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Technology ("science of craft", from Greek ��?�֦ͦ�, techne, "art, skill, cunning of hand"; and -�˦Ϧ�?��, -logia) is the sum of techniques, skills, methods, and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation. Technology can be the knowledge of techniques, processes, and the like, or it can be embedded in machines to allow for operation without detailed knowledge of their workings. Systems (e.g. machines) applying technology by taking an input, changing it according to the system's use, and then producing an outcome are referred to as technology systems or technological systems.

The simplest form of technology is the development and use of basic tools. The prehistoric discovery of how to control fire and the later Neolithic Revolution increased the available sources of food, and the invention of the wheel helped humans to travel in and control their environment. Developments in historic times, including the printing press, the telephone, and the Internet, have lessened physical barriers to communication and allowed humans to interact freely on a global scale.

Technology has many effects. It has helped develop more advanced economies (including today's global economy) and has allowed the rise of a leisure class. Many technological processes produce unwanted by-products known as pollution and deplete natural resources to the detriment of Earth's environment. Innovations have always influenced the values of a society and raised new questions in the ethics of technology. Examples include the rise of the notion of efficiency in terms of human productivity, and the challenges of bioethics. (Full article...)

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Delaware Route 9A (DE 9A) is a two- to four-lane road in Wilmington, Delaware that serves as the primary access route to the Port of Wilmington as well as provide access to Interstate 495 (I-495). The official designation of the route runs 0.78 miles (1.26 km) along Terminal Avenue between DE 9 and the Port of Wilmington, interchanging with I-495. Signage has the route continuing north along Christiana Avenue to an intersection with U.S. Route 13 (US 13) and DE 9 for a total length of 2.0 mi (3.2 km). Christiana Avenue originally became a state highway in the 1920s, becoming a part of US 40 that connected to a ferry across the Delaware River to Penns Grove, New Jersey. US 40 was removed from this road in the 1930s and it later became part of DE 48, which was subsequently removed in the 1950s following the discontinuance of the ferry. DE 9A was designated by 1971. (Full article...)
The refurbished Titan Crane at Clydebank, situated adjacent to the fitting-out basin of the former John Brown & Company shipyard.

Titan Clydebank is a 150-foot-high (46 m) cantilever crane at Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, Scotland. It was designed to be used in the lifting of heavy equipment, such as engines and boilers, during the fitting-out of battleships and ocean liners at the John Brown & Company shipyard. It was also the world's first electrically powered cantilever crane, and the largest crane of its type at the time of its completion.

Situated at the end of a U-shaped fitting out basin, the crane was used to construct some of the largest ships of the 20th century, including the Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Elizabeth 2. The Category A Listed historical structure was refurbished in 2007 as a tourist attraction and shipbuilding museum. It is featured on the current Clydesdale Bank ?5 note. (Full article...)
M-105 was the designation of a former state trunkline highway in The Thumb region of the US state of Michigan. It served as a connecting route between M-53 in Popple and M-83 (now M-142) near Elkton. The designation was in use in the 1920s and 1930s, and it has not been reused since. (Full article...)
M-99 is a north�Csouth state trunkline highway in the Lower Peninsula of the US state of Michigan. It runs from the Ohio state border, where it connects to State Route 15 (SR 15), north to Lansing, where it terminates at a junction with Interstate 496 (I-496) and the Capitol Loop. The highway mainly serves local communities along the route as it passes through farm lands in the southern part of the state. One short segment, in Jonesville, is routed concurrently with US Highway 12 (US 12). The segment within Lansing follows Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

