There are some products that have become so familiar that their name has entered everyday language.  The Hoover Company became so successful in the vacuum cleaner market that its name has entered the language to describe the task they perform.  Here in the UK, many Brits of a certain age do not do the vacuuming.  Instead, they “hoover”. The Hoover - a truly dominant design The same is true of more up-to-date technology.  In the world of the internet, Google now receives … [Read more...]

The name “information superhighway” was familiar at the beginning of the internet age.  At the time that the internet was introduced, the most common communication used a point-to-point system.  A user would dial the telephone number of the recipient, and all communications took place between one and the other.  The electrical connection between the two was a series of wires travelling via telephone exchanges, connected for the purpose of that call, and broken once it … [Read more...]

As a mechanical engineer (ME), I honestly never figured that I would need to know much more than your typical V=IR (Ohm's Law), and if I were even more honest, I would say my intention was to completely forget it after my electrical engineering (EE) class of the master's program. In fact my professor, Dr. Kamel, even stated "Here is this equation you don't care about, and will soon forget..." Boy was she incorrect in my case. As fate, or perhaps my employer, should have it; Ohm's law would … [Read more...]