MIT Museum
The MIT Museum, founded in 1971 is located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It hosts collections of holography, technology-related artworks, artificial intelligence, maritime history, the history of MIT, its holography collection of 1800 pieces is the largest in the world, though not all of it is exhibited. As of 2014, works of high-speed photographer Harold Edgerton and kinetic artist Arthur Ganson are the two largest long-running displays. There is a regular program of temporary special exhibitions on the intersections of art and technology. In addition to serving the MIT community, the museum offers numerous outreach programs to school-age children and adults in the public at large; the attended annual Cambridge Science Festival was originated by and continues to be coordinated by the museum. The museum was founded in 1971 by Warren Seamans, was called the "MIT Historical Collections", its purpose was to collect and preserve historical artifacts and documents scattered throughout MIT.
It was renamed the "MIT Museum" in 1980, began developing exhibits and educational programs for the MIT community as well as society at large. Since 2005 the official mission of the MIT Museum has been, "to engage the wider community with MIT’s science and other areas of scholarship in ways that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century."The museum is directed by MIT Professor John Durant, operates under MIT's Associate Provost for the Arts, who oversees the List Visual Arts Center and the MIT Office of the Arts. The museum was accredited by the organization now called the American Alliance of Museums in 1984, reaccredited in 2002 and 2013; the MIT Museum belongs to the Association of Science-Technology Centers, Museum Computer Network, New England Museum Association, International Confederation of Architectural Museums, the International Council of Maritime Museums. The Mark Epstein Innovation Gallery occupies 5,000 square feet on the ground floor, showcases recent research at MIT.
After dark during the winter season, large holograms from the museum's collection have sometimes been displayed through large windows fronting on Massachusetts Avenue. Other exhibits have included selections from the museum's large collection of slide rules and nomographs, research archives and camera prototypes from Edwin H. Land and the Polaroid Corporation; the majority of exhibits have been developed by the museum staff, but touring shows are exhibited, including a European show about the origins and design of everyday technology, such as the adhesive bandage. The Kurtz Gallery for Photography on the second floor displays temporary shows of photography related to art and technology, including works connected to MIT and people who have worked or studied there. For example, a photo exhibit of Berenice Abbott's work was on display through 2012, highlighting her scientific visualization work which captured elementary physics principles for science education, including the picture Bouncing ball in diminishing arcs.
Many of these photos were incorporated into a landmark high school physics textbook developed by the Physical Science Study Committee, headquartered at MIT. The works of scientific photographer Felice Frankel have been exhibited at the museum. One of the most popular permanent galleries features a dozen works of kinetic art by Arthur Ganson. In November 2013, the museum opened 5000 Moving Parts, a year-long exhibition of kinetic art, featuring the work of Ganson, Anne Lilly, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, John Douglas Powers, Takis; the exhibition inaugurated a "year of kinetic art" at the museum, featuring special programming related to the artform. In 1993, the MIT Museum acquired the complete collection and archives of the Museum of Holography on Mercer Street in the SoHo district of Manhattan; the MOH had been dissolved the previous year, the collection was to be dispersed at auction. At that time an anonymous buyer bought the entire collection and donated it to the MIT Museum, which continues to preserve and display it for researchers and the general public.
Today, the collection is the largest and most comprehensive collection of holograms in the world, containing many specimens of historic and artistic value. Only a small fraction of the collection is viewable by the public at any given time, due to space and funding constraints; the MIT Museum continues to host occasional international symposia on holography every few years. The contents of the collection may be searched via an online accessible database. For a number of years, the museum housed a Hall of Hacks showcasing some of the famous MIT student pranks, but the section was closed in 2001; this was done to free up gallery space for other exhibits. A few selected larger relics of past hacks are now on semi-permanent display inside the MIT Stata Center, including a "fire hose" drinking fountain, full-size replicas of a cow and a police car, placed atop the Great Dome. In the ground floor elevator lobby of the Dreyfoos Tower are located a large time capsule box plus informational panels describing MIT's historic Building 20, sited where the Stata Center is now.
In January 2011, the museum reopened its upper galleries, including the Thomas Peterson'57 Gallery, after an extensive renovation. The first exhibit in the renovated space was The MIT 150 Exhibition in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of MIT's founding charter on April 10, 1861; the special exhibit consisted of 150 objects, documents
Robot
A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer— capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. Robots can be guided by an external control device or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be constructed on the lines of human form, but most robots are machines designed to perform a task with no regard to how they look. Robots can be autonomous or semi-autonomous and range from humanoids such as Honda's Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility and TOSY's TOSY Ping Pong Playing Robot to industrial robots, medical operating robots, patient assist robots, dog therapy robots, collectively programmed swarm robots, UAV drones such as General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, microscopic nano robots. By mimicking a lifelike appearance or automating movements, a robot may convey a sense of intelligence or thought of its own. Autonomous things are expected to proliferate in the coming decade, with home robotics and the autonomous car as some of the main drivers; the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction and application of robots, as well as computer systems for their control, sensory feedback, information processing is robotics.
