Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Nikola Tesla and the Myth of the Lone Inventor

April 3, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
edison-tesla_fe

This post is based on a talk I gave at South by Southwest and a version of it first appeared at BBC Future. Who invented the Internet? To answer that seemingly simple question you basically have two options: you can go on for hours explaining the hundreds of people and institutions that contributed crucial advancements to the way that the Internet operates, or you can just say Vint Cerf. Or Leonard Kleinrock. Or Tim Berners-Lee. People have been fighting for decades over who invented the Net. Some will tell you that Vint Cerf’s work on its underlying protocols—TCP/IP—was its ... Read More

More like this: Science, Time Machine
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Bring on the Noise

July 2, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Thaddeus Cahill's chair-mounted headphones

BEFORE BEATS BY DR. DRE, before the iPod’s earbuds, before even the Sony Walkman’s headphones, there was Thaddeus Cahill’s chair-mounted device for “individual-ear reproduction” of recorded sound. With radio becoming ever more popular, the New York City-based inventor thought people should be able to listen without disturbing others. He applied for a patent in 1931, catching the attention of Everyday Science and Mechanics magazine. (Published by radio pioneer and futurist Hugo Gernsback.) Personal listening devices have actually been around as long as radio itself. Radio ... Read More

More like this: Culture, July-August 2012, Time Machine
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Leonardo of the Deep

May 25, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Closer look at colorful GasPods

Maybe the only invention Leonardo da Vinci hasn't already imagined is the gas pod, a finely sculpted ceramic bulbosity encased in a shiny urethane shell that increases the fuel efficiency of cars to which it's attached. That could be because Leonardo never got around to scuba diving. Had he done so, he might have beaten Bob Evans—a lifelong deep-sea diver, inventor, underwater photographer living in Santa Barbara, California—to the punch. By planting nine gas pods onto the rear roof line of his car—a square backed Volvo X70—Evans said, he achieved a small, but dramatic ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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The iPod Touch as a Crop Saver

November 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

On the heels of Cellscope, a device that clips onto a smartphone to analyze blood samples, comes Gene-Z, a device that can clip onto an iPod Touch and identify diseases in crops and plants. The traditional approach to identifying plant pathogens is to collect field samples, send them to a laboratory, and await the results. With Gene-Z, researchers said, they can take a swab of plant pathogens, transfer the sample to a kind of “lab-on-a-chip,” insert the chip into the device, and get results within 10 to 30 minutes via smartphone technology. Gene-Z was unveiled November 7 at a conference ... Read More

More like this: By The Way ..., Science
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As if Commercials Weren’t Bad Enough Already

September 9, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

After a two-year experiment, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, in conjunction with Samsung, have written a concept paper in the journal Angewandte Chemie explaining that they think it's possible to "generate potentially thousands of odors, at will, in a compact device small enough to fit on the back of your TV." To which we say: Gross. But here's how Sungho Jin, a world-renowned materials expert at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, described his invention: "For example, if people are eating pizza, the viewer smells pizza coming from a TV or cell phone. ... Read More

More like this: Science, September-October 2011, The Cocktail Napkin
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Humayun Finding Medical Advances in Plain Sight

August 30, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

By the standards of the unsexy world of university research scientists, Mark Humayun is something of a media darling. By his count, he's been interviewed more than 500 times, popping up on 20/20 with Barbara Walters, in the pages of Popular Mechanics and onstage with Stevie Wonder. It's always about the same thing — his amazing invention. Humayun is the chief researcher behind the world's first commercially available artificial retina, a breakthrough that literally helps the blind see. The artificial retina — technically, a retinal prosthesis — is the culmination of nearly 20 years ... Read More

More like this: Health, September-October 2011
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Battling World Hunger Through Innovative Technology

July 12, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Battling World Hunger Graphic

Topics like farm industrialization and genetic modification seem to dominate discussion of technology's role in addressing world hunger. Beyond them, however, are new and exciting frontiers. From mobile apps to interactive games, technology is reshaping our understanding of and approach to world hunger. To see the illustration of these innovations that appeared in the July-August 2011 issue of Miller-McCune magazine, click the image below. Robotics Whereas the plant breeder's pursuit of an ideal seed has traditionally been time-consuming and resource-intensive, new technology is vastly ... Read More

More like this: Graphic Art, July-August 2011, Science
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Designing for Impact and Emotion

June 10, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Design matters. A lot. The Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago is determined to show the world how and how much. At two recent conferences it has hosted, one in May and one last October, the power of design and thinking in a designer-ly way were thoroughly discussed and demonstrated. As Patrick Whitney, the dean of IIT’s Institute of Design describes, understanding design “in both a deeper and broader way … can create value for both culture and commerce over the long run.” And design isn’t just an esoteric pursuit; it encompasses all ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Save the Poor by Selling Them Stuff — Cheap

April 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The first slide comes up on the white-walled lecture room's double display screens. In capital letters, it declares: "EMPATHY." The 40-odd Stanford students gathered in a semicircle of plastic chairs on the cement floor blink at the screen, awaiting explanation. Almost all of them are pursuing graduate degrees in some form of engineering or business — disciplines known more for unemotional logic and bare-knuckle competitiveness than getting in touch with someone else's feelings. Erica Estrada, a recent Stanford mechanical engineering grad with long, loose black hair, clicks to the next ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Magazine Feature Story, May-June 2011
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Kisaalita Engineers Solutions for Africa’s Rural Poor

November 1, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
William Kisaalita and milk

For a moment, William Kisaalita is distracted. In a spacious, sunlit office at the University of Georgia, Kisaalita should be focused on the book he just published, or the pile of papers teetering on his desk, or the phone calls and visitors that repeatedly interrupt his afternoon. Instead, Kisaalita, a professor and tissue engineer at the university, leans back in his chair, locking his hands behind his head, his dark eyes narrowing. "When you come here and are successful," he says, gesturing around the large office, "you have this nagging feeling. What have you done for the people at ... Read More

More like this: November-December 2010, Profile, Science
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