The Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. and NEC, a leading electronics maker, announced last Friday that they will produce ecologically friendly batteries for automobiles. The move is anchored on the automaker’s desire to catch up with rivals in the industry that have already started in green technology.
Japan’s third largest automaker and NEC are investing 490 million yen ($4.1 million; 3 million euros) to set up a joint venture by the end of this month so as to produce lithium-ion batteries for green vehicles, including electric cars and hybrids by 2009. The information was divulged by the companies Friday.
Evidently, Nissan has fallen behind Japanese rivals the Toyota Motor Corp. and the Honda Motor Co. in developing hybrids and other ecologically friendly technologies that slash gas emissions blamed for global warming. Tokyo-based Nissan has started selling hybrid cars like the Altima. Nonetheless, the automaker licenses the technology from Toyota. Hybrids switch between an electric motor and a gas engine to deliver reduced CO2 emissions and better mileage.
But the Tokyo-based automaker has developed what it said was a superior auto battery technology with NEC, said Carlos Tavares who is Nissan’s executive vice president. The automaker intends to unveil its original hybrid vehicle by 2010 as well as the original next-generation electric vehicle in the early part of the next decade. "Together Nissan and NEC's engineers have addressed the key challenges of cost, performance, safety and reliability. We believe that we have a breakthrough technology: the lithium-ion battery produce we will produce," Tavares said.
Lithium-ion batteries, also called and commonly known as Li-ion batteries, are common in portable electronics such as laptops and cell phones. But they have yet to be fully adapted to the more rigorous demands of a car engine. At present, these batteries are built to match auto parts like the EBC redstuff and other trusted car systems.
Hybrids from Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., Ltd. use nickel-metal hydride batteries. But Detroit automakers like General Motors Corp. are working on lithium-ion batteries for vehicles. According to Nissan, the battery product from NEC and Nissan will be made available to all automakers. "Co-development with Nissan has enabled a superior-class battery that we expect to spread in the market at an unmatched speed," NEC Executive Vice President Konosuke Kashima said.
Nissan will have a 50 percent stake in Automotive Energy Supply Corp. which is the companies’ new joint venture, while NEC and subsidiary and battery maker NEC Tokin Corp. own a combined fifty percent.
Sales of hybrids and cars that offer other environmentally friendly technology are still a fraction of standard models. Both Toyota and Honda have seen their brand image get better from introducing advances such as the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic hybrids. Sales of Toyota and Honda small cars have increased in the America and other overseas markets lately. The demand is anchored on the soaring oil prices.
Nissan was near bankruptcy before entertaining an alliance with Renault SA of France in 1999. Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive at Renault and Nissan, who led the revival, in the past has played down the vitality of hybrids, which are expensive to develop and take time to catch on. Ghosn has emphasized innovations in gas engines, while saying Nissan was working on its own hybrid technology.
About the Author
Given her background on cars as an auto insurance director, Lauren Woods finds the world of cars to be constantly changing.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
New LED lighting technology embraced by consumers, Total Cost of Ownership saves money over incandescent, fluorescent bulbs
The launch of our new LED lights from EcoLEDs (www.EcoLEDs.com) is already proven to be a huge success. Thank you to all the customers who have purchased our new LED light bulbs from BetterLifeGoods (www.BetterLifeGoods.com). In the first 24 hours, the sales of these lights greatly exceeded our expectations.
The primary question that has emerged from conversations with potential customers concerns the perception that LED lights are very expensive. This article attempts to answer that question, as well as providing additional details on where these new LED lights can be successfully used around the home or office.
First, the price issue: LED lights are, indeed, far more expensive up front than incandescent lights or fluorescent lights. Our high-end 10-watt LED light bulb, for example, currently costs just under $100. It replaces an incandescent 100-watt light bulb that typically costs around $1. So at first, the 10-watt LED light seems to be $99 more expensive.
However, lights do not actually work unless they also consume electricity, and thus the real question about the cost of light bulbs must take into account the Total Cost of Ownership, or TCO. What is the TCO for producing 50,000 hours of light with a 100-watt incandescent bulb?
As it turns out, a 100-watt light bulb actually uses 101.5 watts of electricity. Over 50,000 hours (which would require replacing it 50 times with a new bulb), it will use 5,075 kilowatt-hours of electricity, costing approximately $500 (based on ten cents per kilowatt-hour). So a 100-watt light bulb actually costs you $500 to operate over 50,000 hours. On top of that, it produces a whopping 10,150 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions which directly promote global warming and climate change. Mercury is also released into the atmosphere from all the energy usage, thanks to the fact that much of the electricity consumed in the world comes from coal-fired power plants that emit toxic mercury into the air.
So the Total Cost of Ownership for a 100-watt light bulb is well over $500 for producing 50,000 hours of light.
In contrast, what is the Total Cost of Ownership for our 10-watt EcoLEDs light bulb? The LED light itself costs about $100 up front. It uses 10.8 watts of electricity, which adds up to 540 kilowatt-hours over 50,000 hours. That's about $54 in electricity, vs. the $500 needed to power the 100-watt bulb mentioned above. Plus, our 10-watt LED light reduces CO2 emissions by 9,000 pounds, producing only about 1,080 pounds of CO2 instead of the 10,150 pounds produced from a 100-watt incandescent bulb.
The Total Cost of Ownership for a 10-watt LED light bulb is $100 for the light, and $54 in electricity for producing 50,000 hours of light.
Thus, the LED light is $154 vs. $550 or so (electricity + the cost of replacement bulbs) for incandescent lights.
Which brings us to the question: How much would you rather pay for 50,000 hours of light? $154 or $550? It makes obvious financial sense to pay only $154, especially when you're also protecting the environment at the same time.
Why LED lights cost more up front
Overall, LED lights are far less expensive to own and operate than incandescent lights. Still, many consumers are frustrated at the up-front cost. It's tough to fit a $100 light bulb into a tight budget. I share that concern, and I wish these lights were a lot less expensive to manufacture, but the fact is that quality LED components cost more. The copper, aluminum alloys and lenses that go into our LED lights are quality components, not cheap disposable parts like you normally find in an incandescent light. Building a quality LED light costs a lot more money than building a cheap light that you toss into landfill after a thousand hours of wasting electricity before burning out.
LED component prices are falling each year, however, and the future will no doubt bring more affordable LED lights to the marketplace. We anticipate that retail prices will fall 10 percent per year for quality LED lights, and we will of course work to bring down the prices of our own LED lights as quickly as we can. A less expensive light means increased affordability by a greater number of consumers, and that means a greater impact on saving energy and halting global warming. If we could sell these lights for one dollar and not go broke doing so, you can bet we'd be selling them for that dollar!
LED lights will never be as cheap as incandescent light bulbs. However, they will always pay you back in significant savings over time. And as electricity costs continue to rise, LED lighting makes even more economic sense.
As a consumer, you see, you're really buying hours of light, not just the bulbs that produce the light. The cost of the bulb is the smallest part of the equation. You'll find a similar situation with inkjet printers and inkjet cartridges. The printer might only cost $49 up front, but you might spend several hundred dollars in ink cartridges in a single year in order to operate the printer. Thus, the Total Cost of Ownership of the inkjet printer must take into the account the cost of the ink.