The current highway is the third to carry the M-99 designation. The others were located near Lake Michigan near Muskegon in the Lower Peninsula and Gulliver in the Upper Peninsula in the 1920s and 1930s. The current highway was first designated as parts of M-34 and M-64 in 1919. These numbers were later dropped in favor of an M-9 designation in 1929. For part of 1934, a loop route was designated M-158 in Hillsdale County that was used for a rerouted M-9 in the area. The M-99 designation was applied to the highway in 1940. Since then, the state has completed paving twice; one segment was returned to gravel surface for two years in the 1950s. The southern section in Hillsdale County was rerouted in the 1960s, and sections were converted into divided highways in the late 1970s. (Full article...)
Delaware Route 6 (DE 6) is a state highway in Kent County, Delaware. It runs from Maryland Route 291 (MD 291) at the Maryland border west of Blackiston to the Delaware Bay in Woodland Beach. The route passes through rural areas of northern Kent County as well as the towns of Clayton and Smyrna. DE 6 intersects DE 42 in Blackiston, DE 15 in Clayton, DE 300 and U.S. Route 13 (US 13) in Smyrna, and DE 9 to the east of Smyrna. The road was built as a state highway during the 1920s and 1930s and received the DE 6 designation by 1936. The easternmost part of the route was paved in the 1960s and the route was moved to its current alignment bypassing downtown Smyrna by the 1990s. (Full article...)
State Route 544 is a state highway in northern Whatcom County, Washington, United States. It runs east�Cwest for 9 miles (14 km) near the Canadian border, connecting SR 539 near Lynden to Everson and a junction with SR 9 in Nooksack.

The Lynden�CEverson highway was built in the 1880s as a wagon road, with onward connections to Nooksack via a ferry over the Nooksack River that was later replaced with a bridge. It was paved by the Whatcom County government in the 1930s and incorporated into the state highway system in 1951 as a branch of Secondary State Highway 1A. During the 1964 state highway renumbering, the branch became SR 544. The Nooksack River bridge between Everson and Nooksack was replaced in 1994 after a major flood damaged the old structure. (Full article...)
New York State Route 404 (NY 404) is an east–west state highway located in eastern Monroe County, New York, in the United States. It extends for just over 10 miles (16 km) from an interchange with NY 590 in Irondequoit to an intersection with NY 104 on the Monroe�CWayne County line in the town of Webster. The route traverses the southern tip of Irondequoit Bay and passes through the village of Webster, where NY 404 intersects NY 250. Most of NY 404 passes through commercial areas; however, the western and eastern extents of the highway serve areas more residential in nature. The westernmost 3 miles (5 km) of the route is part of the Seaway Trail, a National Scenic Byway.

NY 404 largely follows the path of the Theodore Roosevelt International Highway, an early 20th-century auto trail, through the towns of Irondequoit, Penfield, and Webster. Most of modern NY 404 was designated as NY 3 in 1924 and redesignated as U.S. Route 104 (US 104) c. 1935. In the early 1970s, US 104 was realigned to follow a new freeway between Irondequoit and Five Mile Line Road in Webster while NY 404 was assigned to US 104's former surface routing along the southern and eastern extents of Irondequoit Bay. NY 404 was gradually extended eastward to the Wayne County line over the course of the next decade as more sections of the freeway opened to traffic. (Full article...)
New York State Route 421 (NY 421) is a short state highway located within Adirondack Park in the southeastern corner of St. Lawrence County, New York, in the United States. It is a narrow, two-lane spur route connecting NY 30 to Horseshoe Lake by way of Tupper Lake. A dead end sign is posted immediately off NY 30, the only route with which it intersects. The entire road is located in the town of Piercefield, although that name is not posted on NY 421. The route offers access to several picnic and snowmobile areas.

