IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-04-09DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960522
Allison Marsh
{"title":"Past Forward: When Electrification Came for the Eraser","authors":"Allison Marsh","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960522","url":null,"abstract":"In 1953, the Loren Specialty Manufacturing Co. introduced its first electric eraser for pencils and ink pens. By then, inventors had already been patenting such devices for several decades, and other companies were selling a variety of electric erasure products. But what was so problematic about the humble eraser that it needed electrifying? In the days before computer-aided drawing and the ease of the undo command, erasing could be a delicate operation. To make corrections to a hand-drawn map, for example, two engineering professors in 1930 suggested first picking off the ink with a sharp knife, placing a hard surface beneath the map, and then rubbing it with a pencil eraser. The Presto Model 80 electrical eraser [above] was marketed to draftsmen, librarians, and artists. Held in the hand like a pen or pencil, the eraser vibrated to abrade a small area in need of correction. Today, some artists still use electric erasers for fine details in their drawings.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 4","pages":"48-48"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10960522","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143808914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-04-09DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960479
Harry Goldstein
{"title":"Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe: Digital Archivists are Saving Public Information from the Memory Hole","authors":"Harry Goldstein","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960479","url":null,"abstract":"In the three decades since Brewster Kahle spun up the nonprofit Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, it has scaled up to include government websites and datasets—many of which are essential to the engineering and scientific communities. U.S. government agencies like the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and NASA are critical sources of research data, technical specifications, and standards documentation in pretty much every area where IEEE Spectrum's audience works—AI & computer science, biomedical devices, power and energy, semiconductors, telecommunications…the list goes on.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 4","pages":"2-2"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10960479","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143808904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-04-09DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960524
Wally Rippel;Alan Cocconi
{"title":"We're Doing EV Charging Wrong: A 1990s Charger Design Would be Cheaper and Simpler—And Just as Safe, Say EV Pioneers","authors":"Wally Rippel;Alan Cocconi","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960524","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960524","url":null,"abstract":"To those who don't yet own an EV, a robust infrastructure may seem unimportant. Studies, after all, show that in developed markets, as much as 90 percent of all charging takes place in the home. It turns out, however, that the remaining percentage of charging is critically important. Drivers of delivery trucks and taxis, residents of apartment buildings, students on their way to college, families on vacation, and countless others have learned that driving an EV can be a struggle where public charging is scarce or unreliable. A 2022 survey by Forbes, for example, indicated that 62 percent of EV owners were so anxious about EV range that they had at times curtailed their travel plans.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 4","pages":"32-47"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143808908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-04-09DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960501
Stephen Cass
{"title":"Build a DIY Weather Satellite Dish: And Try Your Hand at Radio Astronomy","authors":"Stephen Cass","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960501","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960501","url":null,"abstract":"The U.S. government recommends that everyone have a disaster kit that includes a weather radio. These radios tune to a nationwide network run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Federal Communications Commission that provides alerts about hazardous weather and other major emergencies. Such broadcasts can be a lifeline when other communication systems go out. But what if you could step it up and get not just audio information but also images, charts, and written reports, even while completely off the grid?","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 4","pages":"14-16"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143808902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-04-09DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960503
Jayson Stewart;Rudolf Schultz;Daniel Brown
{"title":"The Tiny Supernovas Inside an EUV Machine: The Same Math that Describes Exploding Stars is Keeping Moore's Law Going","authors":"Jayson Stewart;Rudolf Schultz;Daniel Brown","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10960503","url":null,"abstract":"Supernova explosions, the catastrophic self-destruction of certain types of worn-out stars, are intimately tied to life on Earth because they are the birthplaces of heavy elements across the universe. Most of the iron in our blood and the sulfur in our amino acids originated in stars that detonated billions of years ago. But we have encountered another, quite surprising connection between supernovas and the human world—specifically, a connection to the technology needed to make computer chips for the latest smartphones and other electronic devices.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 4","pages":"20-46"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143808842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-03-07DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918574
William Webb
{"title":"Rethinking 6G: It's not More Bandwidth that Users Need","authors":"William Webb","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918574","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918574","url":null,"abstract":"Could maximum data speeds–on mobile devices, at home, at work–be approaching “fast enough” for most people for most purposes? These heretical questions are worth asking, because industry bandwidth tracking data has lately been revealing something surprising: Terrestrial and mobile-data growth is slowing down. In fact, absent a dramatic change in consumer tech and broadband usage patterns, data-rate demand appears set to top out below 1 billion bits per second (1 gigabit per second) in just a few years.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 3","pages":"18-23"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143570647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-03-07DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918575
Jack Copeland
{"title":"Alan Turing's Top-Secret Diy Project: An Exclusive Look Inside his Pioneering Voice-Encryption System","authors":"Jack Copeland","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918575","url":null,"abstract":"It was 8 May 1945, Victory in Europe Day. With the German military's unconditional surrender, the European part of World War II came to an end. Alan Turing and his assistant, Donald Bayley, celebrated victory in their quiet English way, by taking a long walk together.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 3","pages":"34-41"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143570648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}