Uses for LED lights
Many consumers are wondering where they can use LED lights around their homes or businesses. Can they replace lights in room lamps? Ceiling fans? Desk lamps? Recessed lights?
To answer this question, remember that LED lights are really spotlights. They shine light in a specific direction with a certain beam angle. A wide beam angle shines light wider from side to side, while a narrow beam angle shines light in a narrow cone with extreme brightness. Thus, LED lights do NOT shine light in all directions like a typical incandescent light. This makes them the wrong choice for room lamps with lampshades or any light socket requiring "ambient" light in all directions.
What LED lights are great at is shining light straight down onto a surface or straight up to bounce off a ceiling (like a Torchiere light setup). Our high-end LED lights are fantastic in desk lamps, as they offer extreme brightness and outstanding light clarity that's useful for any work or study situation. They're also perfect for recessed lighting and down lights. I'm actually writing this article with the help of a 10-watt LED light in a small desk lamp that's aimed at my wall. It bounces white light across the entire room, illuminating my keyboard and computer. (It also stays cool enough to touch, since it doesn't waste much electricity as excess heat.)
LED lights are also great for porch lights, garages, sheds or any application where you need to leave the light on all night. That's because LED lights will use only 1/10th the electricity of incandescent bulbs, saving you big dollars on electricity. Even our 3-watt LED light is sufficient for nighttime use where you just want to "leave the light on" around your property.
All of our LED lights produce no UV radiation or IR radiation, making them perfect for use in museums, hospitals, offices or areas where UV radiation might degrade the surroundings (such as illuminating valuable artwork or photographs). The fact that they run remarkably cool also means they greatly reduce the fire hazard normally associated with the use of lights.
LED lights will make incandescent and fluorescent lights obsolete
I will offer a prediction right here: LED lights will render both incandescent light bulbs AND compact fluorescent lights obsolete. Many countries are already banning incandescent lights, and four U.S. states are considering their ban. Compact fluorescent lights will eventually be abandoned as the public learns the truth about their mercury content. Only LED lights offer energy efficiency and environmental friendliness at the same time. That's why LED lighting technology represents the future for both residential and commercial lighting.
Philips says it will even stop manufacturing incandescent lights by 2016, but most consumers will have switched long before then. Within a few years, only the most financially-ignorant consumers will even consider using incandescent light bulbs. Burning a light that wastes 95% of the electricity it consumes is sort of like driving a car that gets a fuel economy of one mile per gallon. No consumer in their right mind would continue to throw away their cash (and destroy the environment) when a sensible, efficient alternative is readily available.
And LED lights will get even brighter, better and less expensive in the coming years. Through EcoLEDs.com, I'm making an effort to bring these lights to eco-conscious consumers around the world. Within a few years, we hope to have lights exceeding 500 lumens of light output that will cost under $50 at retail. The trends are already in place, and U.S. LED component manufacturers are gearing up their factories for higher volumes.
LED components will follow price trends of PC components
The LED light industry today is much like the PC industry was in the 1980's. Remember what it cost you to buy a lousy 4.77mHz PC with a floppy disk drive and 64k of RAM in 1981? It was about four thousand dollars -- and it didn't even have color! I remember the first hard drives for Apple computers cost about five thousand dollars... and they only stored only 10 megabytes!
By comparison, you can now by a 4 gigabyte SD memory card for under a hundred bucks at retail! That's a massive reduction in cost as these electronics became cheaper to manufacture and widely accepted by consumers. LED components have been following a similar path. A single component that cost $10 today would have cost $1000 just a few years ago. And a few years from now, it might only cost 10 cents. Prices are falling by 50% a year on LED components, which means LED light bulbs will get increasingly affordable with each passing year.
Even right now, buying LED lights makes great economic sense. They pay you back in 1-2 years in electricity costs alone (depending on how much you pay for electricity), not to mention the benefits of protecting the environment from more CO2 and mercury emissions. That's an environmental cost that consumers rarely factor into their monthly electricity bill, but it's a very real cost associated with wasting electricity.
What is the value of preventing the release of 10,000 pounds of CO2 into the air? What is the value of preventing the release of a kilogram of mercury from a power plant? You see, nobody has really put a price figure on these things because polluting the environment continues to be seen by most American consumers and politicians as a revenue-neutral event when, in reality, it is a huge hidden cost against future economic productivity. Every gram of mercury and every pound of carbon dioxide released into the air places an unknown future cost on the national economy. With this in mind, consider the REAL cost of burning incandescent lights. It's not just what you waste in paying for electricity, it's also what future costs you indirectly impose upon the environment.
Do you get the big picture?
Understanding all this requires "big picture thinking," and sadly, the ability to see the big picture is sorely lacking among many consumers, businesses and lawmakers. Americans seem to be primarily focused on the short-term picture: How much can I save right now? Can I get this cheaper today at the expense of some future hidden burden that will have to be paid by someone else?
Canadians tend to be very well informed about the long-term implications of their present consumption decisions. In fact, many of the customers ordering our EcoLEDs lights are located in Canada. They understand the big picture and realize that paying more money right now for a technology that will save them hundreds of dollars in the long run (while saving the environment at the same time) makes instant sense.
Many Americans understand this, too, but due to our crumbling education system, even the ability to do the basic math calculations required to even understand the Total Cost of Ownership seems to be a rare skill. The vast majority of high school graduates in the United States cannot calculate a 15 percent restaurant tip in their heads. How on earth will they ever understand the Total Cost of Ownership concept for energy-efficient lighting?
I don't have an answer for that. Not everybody will get this. The big picture will only be grasped by some. The others will have to be dragged into the future, kicking and screaming about the government banning their incandescent light bulbs. But the smarter, better-informed consumers out there (like NewsTarget readers) get this right now, and they understand that LED lights make instant sense in terms of personal economics and planetary impact.
(Full disclosure: I am the founder of www.EcoLEDs.com which manufactures and sells LED light bulbs, and I have a financial stake in the commercial success of EcoLEDs. A portion of every sale provides financial support to the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center, where I volunteer as the executive director.)
http://www.newstarget.com/021840.html
The primary question that has emerged from conversations with potential customers concerns the perception that LED lights are very expensive. This article attempts to answer that question, as well as providing additional details on where these new LED lights can be successfully used around the home or office.
First, the price issue: LED lights are, indeed, far more expensive up front than incandescent lights or fluorescent lights. Our high-end 10-watt LED light bulb, for example, currently costs just under $100. It replaces an incandescent 100-watt light bulb that typically costs around $1. So at first, the 10-watt LED light seems to be $99 more expensive.
However, lights do not actually work unless they also consume electricity, and thus the real question about the cost of light bulbs must take into account the Total Cost of Ownership, or TCO. What is the TCO for producing 50,000 hours of light with a 100-watt incandescent bulb?
