STATE OF ELECTRONICS
This is the storey of the “State of Electronics”, a documentary about the art and science of electronics and how it coincided with the modern formation of our society. Electronics starts out as digital in telegraphy in what has been dubbed the “Victorian Internet”. It then changes state to analogue with advent of the valve and Lee De Forest’s “triode”, becoming Radio … later Television. Transistors change it’s form in the 50’s and 60’s into “solid state”. Integrated circuits herald another change with the miniaturisation of hardware and the “space race” in the late 60’s and 70’s. The advent of electronic calculators, computers and micro controllers bring about the true digital age, with computational and computer programming changing the “state of electronics” into both hardware and software. The internet is born, forever changing what electronics means to most.
FEATURED STORY | PETER CLARK
At 96 years of age, Peter Clark has an incredible story to tell. Born in 1922 in England, he lived through the years leading up to the war. Life was hard but simple. Along came WWII and upset most people’s plans in Europe and the UK. Peter joined the RAF and prepared Spitfire aircraft for battle in a front line squadron during the Battle of Britain. Afterwards, he was moved to a bomber squadron where he worked as a flight mechanic and then flew in bombers as a Flight Engineer. Suffering a crash towards the end of the war, he was grounded. After WW2, he took his discharge in Australia and began the odd job, one of which introduced him to a "Wire Recorder". Find out more here!
FEATURED STORY | SCHENZHEN TOUR
Artificial Intelligence, or AI as it is more commonly known, and automation is this weeks discussion point for SOE. After visiting quite a number of factories on our innovation tour of Shenzhen, there was definitely a noticeable trend towards automation in manufacturing for some businesses and not others. The tour group discuss this and it's implications (along with others) to try and make sense of it. Automation is not new to the world with the Luddites smashing the Cotten Gins in the early 1800's, inventions such as the Combine Harvester, Robotics in car manufacturing, CNC of all sorts of machines, etc bringing about changes to the labour force. However, the recent improvements in AI (machine learning and neural networks in particularly) and a desire to implement it, is making it possible for manufacturers to remove most of the "human component" of their processes. Find out more here!
Describe what role you played on your team. Who did you have to work with to achieve your goal? What was the outcome of the project?