy-efficient, and more compact than your garden-variety silicon. So imagine IBM’s delight when a team of company researchers built the first circuit that fits all the components, including inductors and a graphene transistor, on a single wafer — a setup that consumes less space than a grain of salt. The advantage, scientists say, is better performance than what you’d get from a circuit combining a graphene transistor with external components. In fact, the researchers got the circuit’s broadband frequency mixer to operate at 10GHz , a feat that could have implications for wireless gadgets running the gamut from Bluetooth headsets to RFID tags. That’s all just a layman’s explanation, of course — check out the latest issue of Science for the full paper in all of its technical glory.
IBM outs integrated circuit that’s made from wafer-size graphene, smaller than a grain of salt originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Jun 2011 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Why QWERTY?
You spend hours with it each day. Your fingertips know it intimately. But how familiar are you with your keyboard’s history?
When was the typewriter invented?
The first recorded patent for a typewriting machine was filed by a British engineer, Henry Mill, in 1714. It seems that Mr. Mill was more of a thinker than a doer, though, as there’s no evidence that the machine was ever built. The real history of the modern (QWERTY) keyboard begins in 1867, when American newspaper editor and printer Christopher Sholes built the first actual Type-Writer – in fact, that was the patented name of the invention.
What was the state of the art writing implement before the typewriter?
The quill.
That’s only a slight exaggeration. Since Gutenberg’s 15th-century invention of the printing press, not much had changed in the field of writing and printing. A portable pen that contained its own ink supply was not perfected until later in the 19th century, so the quill was still the standard writing implement when Sholes introduced his machine. In fact, Union Officers during the Civil War were issued 12 quills per quarter as part of their stationery ration.
Who came up with the QWERTY layout?
Christopher Sholes was primarily responsible for QWERTY, but it took years of tinkering to arrive at the layout we know today. The first model that Sholes built mimicked a piano keyboard, with the letters placed alphabetically. By the time the machines began to be mass-produced in the 1870s, the QWERTY keyboard was almost identical to the one in front of you.
What is the connection between QWERTY and the Civil War?
Gun manufacturer E. Remington and Sons had made a fortune selling arms during the war, and the company was branching out into the mass production of peace-time inventions like the sewing machine. Remington bought the manufacturing rights for Sholes’ Type-Writer in 1873 and began mass producing the QWERTY machines the following year. Until 1881, Remingtons were the only typewriters commercially available, giving the QWERTY layout a head start on any would be competing layouts.
Is there any proof that QWERTY is the optimal keyboard arrangement?
Not a shred. In fact, all evidence points to QWERTY being terribly inefficient. The most accessible row of the keyboard is the second, or ‘home’ row. So it would make sense if the most commonly used letters in the English language were there, right? But that’s not how QWERTY rolls. About 70% of words in English can be typed with the letters DHIATENSOR, yet only 4 of those 10 letters fall on QWERTY’s home row. The letter A falls on the home row (the only vowel to do so), but it must be struck with what is for most typists the weakest finger — the left pinky.
So why did Sholes create such an awkward layout?
To slow down fast typists. Sounds ridiculous, right? But that’s the consensus among historians. On earlier arrangements of the keys, ones where the most commonly used letters were more sensibly placed on the home row, typists could get on a real roll, even when using the hunt and peck method. The problem with that? With all the popular letters close together, the keys got jammed. The typist had to stop to un-jam them. What made that worse was that in the earliest models of the typewriter, the keys struck the back of the paper, so the typist was unable to see jams — and the resulting mistakes — until the page was removed from the machine. Slowing the typist down a bit by dispersing the most commonly used letters all over the keyboard was preferable to wasting even more time because of jammed keys.
Does the QWERTY keyboard favor right handed typists?
Nope. In fact, it heavily favors left-handed typists. A total of 300 English words can be typed by the right hand alone. By contrast, 3000 English words can be typed with the left. While that’s good for left-handed people (10% of the population), it contributes to the inefficiency of QWERTY keyboard for the majority.
Was there ever an alternative keyboard arrangement?
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
There have been several. The most successful has proven to be the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (DSK). August Dvorak, cousin of the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, was a professor of education in 1932 when he introduced his alternative to QWERTY. In 1914, Dvorak had been inspired by the work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, a married couple who were pioneers in the field of workplace efficiency. After almost two decades of study and experimentation, Dvorak patented the DSK.
So why don’t we use the Dvorak keyboard, then?
Same reason we don’t use the metric system. We embrace its inefficiency and prefer it to the pain of switching to something better. By the time the DSK was introduced in 1932, several generations of typists had been using QWERTY. It was by far the most readily available layout, and the one that was taught in most typing schools. So even after technological advances solved the key jamming issue, we kept the relic of the problem – the QWERTY keyboard.
