Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Story of Electronics and Artificial Intelligence
    The Story of Electronics and Artificial Intelligence
    The Story of Electronics and Artificial Intelligence
    Ebook109 pages1 hour

    The Story of Electronics and Artificial Intelligence

    By George J. Whalen, NY9A

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The Fascinating World of Electronics & AI: A Guide for Inquisitive Teens & Adults

    This new book will tell you how the wonders of electronics have given us almost two centuries of heroic discoveries and inventions: first, radio; then broadcasting; then, cellular phones; then, classic computers; software; and now, quantum computers, networks and artificial intelligence-- and soon, robots, self-driving cars, smart cities; anti-gravity, and a Jetson future!

    So, all you future innovators! Are you ready to dive into the captivating universe of electronics and AI? It's a place where computers learn to think, games level up on their own and robots become our helpful companions. Let's unravel the mysteries together!

     

    What is AI? At its core, AI is the science of making machines smart. Imagine teaching your computer to recognize your cat from a photo or instructing a drone to deliver packages without getting lost. That's AI in action! It's all about creating algorithms -- a set of rules for solving problems -- so that machines can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGeorge J. Whalen, NY9A
    Release dateOct 16, 2024
    ISBN9798227831743
    The Story of Electronics and Artificial Intelligence

    Related to The Story of Electronics and Artificial Intelligence

    Related ebooks

    Computers For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Tesla’s Wireless World

      Nov 1, 2021

      In 1900, the first electrical engineers were busy weaving a worldwide web of wires. Wires conducted power to Thomas A. Edison’s incandescent light bulbs. Wires relayed information to Alexander Graham Bell’s telephones and Samuel F.B. Morse’s telegrap

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Vision to Behold: The Story of Electronic Displays

      Nov 6, 2023

      No electronic device has changed our view of the world we live in quite like the electronic screen. Whether it’s a cathode-ray tube television from 1956 or a smartphone purchased ten minutes ago, our lives have been dominated by the desire to see bey

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Math’s Notes

      Dec 1, 2020

      Two decades ago, in 1999, I wrote a column predicting what I thought the future would be like in the coming 20 years and, as strange as it seems to me, it’s finally here. As it appears that the COVID-19 situation is still not well under control by th

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How The World Turned Electric

      Jan 19, 2023

      How The World Turned Electric
      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Math’s Notes

      Dec 1, 2021

      Math’s Notes
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Electronic Component That Changed Australia (and The World)

      Nov 28, 2022

      The new Apple A16 Bionic chip inside the iPhone 14 has almost 16-billion transistors. At first glance, it might’ve look more like a high-school science experiment than a revolutionary step into the future, but 75 years ago this December, a group of U

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Electricians

      Sep 22, 2020

      Electricians
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Lines Of Communication

      Mar 5, 2019

      We in the magazine trade generally report on technology rather than invent it. But it was a 1753 article in The Scots Magazine (still published today) that proposed an electric telegraph. By 1816, Navy bosses were offered a working message transmit s

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How Wireless Charging Works

      Dec 27, 2019

      How Wireless Charging Works
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Wireless Pioneer

      Nov 21, 2017

      Wireless Pioneer
      19 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Monaco, ITU Centenary 1965

      Jul 9, 2021

      Monaco, ITU Centenary 1965
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Beware of Radio Musk

      Nov 13, 2024

      A cause rarely unites countries and encourages international co-operation. When it does, it's usually because of a practical need. Take electricity – it's the same the world over. TV receivers work the same way everywhere, and so on. So it is with ra

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      When Tech Terrifies

      May 4, 2021

      When Tech Terrifies
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      When Tech Terrifies

      Aug 2, 2021

      When Tech Terrifies
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Lights, Camera, Acrimony!: Physicists and engineers face off over how to make room for more data.

      Mar 20, 2014

      A crowd of thousands had gathered at St. Mark’s Square in Venice, drawn by the prospect of witnessing a telecommunications revolution. In the warm summer evening of June 24, 2011 they watched a video, projected onto the wall of the medieval Doge’s Pa

      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Cable Battle

      Dec 4, 2022

      What piece of home tech would you be willing to drop the equivalent of $1600 on? And we’re talking cash here – no credit cards, no Afterpay, no 24 months’ interest free. This was the prospect enticing consumers back in November 1957 when Australian f

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Internet Ocean

      Oct 1, 2019

      Internet Ocean
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Sixty Years Of Marine Communication

      Apr 16, 2024

      It’s easy to forget how primitive recreational boating was when Soundings was founded 60 years ago. Today, marine VHF radios are everywhere, but until the 1960s, when it came to marine communication, recreational boaters had very few options. For tho

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Math’s Notes

      Dec 1, 2022

      At this point in time, 2022 is coming to a close and the new year is about to be born. I typically use this time to think about where we have been and where we may go in the future. This month, however, I would also like to explore the future but in

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Story of Electronics and Artificial Intelligence

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Story of Electronics and Artificial Intelligence - George J. Whalen, NY9A

      Chapter 1. In Brief: Here’s How It Happened:

      The discovery of the electron in 1897 (by J. J. Thomson) was followed by the invention of the diode vacuum electron tube, also in 1897 (by John A. Fleming). Later discoveries (in 1912) that a three-element version of this device (the triode) could amplify, rectify, generate and detect electrical signals (by E.H. Armstrong) brought about the electronics revolution in the first half of the twentieth century. I’ll explain this shortly.

