Remove Cheap Remove IDEA Remove Tech Remove Universal
article thumbnail

Inventing Postscript, the Tech That Took the Pain out of Printing

Cars That Think

Back then, Warnock already had a rough idea how to “Print Anything.” from the University of Utah , joined the center in 1978, he immediately began work on a new printer protocol. from the University of Utah , joined the center in 1978, he immediately began work on a new printer protocol. in Mountain View, Calif.

Design 104
article thumbnail

Who Really Invented the Thumb Drive?

Cars That Think

In 2000, at a trade fair in Germany, an obscure Singapore company called Trek 2000 unveiled a solid-state memory chip encased in plastic and attached to a Universal Serial Bus (USB) connector. Computer users badly needed a cheap, high-capacity, reliable, portable storage device. The thumb drive was all that—and more.

Singapore 143
article thumbnail

What Robotics Experts Think of Tesla’s Optimus Robot

Cars That Think

What excites me is the idea of cheap and accessible hardware! The sense I’m getting is that Optimus isn’t as bad as people thought, but also, nobody [in the robotics community] is very impressed or surprised by any of the tech. Assistant Professor, University of Toronto. Assistant Professor, Florida State University.

Boston 145
article thumbnail

False Starts: The Story of Vehicle-to-Grid Power

Cars That Think

Then, as electricity entrepreneurs expanded power generation and transmission capacity, they faced the new problem of what to do with all the cheap off-peak, nighttime electricity they could now produce. A Test of Vehicle-to-Grid Tech By the turn of the millennium, however, selling EV propulsion systems had become a hard way to make a living.

Grid 136
article thumbnail

IEEE Spectrum’s Top Telecom Stories of 2023

Cars That Think

This Mirror Reverses How Light Travels in Time Nature Physics In an esoteric bit of research this year, a group of researchers based at universities in New York City discovered how to pass a signal through something called a “time interface”—the result being that the entire signal acted like it was moving back in time.

Google 93
article thumbnail

Bezos Bucks? Get Ready for Corporate Digital Currency

Cars That Think

Corporate Cash The idea of private digital currencies goes back to at least 1994, when the late Edward de Bono wrote of the “IBM dollar.” It started out as a means of running Amazon’s own platform and has since grown into a company that offers similar services to other companies and even university researchers.

article thumbnail

How a Parachute Accident Helped Jump-start Augmented Reality

Cars That Think

The project began in 1991, when I pitched the effort as part of my doctoral research at Stanford University. Back then, I was a graduate student at Stanford University and a part-time researcher at. Adjusted for inflation, they cost about US $8,000 and weren’t even a thousandth as fast as a cheap gaming computer today.

Parts 137