As it turns out, a 100-watt light bulb actually uses 101.5 watts of electricity. Over 50,000 hours (which would require replacing it 50 times with a new bulb), it will use 5,075 kilowatt-hours of electricity, costing approximately $500 (based on ten cents per kilowatt-hour). So a 100-watt light bulb actually costs you $500 to operate over 50,000 hours. On top of that, it produces a whopping 10,150 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions which directly promote global warming and climate change. Mercury is also released into the atmosphere from all the energy usage, thanks to the fact that much of the electricity consumed in the world comes from coal-fired power plants that emit toxic mercury into the air.
So the Total Cost of Ownership for a 100-watt light bulb is well over $500 for producing 50,000 hours of light.
In contrast, what is the Total Cost of Ownership for our 10-watt EcoLEDs light bulb? The LED light itself costs about $100 up front. It uses 10.8 watts of electricity, which adds up to 540 kilowatt-hours over 50,000 hours. That's about $54 in electricity, vs. the $500 needed to power the 100-watt bulb mentioned above. Plus, our 10-watt LED light reduces CO2 emissions by 9,000 pounds, producing only about 1,080 pounds of CO2 instead of the 10,150 pounds produced from a 100-watt incandescent bulb.
The Total Cost of Ownership for a 10-watt LED light bulb is $100 for the light, and $54 in electricity for producing 50,000 hours of light.
Thus, the LED light is $154 vs. $550 or so (electricity + the cost of replacement bulbs) for incandescent lights.
Which brings us to the question: How much would you rather pay for 50,000 hours of light? $154 or $550? It makes obvious financial sense to pay only $154, especially when you're also protecting the environment at the same time.
Why LED lights cost more up front
Overall, LED lights are far less expensive to own and operate than incandescent lights. Still, many consumers are frustrated at the up-front cost. It's tough to fit a $100 light bulb into a tight budget. I share that concern, and I wish these lights were a lot less expensive to manufacture, but the fact is that quality LED components cost more. The copper, aluminum alloys and lenses that go into our LED lights are quality components, not cheap disposable parts like you normally find in an incandescent light. Building a quality LED light costs a lot more money than building a cheap light that you toss into landfill after a thousand hours of wasting electricity before burning out.
LED component prices are falling each year, however, and the future will no doubt bring more affordable LED lights to the marketplace. We anticipate that retail prices will fall 10 percent per year for quality LED lights, and we will of course work to bring down the prices of our own LED lights as quickly as we can. A less expensive light means increased affordability by a greater number of consumers, and that means a greater impact on saving energy and halting global warming. If we could sell these lights for one dollar and not go broke doing so, you can bet we'd be selling them for that dollar!
LED lights will never be as cheap as incandescent light bulbs. However, they will always pay you back in significant savings over time. And as electricity costs continue to rise, LED lighting makes even more economic sense.
As a consumer, you see, you're really buying hours of light, not just the bulbs that produce the light. The cost of the bulb is the smallest part of the equation. You'll find a similar situation with inkjet printers and inkjet cartridges. The printer might only cost $49 up front, but you might spend several hundred dollars in ink cartridges in a single year in order to operate the printer. Thus, the Total Cost of Ownership of the inkjet printer must take into the account the cost of the ink.
Uses for LED lights
Many consumers are wondering where they can use LED lights around their homes or businesses. Can they replace lights in room lamps? Ceiling fans? Desk lamps? Recessed lights?
To answer this question, remember that LED lights are really spotlights. They shine light in a specific direction with a certain beam angle. A wide beam angle shines light wider from side to side, while a narrow beam angle shines light in a narrow cone with extreme brightness. Thus, LED lights do NOT shine light in all directions like a typical incandescent light. This makes them the wrong choice for room lamps with lampshades or any light socket requiring "ambient" light in all directions.
What LED lights are great at is shining light straight down onto a surface or straight up to bounce off a ceiling (like a Torchiere light setup). Our high-end LED lights are fantastic in desk lamps, as they offer extreme brightness and outstanding light clarity that's useful for any work or study situation. They're also perfect for recessed lighting and down lights. I'm actually writing this article with the help of a 10-watt LED light in a small desk lamp that's aimed at my wall. It bounces white light across the entire room, illuminating my keyboard and computer. (It also stays cool enough to touch, since it doesn't waste much electricity as excess heat.)
LED lights are also great for porch lights, garages, sheds or any application where you need to leave the light on all night. That's because LED lights will use only 1/10th the electricity of incandescent bulbs, saving you big dollars on electricity. Even our 3-watt LED light is sufficient for nighttime use where you just want to "leave the light on" around your property.
All of our LED lights produce no UV radiation or IR radiation, making them perfect for use in museums, hospitals, offices or areas where UV radiation might degrade the surroundings (such as illuminating valuable artwork or photographs). The fact that they run remarkably cool also means they greatly reduce the fire hazard normally associated with the use of lights.
LED lights will make incandescent and fluorescent lights obsolete
I will offer a prediction right here: LED lights will render both incandescent light bulbs AND compact fluorescent lights obsolete. Many countries are already banning incandescent lights, and four U.S. states are considering their ban. Compact fluorescent lights will eventually be abandoned as the public learns the truth about their mercury content. Only LED lights offer energy efficiency and environmental friendliness at the same time. That's why LED lighting technology represents the future for both residential and commercial lighting.
Philips says it will even stop manufacturing incandescent lights by 2016, but most consumers will have switched long before then. Within a few years, only the most financially-ignorant consumers will even consider using incandescent light bulbs. Burning a light that wastes 95% of the electricity it consumes is sort of like driving a car that gets a fuel economy of one mile per gallon. No consumer in their right mind would continue to throw away their cash (and destroy the environment) when a sensible, efficient alternative is readily available.
And LED lights will get even brighter, better and less expensive in the coming years. Through EcoLEDs.com, I'm making an effort to bring these lights to eco-conscious consumers around the world. Within a few years, we hope to have lights exceeding 500 lumens of light output that will cost under $50 at retail. The trends are already in place, and U.S. LED component manufacturers are gearing up their factories for higher volumes.
LED components will follow price trends of PC components
The LED light industry today is much like the PC industry was in the 1980's. Remember what it cost you to buy a lousy 4.77mHz PC with a floppy disk drive and 64k of RAM in 1981? It was about four thousand dollars -- and it didn't even have color! I remember the first hard drives for Apple computers cost about five thousand dollars... and they only stored only 10 megabytes!
By comparison, you can now by a 4 gigabyte SD memory card for under a hundred bucks at retail! That's a massive reduction in cost as these electronics became cheaper to manufacture and widely accepted by consumers. LED components have been following a similar path. A single component that cost $10 today would have cost $1000 just a few years ago. And a few years from now, it might only cost 10 cents. Prices are falling by 50% a year on LED components, which means LED light bulbs will get increasingly affordable with each passing year.
Even right now, buying LED lights makes great economic sense. They pay you back in 1-2 years in electricity costs alone (depending on how much you pay for electricity), not to mention the benefits of protecting the environment from more CO2 and mercury emissions. That's an environmental cost that consumers rarely factor into their monthly electricity bill, but it's a very real cost associated with wasting electricity.