      So, triode vacuum tubes were the very first active electronic components; that means they controlled the current flows of electrons within circuits.  This gave us the huge capabilities of amplification, switching, and radio-frequency energy generation. We used those functions to create radio and television, radar, long-distance telephony, computers (first, classic, and, later, quantum), software, artificial intelligence, smart machines (robots), satellites and networks.

      The early growth of electronics was rapid, and by the 1920s, commercial radio broadcasting and communications were widespread. Electronic amplifiers with triode tubes were being used in long-distance telephones, movies and the music recording industry.

      Decades later, the first transistor was invented in 1947. But, vacuum tubes still ruled in microwaves, high power radio transmission, and television until the mid-1980s. Then, solid-state devices (transistors) all but took over electronics. In April 1955, the 608 computer was the first IBM product to use transistor circuits. It had no vacuum tubes but used more than 3,000 germanium transistors. This led IBM’s then-president, Thomas J. Watson Jr. to rule that all future IBM products would use transistors as the active design devices. Thereafter, transistors became exclusively used for computer logic and peripherals. But those early transistors were too big and bulky. And, germanium was a very fragile material. So, the MOSFET (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor) was invented by Dawon Kahng and Mohammed Attalla at Bell Labs. It was the first, truly rugged, silicon compact-form transistor that could be greatly miniaturized and mass-produced for a wide range of uses. It revolutionized the electronics industry, made large-scale  integrated circuits possible, and it has become the world’s most widely used electronic component.

      As the complexity of circuits grew, physical size problems arose. The performance of a computer circuit, depends on its speed. If its components are too large, wires interconnecting them need to be long. So, electric signals take more time to go through the circuit, slowing-down the computer. The invention of integrated circuitry solved this problem by making it possible to form all components and interconnecting wiring on the same chip of semiconductor material. So, integrated circuits (ICs) could be made much smaller, and manufacturing could be automated. In 2008, immense, billion-transistor MOSFET processor ICs became commercially available. Now it’s possible to have a cell phone with as many as 8-billion tiny transistors in its IC.

      Chapter 2. Why We Needed Electronics

      There was no radio in the 19th century. Ships and vehicles were primitive, travel on sea and land was dreadful—hazardous, isolated, and hard. It took great courage to go to sea. Once out of sight of land, every ship was on its own. Sudden storms could destroy any ship unlucky enough to steer into their paths! There was no way to get information to or from vessels that went beyond the horizon. Travel by ship meant being out of touch and in peril for days, weeks or months.

      On land, most roads were dirt, rocky, muddy, pitted, rutted, hazardous, isolated and uncomfortable. Few were paved. Services were scarce. People relied on horses, draft animals, wagons and carriages to go places. Most people lived their entire lives within 30 miles of where they’d been born. Communication was mostly by voice, shout or mail.  Travel by stagecoach, wagon, horse or mule also meant being in peril, isolated and out of touch. 

      Automobiles were invented in the late nineteenth century, so getting places became easier,  but we needed faster and better communication. Radio would become the answer. But, it was like a new baby: weak and always needing changing. Early Radio was just telegraphic, spark-powered, and interference-prone. You had to be an amateur radio hobbyist to use it. There simply was no commercial usage—and no government licensing, until after the 20th century began. BTW, radio’s inventor was Mahlon Loomis (1868). Read about him in my The Story of Radio (to 5G Wireless).

      Radio had a long, unhappy, impoverished childhood in the decades-long shadow of the U.S. Civil War. It took until the early years of the 20th century to begin recovering. Then, the first World War intervened. In the 1920s radio Broadcasting came and brought the thrill of listening to everyone with a receiver. It grew to keep people glued to their radio receivers. The idea of receiving news, messages and music magically from far away, by invisible waves, was very appealing. Everyone got hooked... we listened in our cars, too. But listening wasn’t enough.  We wanted to talk. So, AT&T radio-telephones came. But, they were channel-limited and always busy. To solve this, analog cellular car phones came. Then, a genius engineer at Bell Labs (Jesse E. Russell) changed their technology over to digital (1980-88)... and, suddenly, cell phones were out of the trunk and small enough to move into our pockets and purses to make us

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1