Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
Optical text recognition guesses letters using light edges
OCR software identifies characters by patterns of light and dark pixels, which is why similar shapes like 0 and O can be confused.
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An older Siri voice assembled speech from recorded pieces
Apple's hybrid speech system selected fragments from a large recording database, using machine learning to choose pieces that fit the intended sentence and…
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How 3D glasses know when to turn black
An infrared emitter sends timing signals to the glasses, which darken their lenses in sync with the TV's frames. Block the sensor and the timing breaks down.
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How eye trackers know where you're looking
They shine invisible light at the eye and track how it reflects off the cornea to estimate where the eye is pointing.
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Brain scanners read electrical signals through thick skulls
The signals are so faint that scalp electrodes must detect them through the skull, like hearing a whisper from outside a brick house.
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How filmmakers freeze time around an actor
A rig with hundreds of photo lenses captures the actor from slightly different angles. Firing them in sequence and stitching the images together creates the…
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Hearing aids map incoming frequencies to match deafness
They analyze incoming sound and boost the frequencies the wearer has trouble hearing, rather than simply turning everything up.
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How videos avoid storing every frame
Video codecs store key frames and then encode changes between them instead of saving every frame as a full image. When a scene barely changes, much of the…
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Invisible walls in video games are transparent solid boxes
Developers can use invisible collision barriers to stop players at map edges. The barriers need not look like anything in the game world.
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High dynamic range blends bright and dark photos together
Your camera takes three shots at different exposures, then combines the best-lit parts so bright skies and dark shadows can both remain visible.
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Night vision goggles amplify ambient light into a green glow
They need at least a little ambient light, such as starlight or distant streetlights; a vacuum tube amplifies it and displays the image on a green phosphor…
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Why digital bodies flop without twisting apart
Game physics treats limbs as solid cylinders joined by virtual springs with limited rotation. Those constraints let a character tumble dramatically without…
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Your camera guesses colors it never sees
The sensor measures light intensity, not color; a red, green, and blue filter mosaic lets the processor estimate the missing color information for each pixel.
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Your phone guesses the next word
It predicts likely next words from patterns in language rather than understanding what you mean. A suggestion like “pizza” after “let’s eat” reflects…
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Voxel graphics build 3D worlds out of tiny colored cubes
Voxel engines represent 3D space as colored cubes rather than hollow surfaces. That can make destruction more tangible: blasts can remove chunks of a wall…
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Procedural generation builds worlds using mathematical noise
Layered Perlin noise can generate natural-looking terrain—mountains, rivers, and caves—without designers hand-building every feature.
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How MP3s shrink files by removing inaudible sounds
MP3 compression saves space by discarding audio information listeners are unlikely to hear, including sounds masked by other frequencies.
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Closed captions are manually timed to sync with video frames
Professional captioners manually time text to the video so it appears and disappears with the dialogue and scene changes, helping deaf viewers follow along.
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Directional mics use side acoustic ports to cancel noise
The side slots let off-axis sound enter the tube and interfere with itself, reducing noise from the sides while the mic favors sound coming from in front.
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How video-game characters learn to blink
A hidden randomized timer triggers a one-frame blink every few seconds, keeping digital faces from looking like motionless mannequins.
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Your phone can fake a button's click
A haptic actuator produces a short, precisely timed vibration when you touch the control. Your finger feels a mechanical response even though no physical…
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Digital synthesizers generate sound via mathematical tables
Pressing a key can trigger a stored table of numbers, which the keyboard converts into an electrical signal for a speaker. Even an orchestral-sounding pad can…
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Camera auto-focus uses phase detection to split light pairs
The processor keeps adjusting the lens until the two images overlap, like a rapid eye exam for the camera.
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The first endoscope used a burning candle
Philipp Bozzini's 1806 device used tiny mirrors to reflect candlelight toward internal organs. The open flame made it a hazardous way to examine the body.
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