A miniature brushless DC motor, built by Danaher’s Kollmorgen (DHR) (Digital Movers, February 2002), runs the 10,000 rpm pump in the AbioCor artificial heart. An ultra-high-energy-density lithium battery, implanted inside the heart itself, supples about 30 minutes of primary power to the motor.
Electronic motion control brings quantum leaps in flexibility, precision, efficiency, and reliability to applications as diverse as robots, wheelchairs, lift trucks, and packaging machines.
Infrared (IR) sensors festoon soldiers helmets, hang limpet-like on Apache and Pavelow helicopters, and are integral to M1 tanks and their battlefield kin.
How do you “see” molecules? The molecules in plastic explosives? Or nerve gas? Or cocaine? Or Anthrax DNA? A dog’s nose is pretty good at this form of vision, which is why canines are showing up a lot in places like airports these days.
Edison’s bulb radiates power around 500,000 GHz, which is convenient, because that’s in the frequency range our eyes can see. The downside: light doesn’t penetrate clothes, walls, fog, smoke, foliage, and dirt.
We built what became the four bombs; they hijacked them. We supplied the engineers, turbines and wings; they supplied suicidal fanatics and cardboard cutters. The Capitol was saved, apparently, because our civilians overwhelmed their conscripts in hand-to-hand combat on one of the planes.