What is the value of preventing the release of 10,000 pounds of CO2 into the air? What is the value of preventing the release of a kilogram of mercury from a power plant? You see, nobody has really put a price figure on these things because polluting the environment continues to be seen by most American consumers and politicians as a revenue-neutral event when, in reality, it is a huge hidden cost against future economic productivity. Every gram of mercury and every pound of carbon dioxide released into the air places an unknown future cost on the national economy. With this in mind, consider the REAL cost of burning incandescent lights. It's not just what you waste in paying for electricity, it's also what future costs you indirectly impose upon the environment.
Do you get the big picture?
Understanding all this requires "big picture thinking," and sadly, the ability to see the big picture is sorely lacking among many consumers, businesses and lawmakers. Americans seem to be primarily focused on the short-term picture: How much can I save right now? Can I get this cheaper today at the expense of some future hidden burden that will have to be paid by someone else?
Canadians tend to be very well informed about the long-term implications of their present consumption decisions. In fact, many of the customers ordering our EcoLEDs lights are located in Canada. They understand the big picture and realize that paying more money right now for a technology that will save them hundreds of dollars in the long run (while saving the environment at the same time) makes instant sense.
Many Americans understand this, too, but due to our crumbling education system, even the ability to do the basic math calculations required to even understand the Total Cost of Ownership seems to be a rare skill. The vast majority of high school graduates in the United States cannot calculate a 15 percent restaurant tip in their heads. How on earth will they ever understand the Total Cost of Ownership concept for energy-efficient lighting?
I don't have an answer for that. Not everybody will get this. The big picture will only be grasped by some. The others will have to be dragged into the future, kicking and screaming about the government banning their incandescent light bulbs. But the smarter, better-informed consumers out there (like NewsTarget readers) get this right now, and they understand that LED lights make instant sense in terms of personal economics and planetary impact.
(Full disclosure: I am the founder of www.EcoLEDs.com which manufactures and sells LED light bulbs, and I have a financial stake in the commercial success of EcoLEDs. A portion of every sale provides financial support to the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center, where I volunteer as the executive director.)
http://www.newstarget.com/021840.html
When old electronics meet their end, much ends up becoming toxic waste in China
(NewsTarget) Old computers and other used-up appliances are creating polluted environments in Asia, the final resting place for much of the world's electronic goods, reports the China Daily newspaper.
Known as "e-waste," more than 75 percent of televisions, computers and other home electronics discarded by the developed world end up bound for Asia. Up to 90 percent of the old electronics goes to China, according to the Beijing-based Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China's Ministry of Science and Technology.
However, only 10 percent of the electronics that go to China are recycled for reuse. The rest gets burned, destroyed or otherwise reduced to poisonous end-products.
Inside computers and other electronics are gold, copper and other reusable precious metals. This makes the 90 percent of discarded electronics not recycled a viable enterprise for people looking to extract those precious metals. However, many of these "electronics harvesters" use simple and environmentally unfriendly processes to get the metals out, such as putting the machines through acid baths.
The result is that lead, mercury and other chemicals are released into the atmosphere – through toxic gasses – and put into lakes and rivers through wastewater systems. The harvesters are burning the plastic cases, melting lead-based monitor glass and simply tossing out the undesirable by-products of precious metal extraction.
In some cities that are hotspots for the metal extraction business, pollution levels are much higher than American or European standards.
In the Guiyu area, an agricultural sector in south China that many e-processers have set up shop, the groundwater became so contaminated that drinking water had to be brought in from an area 18 miles away, according to a 2001 report from the Seattle-based toxic trade watchdog Basel Action Network.
Sediment samples from the area showed that the groundwater had so much lead in it that it would have been considered 212 times more toxified than acceptable standards if it came from Europe's Rhine River.
"Tin was found at levels 152 times the EPA threshold. Chromium in one sample was at levels 1,338 times the EPA threshold level," the report added.
A major source of this e-waste are unsuspecting good Samaritans in America thinking they are helping the environment: Much of the old electronics donated by people and businesses for recycling in the U.S. instead gets exported into the world market.
"Informed recycling industry sources estimate that between 50 to 80 percent of the e-waste collected for recycling in the western U.S. are not recycled domestically," according to the BAN report.
From there, the supply market takes over, and often metal extraction companies win.
The supply market of old electronics sways in favor of these shops because they often offer higher prices for the goods than recycling outfits can.
The supply is good, too: the volume of e-waste from the United States is "estimated at 5 to 7 million tons," the report said.
In China alone – excluding the e-waste that is brought into the country – "about 150 million television sets, washing machines, refrigerators, air-conditioners and computers are discarded every year in China," the China Daily reported, using statistics from the China Home Electronics Association.
For the American market, the BAN report from 2001 posited that e-waste numbers would rise by 2006 thanks to the proliferation of High-Definition Television – flat-screen TVs – obsolescing old television technology, and the fact that most computers bought today are replacements for an old one that must be thrown out.
The world market for e-waste is one that is mostly unregulated, but a limited number of other countries are involved. Outside of China, other countries in the metal extraction business include India and Pakistan. The Middle Eastern country of Dubai is another major collector of discarded electronics, but it acts as a middleman: most of what it receives is re-exported out to China and other countries.
http://www.newstarget.com/021578.html
Known as "e-waste," more than 75 percent of televisions, computers and other home electronics discarded by the developed world end up bound for Asia. Up to 90 percent of the old electronics goes to China, according to the Beijing-based Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China's Ministry of Science and Technology.
However, only 10 percent of the electronics that go to China are recycled for reuse. The rest gets burned, destroyed or otherwise reduced to poisonous end-products.
Inside computers and other electronics are gold, copper and other reusable precious metals. This makes the 90 percent of discarded electronics not recycled a viable enterprise for people looking to extract those precious metals. However, many of these "electronics harvesters" use simple and environmentally unfriendly processes to get the metals out, such as putting the machines through acid baths.
The result is that lead, mercury and other chemicals are released into the atmosphere – through toxic gasses – and put into lakes and rivers through wastewater systems. The harvesters are burning the plastic cases, melting lead-based monitor glass and simply tossing out the undesirable by-products of precious metal extraction.
In some cities that are hotspots for the metal extraction business, pollution levels are much higher than American or European standards.
In the Guiyu area, an agricultural sector in south China that many e-processers have set up shop, the groundwater became so contaminated that drinking water had to be brought in from an area 18 miles away, according to a 2001 report from the Seattle-based toxic trade watchdog Basel Action Network.
Sediment samples from the area showed that the groundwater had so much lead in it that it would have been considered 212 times more toxified than acceptable standards if it came from Europe's Rhine River.
"Tin was found at levels 152 times the EPA threshold. Chromium in one sample was at levels 1,338 times the EPA threshold level," the report added.
A major source of this e-waste are unsuspecting good Samaritans in America thinking they are helping the environment: Much of the old electronics donated by people and businesses for recycling in the U.S. instead gets exported into the world market.
"Informed recycling industry sources estimate that between 50 to 80 percent of the e-waste collected for recycling in the western U.S. are not recycled domestically," according to the BAN report.
From there, the supply market takes over, and often metal extraction companies win.
The supply market of old electronics sways in favor of these shops because they often offer higher prices for the goods than recycling outfits can.