These technologies deal with automated machines that can take the place of humans in dangerous environments or manufacturing processes, or resemble humans in appearance, behavior, or cognition. Many of today's robots are inspired by nature contributing to the field of bio-inspired robotics; these robots have created a newer branch of robotics: soft robotics. From the time of ancient civilization there have been many accounts of user-configurable automated devices and automata resembling animals and humans, designed as entertainment; as mechanical techniques developed through the Industrial age, there appeared more practical applications such as automated machines, remote-control and wireless remote-control. The term comes from a Czech word, meaning "forced labor". U. R. by the Czech writer, Karel Čapek but it was Karel's brother Josef Čapek, the word's true inventor. Electronics evolved into the driving force of development with the advent of the first electronic autonomous robots created by William Grey Walter in Bristol, England in 1948, as well as Computer Numerical Control machine tools in the late 1940s by John T. Parsons and Frank L. Stulen.
The first commercial and programmable robot was built by George Devol in 1954 and was named the Unimate. It was sold to General Motors in 1961 where it was used to lift pieces of hot metal from die casting machines at the Inland Fisher Guide Plant in the West Trenton section of Ewing Township, New Jersey. Robots have replaced humans in performing repetitive and dangerous tasks which humans prefer not to do, or are unable to do because of size limitations, or which take place in extreme environments such as outer space or the bottom of the sea. There are concerns about the increasing use of their role in society. Robots are blamed for rising technological unemployment as they replace workers in increasing numbers of functions; the use of robots in military combat raises ethical concerns. The possibilities of robot autonomy and potential repercussions have been addressed in fiction and may be a realistic concern in the future; the word robot can refer to both physical robots and virtual software agents, but the latter are referred to as bots.
There is no consensus on which machines qualify as robots but there is general agreement among experts, the public, that robots tend to possess some or all of the following abilities and functions: accept electronic programming, process data or physical perceptions electronically, operate autonomously to some degree, move around, operate physical parts of itself or physical processes and manipulate their environment, exhibit intelligent behavior behavior which mimics humans or other animals. Related to the concept of a robot is the field of Synthetic Biology, which studies entities whose nature is more comparable to beings than to machines; the idea of automata originates in the mythologies of many cultures around the world. Engineers and inventors from ancient civilizations, including Ancient China, Ancient Greece, Ptolemaic Egypt, attempted to build self-operating machines, some resembling animals and humans. Early descriptions of automata include the artificial doves of Archytas, the artificial birds of Mozi and Lu Ban, a "speaking" automaton by Hero of Alexandria, a washstand automaton by Philo of Byzantium, a human automaton described in the Lie Zi.
Many ancient mythologies, most modern religions include artificial people, such as the mechanical servants built by the Greek god Hephaestus, the clay golems of Jewish legend and clay giants of Norse legend, Galatea, the mythical statue of Pygmalion that came to life. Since circa 400 BC, myths of Crete include Talos, a man of bronze who guarded the island from pirates. In ancient Greece, the Greek engineer Ctesibius "applied a knowledge of pneumatics and hydraulics to produce the first organ and water clocks with moving figures." In the 4th century BC, the Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum postulated a mechanical steam-operated bird he called "The Pigeon". Hero of Alexandria, a Greek mathematician and inventor, created numerous user-configurable automated devices, described machines powered by air pressure and water; the 11th century Lokapannatti tells of how the Buddha's relics were protected by mechanical robots, from the kingdom of Roma visaya. In ancient China, the
Virtual International Authority File
The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of several national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. Discussion about having a common international authority started in the late 1990s. After a series of failed attempts to come up with a unique common authority file, the new idea was to link existing national authorities; this would present all the benefits of a common file without requiring a large investment of time and expense in the process. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library and the OCLC on August 6, 2003; the Bibliothèque nationale de France joined the project on October 5, 2007. The project transitioned to being a service of the OCLC on April 4, 2012; the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together. A VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary "see" and "see also" records from the original records, refers to the original authority records.