[NOTE: See the comment from Nancy below about the DSK vs. QWERTY argument.]
Just throwing this out there: Do Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt have anything to do with QWERTY?
Tangentially, yes. Remember the Gilbreths, the couple who inspired Dvorak to create his keyboard? Their family was the subject of the book Cheaper by the Dozen, a film version of which Martin and Hunt starred in decades later.
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Why QWERTY?
Cows In China Are Now Producing Human Breast Milk [Video]
Amidst all the concern going around that cows’ milk is bad for you, Chinese scientists have found a way to fix the problem: By genetically engineering cows to produce human breast milk. Is soy milk just not in favor yet? More
Netgear’s Universal WiFi Range Extender now available for balding home networks
Few things in life are more aggravating than WiFi dead spots — especially when you’ve just settled in to stream the latest Game of Thrones episode, after a long and excruciating week of tech blogging. Good thing that Netgear’s Universal WiFi Range Extender, first spotted at this year’s CES, is now available for shipping. This discrete white cube promises to bring connectivity to remote regions of your lair by automatically mirroring the wireless signal emitted from your gateway. Just use the device’s LED indicator to find the area where the extender would optimize its reach, plug it into any ol’ AC outlet, and those ugly pockets of wireless death will suddenly spring back to life (think of it as Rogaine for your WiFi router). It also supports 802.11 b/g/n and is compatible with WEP, WPA and WPA2 security standards, in case you were wondering. You can find the extender at retailers located all over this green Earth, where it’ll be priced at around $90. If that tickles your fancy, head past the break for the full PR.
Continue reading Netgear’s Universal WiFi Range Extender now available for balding home networks
Netgear’s Universal WiFi Range Extender now available for balding home networks originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
What To Do When You Get Scammed on eBay [Security]
Often times scammers can be easy enough identify and avoid, but we don’t always have our guards up and some are more clever than others. If you fall victim to an eBay scam, it’s not the end of the world. Here are a few things you can do to try and fix the situation. More
New ‘semi-solid’ battery could recharge EVs as fast as pumping gas
Researchers at MIT reckon they’ve struck oil. In fact, you’re looking at what they call “Cambridge crude” — a substance that could halve the weight and cost of EV batteries and make them quicker to charge too. The black goo is packed with a high concentration of energy in the form of particles suspended in a liquid electrolyte. When separated by a filter, these particles function as mobile electrodes that can be pumped into and around a system before the energy is released. So instead of waiting up to 20 hours to juice your Nissan Leaf, you could potentially just pump this pre-charged substance into it — rather like dirty old gas. Until now, no such “semi-solid flow cell” has been able to hold useful quantities of energy, but this stuff literally oozes with it. Not only could it power EVs, it could even be used for large-scale electricity storage for utilities. The researchers insist this energy revolution is years off — but when it comes, there will be blood.
New ‘semi-solid’ battery could recharge EVs as fast as pumping gas originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
New ‘semi-solid’ battery for EVs could recharge as fast as pumping gas
Researchers at MIT reckon they’ve struck oil. In fact, you’re looking at what they call “Cambridge crude” — a substance that could halve the weight and cost of EV batteries and make them quicker to charge too. The black goo is packed with a high concentration of energy in the form of particles suspended in a liquid electrolyte. When separated by a filter, these particles function as mobile electrodes that can be pumped into and around a system before the energy is released. So instead of waiting up to 20 hours to juice your Nissan Leaf, you could potentially just pump this pre-charged substance into it — rather like dirty old gas. Until now, no such “semi-solid flow cell” has been able to hold useful quantities of energy, but this stuff literally oozes with it. Not only could it power EVs, it could even be used for large-scale electricity storage for utilities. The researchers insist this energy revolution is years off — but when it comes, there will be blood.
New ‘semi-solid’ battery for EVs could recharge as fast as pumping gas originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
What you need to know about iTunes Match: your questions answered
This fall Apple will offer iTunes users a paid add-on to its iCloud music syncing called iTunes Match. The service will let you mirror your iTunes library on iCloud, making it possible to access any track on any device you have registered with your Apple ID for a yearly $24.99 subscription fee.
The service has some limitations and perhaps one interesting “loophole,” and questions exist concerning what exactly happens when you stop paying $25 every year. We decided to dig in and find out exactly what users can expect when the service rolls out in a few months.
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What you need to know about iTunes Match: your questions answered
Wii U Discs Will Be 25GB In Size [Stats]
In a wide-ranging interview with Kotaku regarding the new Wii U console, one of Nintendo’s chief game designers, Katsuya Eguchi, confirmed that the system’s proprietary disc format will hold 25 Gigabytes of data. That squares with our own reporting from before E3 and puts Nintendo in a good place to run games that fill up a single-layer 25GB Blu-Ray disc, the format used by current console king of large game discs, the PlayStation 3. More