The supply is good, too: the volume of e-waste from the United States is "estimated at 5 to 7 million tons," the report said.
In China alone – excluding the e-waste that is brought into the country – "about 150 million television sets, washing machines, refrigerators, air-conditioners and computers are discarded every year in China," the China Daily reported, using statistics from the China Home Electronics Association.
For the American market, the BAN report from 2001 posited that e-waste numbers would rise by 2006 thanks to the proliferation of High-Definition Television – flat-screen TVs – obsolescing old television technology, and the fact that most computers bought today are replacements for an old one that must be thrown out.
The world market for e-waste is one that is mostly unregulated, but a limited number of other countries are involved. Outside of China, other countries in the metal extraction business include India and Pakistan. The Middle Eastern country of Dubai is another major collector of discarded electronics, but it acts as a middleman: most of what it receives is re-exported out to China and other countries.
http://www.newstarget.com/021578.html
Electronics Industry’s Evolution in the US
USA is a cauldron where ideas are set into gizmos. It has maintained the leading position in frontier technologies over the years and there is a readiness to explore newer dimensions in business
Asignificant contribution to elec- tronics by USA is Thomas Edison’s invention of the incandescent lamp, whose byproducts are electronic devices. Lee De Forest of Federal Telegraph Company, Palo Alto, in 1912 introduced the third electrode in the two-element Fleming valve. The great expansion of the solidstate electronics based on the transistor diode dates back to the period 1945-48.
The microelectronics revolution really began at about the same time as ENIAC was unveiled although nobody realised it at that time. It was made possible by three key inventions, namely, the transistor, the planar process, and IC.
With ENIAC the process of computer manufacturing really picked up. Two years after ENIAC, computer UNIVAC stole the show when it was introduced on US TV during a presidential election and correctly forecast a landslide victory for Eisenhower only after five per cent votes had been counted.
A peep into the history
While in search of switches for amplifiers to replace mechanical relays and the valves that troubled ENIAC much, J. Bardeen, W.H. Brattain, and Willian Shockley came up with the point-contact transistor, a small piece of germanium. This was however later changed to pure silicon, the main ingredient of beach sand.
By mid-1950 there were a number of firms producing different types of transistors, most of which were spin-offs of Bell and other large companies. A new breed of people had emerged as the scientific entrepreneurs.
It was Fairchild Semiconductor, a company started only in 1957, that produced the first transistor using the planar technique of 1959.
When transistors produced by planar process hit the market, there were 84 firms operating in what had been known as the semiconductor industry that then concentrated around Route 128 near Boston, Massachussets, and Stanford Universities in California. These institutions provided for academia, industry, and R&D to melt into each other. In fact, it was this phenomenon that helped USA to speed up technology development. Route 128 and Silicon Valley developed into IT centres with the presence of MIT, Harvard, and Stanford University in the immediate vicinity.
Large purchases of transistors by military for communication equipment boosted the business to such an extent that by 1963 nearly half of all transistor sales were to the US government. Semiconductor devices were also finding their way to radios, hearing aids, TV, cameras, and, of course, computers.
The next big step came with the invention of ICs, generally credited to Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert N. Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor.
In 1969, a young engineer named Marcian Ted Hoff at the small firm Intel devised a way of improving the design of chips for an electronic calculator made by the Japanese firm Busicom. In 1971, he succeeded in putting the entire central processing unit of a computer on a single chip. This device was called microprocessor.
Consequently, computers were brought into business market by a handful of companies on both sides of Atlantic. IBM quickly carved out a dominant role bringing out successively more powerful and smaller computers and eventually entered the PC market, in which it created a de facto standard.
The US electronics biggies in 1950—GE, Westinghouse, and RCA—missed the microelectronics movement. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were the ones who in 1975 gave the idea of a PC to their bosses in Hewlett-Packard, the company renowned for its R&D. They borrowed ideas from Xerox’s R&D facility, Palo Alto Research Centre, which had flaunted a PC called Alto in 1973 but noticed its commercial use only in 1979. The two started Apple Computer in a rented garage, which entered the Fortune 500 list within six years.
In USA, the most organised efforts to boost high technology emanated from the private sector, especially in the form of joint research ventures. These efforts were depicted by institutions like Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) founded by twelve major companies including Control Data, Motorola, and Sperry in 1982 under the leadership of Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, former director of CIA. MCC was later joined by other companies and established a base in Austin, Texas. It began work in 1984.
The Semiconductor Research Corporation backed by about 35 companies including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, RCA and some of the MCC sponsors was also founded in 1982 and it chose Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, as its base. The SRC’s main role has been to commission basic research on microelectronics from key universities and to build collaborative work between academies and the industry.
Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Strategic Computing Plan, and Strategic Defence Initiative are also pouring millions of dollars into microchip, supercomputer, and artificial intellegence. A further $1.6-billion funding for the US semiconductor industry was proposed by Defence Science Board task force in December 1986.
The Small Business Innovation Research programme that started in 1982 required federal agencies to earmark a large proportion of their R&D funds for small high-technology companies. Small firms employ 60 per cent of the US workforce. They have received more than 60 per cent of patents issued and produce on an average 2.5 times more innovations per employee than larger firms. Despite the fact, in recent years they received less than 6 per cent of federal R&D contracts and large firms were 2.8 times as likely to receive an award as a small firm.
High-technology fever hit Capitol Hill in response to Japanese challenge in the late eighties in the form of Sematech consortium.
High-technology states
Prior to the eighties, only four states, namely, Massachussets, North Carolina, Connecticut, and Florida, had programmes to promote and attract high-technology industries. Even California, Texas, and New York relied entirely on private universities and private venture capitalists to develop high-technology ideas. Today, no less than 38 states boast of comprehensive, high-technology development programmes.
When MCC was looking for a site for its headquarters, 57 communities from 22 states made approaches deluging the consortium with package deals and ever-increasing financial coffers.
States introduced tax incentives and put up cash in the form of venture capital, sometimes taken from the pension funds of state employees. Several built stylish, low-rent incubator facilities for high-technology start-ups, while many developed technology centres or science parks in connection with nearby universities and colleges. Other states established networks in order to bring together local investors and entrepreneurs while virtually every state claimed to be pouring resources into education and training, particularly the technical departments of colleges and universities.
Most states indulged in the traditional arts of self-promotion and hustling. Following the success of Silicon Valley, civic boosters gave the US Silicon Prairie (Texas), Silicon Mountain (Colorado), Silicon Desert (Arizonia), Silicon Bayou (Louisiana), Silicon Tundra (Minnesota), Silicon Forest (Oregon), and Silicon Valley East (Troy-Albany-Schenectady, New York). In pursuit of high-technology urban planners from Atlanta and North Carolina to Pittsburg and New Hampshire and Salt Lake City and Seattle extolled the merits of their areas, each claiming superior educational and research facilities, a better business climate, and higher quality of life.
Silicon Valley, the leader in IT, continued to attract young well-educated Americans. It created a pool of highly skilled scientific and technical personnel—a vital requirement for a new expanding industry like microelectronics. Without this skilled workforce Silicon Valley would never have originated. Likewise, military funding played an important role in the development of Silicon Valley.
