Rick Green 200

AM signals: 20 x 24 Polaroid camera, low-cost flow battery, THz imaging

Dec. 23, 2015

Tech companies are plying prospective customers with gifts. For example, Steve Phillips, CIO of electronics distributor Avnet Inc., received a remote-control car, but without the remote control unit. According to the Wall Street Journal, a salesperson said he would provide the remote control unit when offered a chance to discuss the company’s software. Phillips says he had no interest in the software, or the strong-arm selling tactic. “I ended up with a non-functioning remote-control car, and he ended up with a remote control without a car,” he says.

“Airbus is leading a research group looking at terahertz imaging technology and it is claiming a breakthrough which will see the imaging technology used in space observation, medical imaging, industrial automation, and security screening,” writes Richard Wilson at Electronics Weekly. “The work to develop a new camera that delivers high accuracy using terahertz waves with lower operating costs in part of a European Union project called TeraTOP.”

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has developed a flow battery that could cost 60% less than today’s standard flow batteries—about $180 per kW-hr. “Moving from transition metal elements to synthesized molecules is a significant advancement because it links battery costs to manufacturing rather than commodity metals pricing,” said Imre Gyuk, energy storage program manager for the Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE), which funded this research.

The photographer Elsa Dorfman has eschewed digital technology. The 78-year-old Dorfman is retiring after a career taking photographs using a Polaroid 240-pound large-format 20 x 24-inch camera built in the 1970s. “There’s no Photoshopping or striving for social media perfection here,” writes Deborah Becker at WBUR.org. “Dorfman says it’s her feel for the camera—which displays images upside down and backwards—that allows her to convey the authenticity of the moment.” Polaroid stopped making film for the camera in 2008. What’s left may be viable for another two years.

Chroma recommends spending the holidays with its top application notes. Here are the company’s five most downloaded application notes for 2015: AC Sources Single & 3 Phase Power, Electrical Safety Testing 101, 6310A Slew Rate And Minimum Rise Time, AC Sources Software Simplifies Testing To Mil And Aerospace Standards, and LED Lighting Test Methods.

About the Author

Rick Nelson | Contributing Editor

Rick is currently Contributing Technical Editor. He was Executive Editor for EE in 2011-2018. Previously he served on several publications, including EDN and Vision Systems Design, and has received awards for signed editorials from the American Society of Business Publication Editors. He began as a design engineer at General Electric and Litton Industries and earned a BSEE degree from Penn State.

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