The eastern portion of NY 421 was built in the 1920s under the terms of a 1923 law authorizing the construction of a highway leading from modern NY 30 north to Warren Point. This road was completed in 1925. NY 421 was assigned to the entirety of the north�Csouth highway c. 1931. The roadway connecting Horseshoe Lake to Tupper Lake was built c. 1962 and became part of NY 421 by 1968. NY 421's former routing to Warren Point remained a state highway up through 1999, when a bill permitting the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) to remove it from the state highway system was signed into law. (Full article...)
M-58 is a 5.108-mile-long (8.221 km) east�Cwest state trunkline highway in the US state of Michigan that runs from M-47 in Saginaw Township east to exit 3 of Interstate 675 (I-675) near the north part of downtown Saginaw. The trunkline follows State Street through the Saginaw area, and east of Lathrop Avenue, M-58 is split along two streets, using Davenport Avenue as well. This is the third time that the number has been used on a highway in Michigan; the first two were used in the Berrien County and Pontiac areas. The Saginaw version was designated in 1971, and it is listed on the National Highway System. (Full article...)
Delaware Route 20 (DE 20) is an east�Cwest state highway in Sussex County, Delaware. Its western terminus is the Maryland state line in Reliance, where it continues as Maryland Route 392 (MD 392). Its eastern terminus is DE 54 west of Fenwick Island. The route runs through rural areas of Sussex County and passes through the towns of Seaford, Millsboro, and Dagsboro. DE 20 intersects U.S. Route 13 (US 13) in Seaford, US 9 in Hardscrabble, US 113 and DE 24/DE 30 in Millsboro, DE 26 in Dagsboro, and DE 17 in Roxana. DE 20 was originally created by 1936 to run from the Maryland border east to US 113 in Millsboro. By 1970, it was realigned to bypass Seaford. The route was extended east to DE 1 in Fenwick Island by 1994; however, the eastern terminus was cut back to DE 54 in 2005 to avoid the concurrency with that route. (Full article...)
The Pittston Coal strike was a United States strike action led by the United Mine Workers Union (UMWA) against the Pittston Coal Company, nationally headquartered in Pittston, Pennsylvania. The strike, which lasted from April 5, 1989 to February 20, 1990, resulted from Pittston's termination of health care benefits for approximately 1,500 retirees, widows, and disabled miners. The strikers also cited the refusal of the company to contribute to the benefit trust established in 1950 for miners who retired before 1974 and the refusal of the company to bargain in good faith as grounds for their action. The company cited declining coal prices, decreasing demand, and recession as its reason for limiting health care benefits.

The strike affected production in mines mostly in Virginia, but a few in West Virginia and Kentucky as well. Mine workers and their families engaged in acts of civil disobedience, work stoppage, protests, and rallies. At its peak in June 1989, the strike involved approximately 2,000 miners daily staying at Camp Solidarity with thousands more sending donations and holding wildcat walkouts that involved around 40,000 people. The participation of women in the labor action through the ad hoc formation of the Daughters of Mother Jones—reminiscent of the early days of union organization—proved an essential element of the successful strike. (Full article...)
A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a unique identifier used by web technologies. URIs may be used to identify anything, including real-world objects, such as people and places, concepts, or information resources such web pages and books. Some URIs provide a means of locating and retrieving information resources on a network (either on the Internet or on another private network, such as a computer filesystem or an Intranet), these are Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). Other URIs provide only a unique name, without a means of locating or retrieving the resource or information about it, these are Uniform Resource Names (URNs). The web technologies that use URIs are not limited to web browsers. URIs are used to identify anything described using the Resource Description Framework (RDF), for example concepts that are part of an ontology defined using the Web Ontology Language (OWL), and people who are described using the Friend of a Friend vocabulary would each have an individual URI.

Although URI remains a term in common use, the specifications that define URIs have been replaced by those for Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRI), which extend the definition of URIs so that IRIs can handle character sets such as Kanji rather than being restricted to ASCII. (Full article...)
Crystal City area of Arlington County, Virginia in 2005

Amazon HQ2 is a planned corporate headquarters in Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia for technology company Amazon. HQ2 was announced in September 2017, and is an expansion of the existing headquarters in Seattle, Washington.

Amazon intended to spend $5 billion on construction, saying that HQ2 would house 50,000 workers when completed. The corporation also invited governments and economic development organizations to give the corporation tax breaks and other incentives to entice it to their locality. More than 200 cities in Canada, Mexico, and the United States eventually offered tax breaks, expedited construction approvals, promises of infrastructure improvements, new crime-reduction programs, and other incentives. On January 18, 2018, a shortlist of 20 finalists was announced, after which the candidate localities continued to detail or expand their incentive packages. (Full article...)
Tom Kilburn (11 August 1921 �C 17 January 2001) was an English mathematician and computer scientist. Over the course of a productive 30-year career, he was involved in the development of five computers of great historical significance. With Freddie Williams he worked on the Williams�CKilburn tube and the world's first electronic stored-program computer, the Manchester Baby, while working at the University of Manchester. His work propelled Manchester and Britain into the forefront of the emerging field of computer science.