With emphasis on individuals rather than companies, most electronics engineers have had no qualms about job-hopping from firm to firm, taking with them their turnkey knowledge. Job change provided super starts to advance their careers to gain further knowledge and to partner a winning team. Many entrepreneurs failed and started successfully again after taking a beating.
There are provisions of laws, regulations, and conventions for security, taxing, accounting, corporate governance, bankruptcy, immigration, R&D, and more. The government is a part of the solution and not the problem.
Major inventions and inventors
The charge-coupled device that can see 80 times more effectively than photographic film was invented in 1969 at Bell Labs by George Smith and Willard Boyce. It replaced bulky vacuum tubes known as ‘vidicons’ and made possible a new generation of artificial intelligence.
USA is a cauldron where ideas are set into gizmos. It has maintained the leading position in frontier technologies over the years and there is a readiness to explore newer dimensions in business.
In 1996, Intel’s research division designed the world’s fastest super computer that could perform one billion mathematical operations per second. The US intends to build a super computer that packs the power of a man’s 57,000 years of round-the-clock work to maintain the lead safety of Nukes without underground testing. The super computer would be able to carry out 1.8 trillion calculations in a second to ensure that it never needs to carry out Nuke testing. It would be as powerful as 50,000 mainframe computers in the world put together. DARPA is pouring millions of dollars on research on super computers and artificial intelligence.
USA leads in space and defence robotics. Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotic Institute is the world’s largest industry centre for robotics and manufacturing technologies. Robots are widely employed in the manufacturing of drugs and automobiles. ATM is the most popular version of robotics. Global Hawk is a robotic plane jet powered with a wing span equivalent to a Boeing 737 that flew from Edwards Air Force Base in California and landed in Edinburg, Australia.
USA is home to the three microprocessor designers of repute, namely, Intel, AMD, and Cryrix. Intel has recently unveiled the world’s first single-chip gigabit Ethernet controller that will help accelerate the deployment of gigabit Ethernet networks by greatly simplifying design for system engineers. It is also producing some of the peripheral products that surround the computer: MP3 players, remote surfing devices, and PC cameras to name a few. While Intel does not aim to be a dominant player in any of these categories, it intends helping them get off the ground, with Pentium IV expected to break the 2.5GHz barrier by the fourth quarter of this year.
Japanese and Americans differ in many ways. Unlike Japan where the whole country mobilises behind a certain idea or concept, Americans don’t. They are proud of individuality. US companies don’t keep open channels of communication in between them, writes Pamela Mc Corduck in the Fifth Generation. Most US companies meet with each other in a court of law. Sharing research is taboo, sharing market information is worse, and cracking markets together is satanic. The anti-trust legislation is very strong and hangs like a Democles sword. Don’t we know about the break-up of AT&T?
Yet networking companies like Cisco, 3Com, and IBM have forged links with big telecommunication network operators as they struggle to come to grips with new telephony epitomised by the likes of World Communication that combines traditional voice telephony and Internet Protocol (IP) expertise.
Within the IT sector itself Microsoft has moved aggressively into the content business with substantial investment in MSN, MSNBC, and Web TV. Sun Microsystems, best known for its powerful workstations, RISC, microprocessors and Web servers, has become a name to reckon with in the software industry with its pioneering development of Java. The AOL-Time Warner merger in January 2000 with a market capitalisation of about $350 billion epitomises the future look of the media—the Internet, cable TV, and print all provided by a single conglomerate.
Aimster is a US invention that does something more than Napster, the music swapping programme. It swaps any kind of digital file, including video, text, and photographs. It also piggybacks on instant message system that counts millions of users including AOL-Time Warners giant AIM services. Cadence Design System Inc., based in San Jose, is the leader in electronic design automation and among the top-seven software companies in the world. Cadence India in 1987 produced Check Plus test, designed by Indian researchers, which was acclaimed world over. IBM has come out with system-on-a-chip. Its new processor for the Internet-age system-on-a-chip combines the conventional microprocessor with handheld Internet-ready device features. Known as power PC-I AP, the chip draws on the strength of IBM’s own PowerPC chip series that powers Apple computers, and includes both ready-to-use and programmable elements. In 1994, Qualcomm patented a phone system called CDMA. Soon a plethora of small- and medium-scale cellular companies deployed CDMA using 800MHz and 1900MHz bands. Sprint took CDMA nation-wide in the US around 1996. CDMA proved to be a success story. This technology uses the entire band for all telephones, allowing users to talk simultaneously on the same channel. How each conversation is plucked out of this electronic cacaphony is the magic of CDMA.
US companies have struck hard in handheld computers. Names like Palm V and Handspring Visor PDAs are quite popular. Motorola, the communication giant, has come out with a phone, V1000, specially designed for youths that can send short-text messages.
A large number of US companies like Hewlett-Packard, Autodesk, and Intel have now taken to venture capital. Intel’s business development programme has become one of the largest corporate venture investment programmes in the technology sector. Today, Intel’s portfolio includes more than 300 technology-related companies valued at $5.8 billion.
Sony, IBM, and Toshiba have joined hands to develop a teraflop-class microprocessor that, the companies hope, will make possible within the next five years consumer electronics devices more powerful than IBM’s Deep Blue super computer.
The US industry is home to a number of inventions. Web browsers (Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator) and search machines (Yahoo, AltaVista, AOL, and Google) are all American.
Nortel Networks is the leader in optical networks. IBM and Dell are the world’s biggest computer corporations. Motorola is the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer after Nokia. Even the world’s largest software company Microsoft is American. AOL is the largest Internet service provider. Seagate is the world’s largest storage technology provider.
The first e-mail managing programme to list selectively, read file forward, and respond to message was written by Dr Laurence G. Roberts. The mouse was invented by D.C. Enghard in 1968, the ethernet by Dr Robert M. Bob Metcalf, founder of 3Com Corp., and the graphical Web browser mosaic by Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape Communication. Public key infrastructure (PKI), a technology that ensures protection to communication of information, was designed by Martin Hellman, a computer science professor at Stanford University.
The future vision
Even the future belongs to the US. John C. Carson, chief technology officer at Invine Sensors Corp. in Silicon Valley, says that “beyond 2012 chips that exploit the quirky world of quantum mechanics promise far bigger leaps because chips won’t use wires duplicating the human brain.” Indians like Sabeer Bhatia, Vinod Khosla, Vinod Dham, and scores of others have helped Silicon Valley blossom with new technologies and entrepreneurship.
DARPA has awarded Personick, director of the Centre for Telecommunications and Information Networking at Philadelphia’s Drexel University, the task of making the Pegasus router that will employ photonic devices to manipulate the beams of light sent down optical cables.
IBM’s project Eliza seeks to create computers that act much like biological entities. These computers will maintain and update themselves, and handle maintenance schedules, fight hackers, and correct input errors.
Efforts are on at the US Jet Propulsion Lab at Pasadena, California, to develop the design for interplanetary Internet. This design effort is underway with support from DARPA, the same agency that sponsored the original Internet design around 25 years ago.This entire orchestra of technology is part of the new economy. Heavy investments to computers and associated business changes have been possible mainly because of the ease of financing. Venture capital firms have helped the growth of the new technology and innovations in enterprises.
If technology is the engine of the new US economy, finance is the fuel. Venture capital funding is today running annually at a rate of $100 billion. This is what has enabled new economy powerhouses such as Cisco, Netscape, and Amazon.com to grow explosively.
http://www.electronicsforu.com/electronicsforu/Articles/ad.asp?url=/efylinux/efyhome/cover/sept2001/usa.htm&title=Electronics%20Industry%92s%20Evolution%20in%20the%20US
Asignificant contribution to elec- tronics by USA is Thomas Edison’s invention of the incandescent lamp, whose byproducts are electronic devices. Lee De Forest of Federal Telegraph Company, Palo Alto, in 1912 introduced the third electrode in the two-element Fleming valve. The great expansion of the solidstate electronics based on the transistor diode dates back to the period 1945-48.
The microelectronics revolution really began at about the same time as ENIAC was unveiled although nobody realised it at that time. It was made possible by three key inventions, namely, the transistor, the planar process, and IC.
With ENIAC the process of computer manufacturing really picked up. Two years after ENIAC, computer UNIVAC stole the show when it was introduced on US TV during a presidential election and correctly forecast a landslide victory for Eisenhower only after five per cent votes had been counted.
A peep into the history
While in search of switches for amplifiers to replace mechanical relays and the valves that troubled ENIAC much, J. Bardeen, W.H. Brattain, and Willian Shockley came up with the point-contact transistor, a small piece of germanium. This was however later changed to pure silicon, the main ingredient of beach sand.
By mid-1950 there were a number of firms producing different types of transistors, most of which were spin-offs of Bell and other large companies. A new breed of people had emerged as the scientific entrepreneurs.
It was Fairchild Semiconductor, a company started only in 1957, that produced the first transistor using the planar technique of 1959.
When transistors produced by planar process hit the market, there were 84 firms operating in what had been known as the semiconductor industry that then concentrated around Route 128 near Boston, Massachussets, and Stanford Universities in California. These institutions provided for academia, industry, and R&D to melt into each other. In fact, it was this phenomenon that helped USA to speed up technology development. Route 128 and Silicon Valley developed into IT centres with the presence of MIT, Harvard, and Stanford University in the immediate vicinity.
Large purchases of transistors by military for communication equipment boosted the business to such an extent that by 1963 nearly half of all transistor sales were to the US government. Semiconductor devices were also finding their way to radios, hearing aids, TV, cameras, and, of course, computers.
The next big step came with the invention of ICs, generally credited to Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert N. Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor.
In 1969, a young engineer named Marcian Ted Hoff at the small firm Intel devised a way of improving the design of chips for an electronic calculator made by the Japanese firm Busicom. In 1971, he succeeded in putting the entire central processing unit of a computer on a single chip. This device was called microprocessor.
Consequently, computers were brought into business market by a handful of companies on both sides of Atlantic. IBM quickly carved out a dominant role bringing out successively more powerful and smaller computers and eventually entered the PC market, in which it created a de facto standard.
The US electronics biggies in 1950—GE, Westinghouse, and RCA—missed the microelectronics movement. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were the ones who in 1975 gave the idea of a PC to their bosses in Hewlett-Packard, the company renowned for its R&D. They borrowed ideas from Xerox’s R&D facility, Palo Alto Research Centre, which had flaunted a PC called Alto in 1973 but noticed its commercial use only in 1979. The two started Apple Computer in a rented garage, which entered the Fortune 500 list within six years.
In USA, the most organised efforts to boost high technology emanated from the private sector, especially in the form of joint research ventures. These efforts were depicted by institutions like Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) founded by twelve major companies including Control Data, Motorola, and Sperry in 1982 under the leadership of Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, former director of CIA. MCC was later joined by other companies and established a base in Austin, Texas. It began work in 1984.
The Semiconductor Research Corporation backed by about 35 companies including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, RCA and some of the MCC sponsors was also founded in 1982 and it chose Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, as its base. The SRC’s main role has been to commission basic research on microelectronics from key universities and to build collaborative work between academies and the industry.
Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Strategic Computing Plan, and Strategic Defence Initiative are also pouring millions of dollars into microchip, supercomputer, and artificial intellegence. A further $1.6-billion funding for the US semiconductor industry was proposed by Defence Science Board task force in December 1986.
The Small Business Innovation Research programme that started in 1982 required federal agencies to earmark a large proportion of their R&D funds for small high-technology companies. Small firms employ 60 per cent of the US workforce. They have received more than 60 per cent of patents issued and produce on an average 2.5 times more innovations per employee than larger firms. Despite the fact, in recent years they received less than 6 per cent of federal R&D contracts and large firms were 2.8 times as likely to receive an award as a small firm.
High-technology fever hit Capitol Hill in response to Japanese challenge in the late eighties in the form of Sematech consortium.
High-technology states
Prior to the eighties, only four states, namely, Massachussets, North Carolina, Connecticut, and Florida, had programmes to promote and attract high-technology industries. Even California, Texas, and New York relied entirely on private universities and private venture capitalists to develop high-technology ideas. Today, no less than 38 states boast of comprehensive, high-technology development programmes.
When MCC was looking for a site for its headquarters, 57 communities from 22 states made approaches deluging the consortium with package deals and ever-increasing financial coffers.
States introduced tax incentives and put up cash in the form of venture capital, sometimes taken from the pension funds of state employees. Several built stylish, low-rent incubator facilities for high-technology start-ups, while many developed technology centres or science parks in connection with nearby universities and colleges. Other states established networks in order to bring together local investors and entrepreneurs while virtually every state claimed to be pouring resources into education and training, particularly the technical departments of colleges and universities.
Most states indulged in the traditional arts of self-promotion and hustling. Following the success of Silicon Valley, civic boosters gave the US Silicon Prairie (Texas), Silicon Mountain (Colorado), Silicon Desert (Arizonia), Silicon Bayou (Louisiana), Silicon Tundra (Minnesota), Silicon Forest (Oregon), and Silicon Valley East (Troy-Albany-Schenectady, New York). In pursuit of high-technology urban planners from Atlanta and North Carolina to Pittsburg and New Hampshire and Salt Lake City and Seattle extolled the merits of their areas, each claiming superior educational and research facilities, a better business climate, and higher quality of life.
Silicon Valley, the leader in IT, continued to attract young well-educated Americans. It created a pool of highly skilled scientific and technical personnel—a vital requirement for a new expanding industry like microelectronics. Without this skilled workforce Silicon Valley would never have originated. Likewise, military funding played an important role in the development of Silicon Valley.
With emphasis on individuals rather than companies, most electronics engineers have had no qualms about job-hopping from firm to firm, taking with them their turnkey knowledge. Job change provided super starts to advance their careers to gain further knowledge and to partner a winning team. Many entrepreneurs failed and started successfully again after taking a beating.
There are provisions of laws, regulations, and conventions for security, taxing, accounting, corporate governance, bankruptcy, immigration, R&D, and more. The government is a part of the solution and not the problem.