A graduate of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Kilburn worked on radar at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) in Malvern under Frederic Calland Williams during the Second World War. After the war ended, he was recruited by Williams to work on the development of computers at the University of Manchester. He led the development of a succession of innovative Manchester computers that incorporated a host of ground-breaking innovations and developments, including the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercial computer, and the Atlas, one of the first time-sharing multiprocessing computers that incorporated job scheduling, spooling, interrupts, pipelining and paging. (Full article...)
Clifton Suspension Bridge

The Clifton Suspension Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Avon Gorge and the River Avon, linking Clifton in Bristol to Leigh Woods in North Somerset. Since opening in 1864, it has been a toll bridge, the income from which provides funds for its maintenance. The bridge is built to a design by William Henry Barlow and John Hawkshaw, based on an earlier design by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It is a grade I listed building and forms part of the B3129 road.

The idea of building a bridge across the Avon Gorge originated in 1753. Original plans were for a stone bridge and later iterations were for a wrought iron structure. In 1831, an attempt to build Brunel's design was halted by the Bristol riots, and the revised version of his designs was built after his death and completed in 1864. Although similar in size, the bridge towers are not identical in design, the Clifton tower having side cut-outs, the Leigh tower more pointed arches atop a 110-foot (34 m) red sandstone-clad abutment. Roller-mounted "saddles" at the top of each tower allow movement of the three independent wrought iron chains on each side when loads pass over the bridge. The bridge deck is suspended by 162 vertical wrought-iron rods in 81 matching pairs. (Full article...)

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Filling station
Photograph: Uwe Aranas
A filling station in Sabah, Malaysia, operated by Royal Dutch Shell. Filling stations, also known under a wide variety of names, are facilities that sell fuel and engine lubricants for motor vehicles. They include one or more fuel dispensers, which distribute fuels such as gasoline and diesel into the tanks within vehicles and calculate the financial cost of the fuel transferred. Filling stations may also include air compressors and electricity sockets, which may inflate tyres or offer charging stations. Many filling stations also incorporate a convenience store, where customers can purchase snacks and other goods.
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Semi-trailer truck
Diagram: H Padleckas and Ju gatsu mikka
A diagram showing a side and underside view of an 18-wheeler semi-trailer truck with an enclosed cargo space. The underside view shows the arrangement of the wheels, and in blue, the axles, drive shaft, and differentials.

The numbered parts are:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000000E-QINU`"'

#tractor unit
#semi-trailer (detachable)
#engine compartment
#cabin
#sleeper (not present in all trucks)
#air dam
#fuel tanks
#fifth-wheel coupling
#enclosed cargo space
#landing gear (legs for when semi-trailer is detached)
#tandem axles

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Mary Jackson
Photograph credit: Langley Research Center; restored by Adam Cuerden
Mary Jackson (1921�C2005) was an African American mathematician and aerospace engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which was succeeded by NASA in 1958. For most of her career, she worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia; starting as a computer at the segregated West Area Computing division, she later took advanced engineering classes and, in 1958, became NASA's first black female engineer.

After 34 years at NASA, Jackson had earned the most senior engineering title available. Realizing that she could not earn further promotions without becoming a supervisor, she accepted a demotion to become a manager of the Federal Women's Program in the NASA Office of Equal Opportunity Programs, as well as of the Affirmative Action Program. In this role, she worked to influence both the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, engineering and mathematics careers. She was portrayed by Janelle Mon��e as a lead character in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. This picture, taken in 1980, shows Jackson working at NASA Langley.
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Thomas Edison
Photo: Bachrach Studios; Restoration: Michel Vuijlsteke
Thomas Edison (1847�C1931) was an American inventor, scientist and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
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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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M198 howitzer
Photo credit: L Cpl. Samantha L. Jones, USMC
Nine Marines from Mike Battery, 4th Battalion, 14th Marines operate the 155mm M198 howitzer in November 2004. The battery was based at Camp Fallujah, Iraq and was supporting Operation Phantom Fury. All nine members of the M198 crew are present.
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Nuclear weapon
Image credit: Fastfission
Schematic representation of the two methods with which to assemble an atomic bomb. An A-bomb produces its explosive energy through nuclear fission reactions alone. A mass of fissile material (enriched uranium or plutonium) is assembled into a supercritical mass��the amount of material needed to start an exponentially growing nuclear chain reaction��either by shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another (the "gun" method, shown on top here), or by compressing a sub-critical sphere of material using chemical explosives to many times its original density (the "implosion" method, at bottom).
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TRS connector
Image credit: S?ren Peo Pedersen
Two TRS connectors (also known as jack plugs or phone plugs), a common audio connector. They are cylindrical in shape, with two or more contacts. Originally invented for use in telephone switchboards, jack plugs are still widely used, both in the original ?-inch (6.3 mm) size and in miniaturized versions. The top plug in this image is for stereo connections, while the bottom is for mono.
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Geneva drive
Animation: Mike1024
The Geneva drive is a gear mechanism that translates a continuous rotation into an intermittent rotary motion. The rotating drive wheel has a pin that reaches into a slot of the driven wheel advancing it by one step. The drive wheel also has a raised circular blocking disc that locks the driven wheel in position between steps. Such a mechanism is used in film projectors, watches, and indexing tables, among others.
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Keypunch
Picture: Unknown; restoration: Mmxx
A woman using a Hollerith pantograph, a machine developed by Herman Hollerith for the punching of cards, providing data which could then be processed. Such tools were used in the 1890 United States Census, the first time the country's census was tabulated by machine.
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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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Sukhoi Superjet 100
Photograph: Katsuhiko Tokunaga/SuperJet International
The Sukhoi Superjet 100 is a modern fly-by-wire twin-engine regional jet with 8 to 108 passenger seats. Development began in 2000; the aircraft had its maiden flight on 19 May 2008 and entered commercial service on 21 April 2011. This aircraft is seen flying off the coast of Italy near Sanremo.
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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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Enriched uranium
Photo: United States Department of Energy
A billet of enriched uranium, which is uranium where the percent composition of uranium-235 (²³⁵U) has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Enriched uranium is a critical component for both civil nuclear power generation and military nuclear weapons.
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Bucket-wheel excavators
Photograph: Raimond Spekking
Bucket-wheel excavators (BWEs) are heavy equipment used in surface mining. The primary function of a BWE is to act as a continuous digging machine in large-scale open pit mining operations. These BWEs were photographed at the Garzweiler surface mine in Germany.
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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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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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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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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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Micrometer
Photograph: Lucasbosch
A micrometer is a device incorporating a calibrated screw, widely used for precise measurement of components in mechanical engineering and machining. Micrometers are usually, but not always, in the form of calipers (opposing ends joined by a frame). The spindle is a very accurately machined screw and the object to be measured is placed between the spindle and the anvil. The spindle is moved by turning the ratchet knob or thimble until the object to be measured is lightly touched by both the spindle and the anvil.
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Did you know...

... that Munster Technological University, scheduled to open in 2021, will be only the second university of its type in Ireland?
... that modified mRNA (mRNA translation depicted) is a key technology in the Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer vaccines against COVID-19?
... that Jill S. Tietjen tries to supply more role models for women in engineering and technology by regularly nominating candidates for awards and halls of fame?
... that in 1948 and 1952, nuclear physicist Leslie Shepherd published scientific papers on the use of nuclear technology for interplanetary and interstellar space travel?
... that Andrew Niikondo, acting vice-chancellor of the Namibia University of Science and Technology, completed his secondary school education only at age 30?
... that technology developed for use in inkjet printers helped make the automated white blood cell differential, a common blood test, possible?

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See also: 2021 in science and technology

November 12, 2020 �C Economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announces a $35.14 billion package to stimulate the economy by boosting jobs, consumer demand, manufacturing, agriculture and exports hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. She said the package includes 9 billion rupees ($121 million) for development of a vaccine by the government��s biotechnology department. (ABC News)
October 26, 2020 �C: Chinese financial technology firm Ant Group debuts on the Hong Kong and Shanghai Stock Exchanges, with its IPO worth up to US$34.4 billion. This surpasses Saudi Aramco, whose IPO was worth US$29.4 billion, as the strongest debut on a stock exchange. Jack Ma, whose company Alibaba Group is backing the debut, is expected to become the richest man in China as a result. (BBC)