Major inventions and inventors
The charge-coupled device that can see 80 times more effectively than photographic film was invented in 1969 at Bell Labs by George Smith and Willard Boyce. It replaced bulky vacuum tubes known as ‘vidicons’ and made possible a new generation of artificial intelligence.
USA is a cauldron where ideas are set into gizmos. It has maintained the leading position in frontier technologies over the years and there is a readiness to explore newer dimensions in business.
In 1996, Intel’s research division designed the world’s fastest super computer that could perform one billion mathematical operations per second. The US intends to build a super computer that packs the power of a man’s 57,000 years of round-the-clock work to maintain the lead safety of Nukes without underground testing. The super computer would be able to carry out 1.8 trillion calculations in a second to ensure that it never needs to carry out Nuke testing. It would be as powerful as 50,000 mainframe computers in the world put together. DARPA is pouring millions of dollars on research on super computers and artificial intelligence.
USA leads in space and defence robotics. Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotic Institute is the world’s largest industry centre for robotics and manufacturing technologies. Robots are widely employed in the manufacturing of drugs and automobiles. ATM is the most popular version of robotics. Global Hawk is a robotic plane jet powered with a wing span equivalent to a Boeing 737 that flew from Edwards Air Force Base in California and landed in Edinburg, Australia.
USA is home to the three microprocessor designers of repute, namely, Intel, AMD, and Cryrix. Intel has recently unveiled the world’s first single-chip gigabit Ethernet controller that will help accelerate the deployment of gigabit Ethernet networks by greatly simplifying design for system engineers. It is also producing some of the peripheral products that surround the computer: MP3 players, remote surfing devices, and PC cameras to name a few. While Intel does not aim to be a dominant player in any of these categories, it intends helping them get off the ground, with Pentium IV expected to break the 2.5GHz barrier by the fourth quarter of this year.
Japanese and Americans differ in many ways. Unlike Japan where the whole country mobilises behind a certain idea or concept, Americans don’t. They are proud of individuality. US companies don’t keep open channels of communication in between them, writes Pamela Mc Corduck in the Fifth Generation. Most US companies meet with each other in a court of law. Sharing research is taboo, sharing market information is worse, and cracking markets together is satanic. The anti-trust legislation is very strong and hangs like a Democles sword. Don’t we know about the break-up of AT&T?
Yet networking companies like Cisco, 3Com, and IBM have forged links with big telecommunication network operators as they struggle to come to grips with new telephony epitomised by the likes of World Communication that combines traditional voice telephony and Internet Protocol (IP) expertise.
Within the IT sector itself Microsoft has moved aggressively into the content business with substantial investment in MSN, MSNBC, and Web TV. Sun Microsystems, best known for its powerful workstations, RISC, microprocessors and Web servers, has become a name to reckon with in the software industry with its pioneering development of Java. The AOL-Time Warner merger in January 2000 with a market capitalisation of about $350 billion epitomises the future look of the media—the Internet, cable TV, and print all provided by a single conglomerate.
Aimster is a US invention that does something more than Napster, the music swapping programme. It swaps any kind of digital file, including video, text, and photographs. It also piggybacks on instant message system that counts millions of users including AOL-Time Warners giant AIM services. Cadence Design System Inc., based in San Jose, is the leader in electronic design automation and among the top-seven software companies in the world. Cadence India in 1987 produced Check Plus test, designed by Indian researchers, which was acclaimed world over. IBM has come out with system-on-a-chip. Its new processor for the Internet-age system-on-a-chip combines the conventional microprocessor with handheld Internet-ready device features. Known as power PC-I AP, the chip draws on the strength of IBM’s own PowerPC chip series that powers Apple computers, and includes both ready-to-use and programmable elements. In 1994, Qualcomm patented a phone system called CDMA. Soon a plethora of small- and medium-scale cellular companies deployed CDMA using 800MHz and 1900MHz bands. Sprint took CDMA nation-wide in the US around 1996. CDMA proved to be a success story. This technology uses the entire band for all telephones, allowing users to talk simultaneously on the same channel. How each conversation is plucked out of this electronic cacaphony is the magic of CDMA.
US companies have struck hard in handheld computers. Names like Palm V and Handspring Visor PDAs are quite popular. Motorola, the communication giant, has come out with a phone, V1000, specially designed for youths that can send short-text messages.
A large number of US companies like Hewlett-Packard, Autodesk, and Intel have now taken to venture capital. Intel’s business development programme has become one of the largest corporate venture investment programmes in the technology sector. Today, Intel’s portfolio includes more than 300 technology-related companies valued at $5.8 billion.
Sony, IBM, and Toshiba have joined hands to develop a teraflop-class microprocessor that, the companies hope, will make possible within the next five years consumer electronics devices more powerful than IBM’s Deep Blue super computer.
The US industry is home to a number of inventions. Web browsers (Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator) and search machines (Yahoo, AltaVista, AOL, and Google) are all American.
Nortel Networks is the leader in optical networks. IBM and Dell are the world’s biggest computer corporations. Motorola is the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer after Nokia. Even the world’s largest software company Microsoft is American. AOL is the largest Internet service provider. Seagate is the world’s largest storage technology provider.
The first e-mail managing programme to list selectively, read file forward, and respond to message was written by Dr Laurence G. Roberts. The mouse was invented by D.C. Enghard in 1968, the ethernet by Dr Robert M. Bob Metcalf, founder of 3Com Corp., and the graphical Web browser mosaic by Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape Communication. Public key infrastructure (PKI), a technology that ensures protection to communication of information, was designed by Martin Hellman, a computer science professor at Stanford University.
The future vision
Even the future belongs to the US. John C. Carson, chief technology officer at Invine Sensors Corp. in Silicon Valley, says that “beyond 2012 chips that exploit the quirky world of quantum mechanics promise far bigger leaps because chips won’t use wires duplicating the human brain.” Indians like Sabeer Bhatia, Vinod Khosla, Vinod Dham, and scores of others have helped Silicon Valley blossom with new technologies and entrepreneurship.
DARPA has awarded Personick, director of the Centre for Telecommunications and Information Networking at Philadelphia’s Drexel University, the task of making the Pegasus router that will employ photonic devices to manipulate the beams of light sent down optical cables.
IBM’s project Eliza seeks to create computers that act much like biological entities. These computers will maintain and update themselves, and handle maintenance schedules, fight hackers, and correct input errors.
Efforts are on at the US Jet Propulsion Lab at Pasadena, California, to develop the design for interplanetary Internet. This design effort is underway with support from DARPA, the same agency that sponsored the original Internet design around 25 years ago.This entire orchestra of technology is part of the new economy. Heavy investments to computers and associated business changes have been possible mainly because of the ease of financing. Venture capital firms have helped the growth of the new technology and innovations in enterprises.
If technology is the engine of the new US economy, finance is the fuel. Venture capital funding is today running annually at a rate of $100 billion. This is what has enabled new economy powerhouses such as Cisco, Netscape, and Amazon.com to grow explosively.
http://www.electronicsforu.com/electronicsforu/Articles/ad.asp?url=/efylinux/efyhome/cover/sept2001/usa.htm&title=Electronics%20Industry%92s%20Evolution%20in%20the%20US
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)