The data are available for research and data exchange and sharing. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol; the file numbers are being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAF's clustering algorithm is run every month; as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records. Authority control Faceted Application of Subject Terminology Integrated Authority File International Standard Authority Data Number International Standard Name Identifier Wikipedia's authority control template for articles Official website VIAF at OCLC
Automatix
Automatix Inc. founded in January 1980, was the first company to market industrial robots with built-in machine vision. Its founders were inventor of the Stanford arm. Initial product offerings included the Autovision machine vision system, the Robovision welding robot and the Cybervision electronic parts assembly system. Automatix was one of the first users of Motorola 68000 microprocessors, but because no software existed for the 68000 in 1980, Automatix had to develop its own operating system and a robotics scripting language, called "RAIL", its initial machine vision offering was based on software and hardware licensed from Stanford Research Institute. In the late 1980s, Automatix replaced the proprietary 68000 computer in its vision products with an Apple Macintosh II. Automatix used robot mechanisms imported from Hitachi at first and from Yaskawa and KUKA, it did design and manufacture a Cartesian robot called the AID-600. The 600 was intended for use in precision assembly but was adapted for welding use Tungsten inert gas welding, which demands high accuracy and immunity from the intense electromagnetic interference that the TIG process creates.
Automatix was the first company to market a vision-guided welding robot called Seamtracker. Structured laser light and monochromatic filters were used to allow an image to be seen in the presence of the welding arc. Another concept, invented by Mr. Scheinman, was RobotWorld, a system of cooperating small modules suspended from a 2-D linear motor; the product line was sold to Yaskawa. Automatix introduced several different machine vision systems during its history: Autovision I, 1981, designed for fast time to market, was based on Vision Module technology licensed from Stanford Research Institute; the AV I used an early Motorola 68000 KDM prototype board interfaced to a Unibus frame grabber board purchased from SRI. The frame grabber was designed for the General Electric TN-2200, an early solid state video camera with a 128 by 128 pixel array and C-mount lens. DECtape II drives were used for data storage. Autovision II, 1982, used a custom designed Versabus 68000 processor with a custom 8-channel RS-170 Versabus frame grabber employing an AMD Am2900 bit slice micro-controller, packaged in an industrially hardened NEMA-12 enclosure.
Autovision IV, similar to AV II, but with a patented frame grabber using dual 68000s. Then-new Sony 3-1/2 inch floppy drives replaced DECtape. AV 5, same electronics as the AV IV, but in a rack mount package. AI 90, 1987, vision system based on an Apple Macintosh II repackaged in a rack mount industrial enclosure, with RAIL ported to Mac OS, it was announced at the MacWorld Expo in Boston in 1987. Autovision 90, a rack mount Apple Quadra 950. Image Analyst, a software package for Macintosh computers, based on MacRAIL; the Automatix AI-32 robot controller used the same processor, bus and RAIL language as the AV II, IV and 5, allowing frame grabber and processing boards to be added for integrated machine vision. Automatix raised large amounts of venture capital, went public in 1983, but was not profitable until the early 1990s. In 1994, Automatix merged with another machine vision company, Itran Corp. to form Acuity Imaging, Inc. Acuity was acquired by Robotics Vision Systems Inc. in September 1995.
As of 2004, RVSI supported the evolved Automatix machine vision package under the PowerVision brand. In August 2005 RVSI itself was acquired by Siemens Energy and Automation who by mid-2008 are marketing the RVSI Visionscape and Hawkeye products alongside their own SIMATIC brand, some of which are re-branded DVT/Cognex smart cameras. In September 2008, Microscan Systems, Inc. of Renton, acquired Siemens' Machine Vision business, including Visionscape and Hawkeye. As of August 2016, the Powervision system developed by Automatix was available from RPC Machine Vision Systems, a value added reseller of Microscan
Jenny Scheinman
Jenny Scheinman is a jazz violinist. She has produced several critically acclaimed solo albums, including 12 Songs, named one of the Top Ten Albums of 2005 by The New York Times, she has played with Linda Perry, Norah Jones, Nels Cline, Lou Reed, Ani Difranco, Bruce Cockburn, Aretha Franklin, Lucinda Williams, Bill Frisell, the Hot Club of San Francisco, Allison Miller. In 2008 Scheinman released a self-titled vocal album, she has played with her friend, Sean Lennon, on the Late Show with David Letterman. Her playing is used as soundbed for NPR programming, her album Mischief & Mayhem features guitarist Nels Cline, drummer Jim Black, bassist Todd Sickafoose She grew up in Petrolia, California, a remote area of Humboldt County near Cape Mendocino. She is the niece of robotics pioneer Victor Scheinman and the granddaughter of Telford Taylor, chief prosecutor at the United States war crimes trials at Nuremberg. Live at Yoshi's The Rabbi's Lover Shalagaster 12 Songs Crossing the Field Jenny Scheinman Mischief & Mayhem The Littlest Prisoner Here on Earth With Ani DiFranco Red Letter Year Allergic To Water With Bill Frisell The Intercontinentals Unspeakable Richter 858 History, Mystery Disfarmer Sign of Life: Music for 858 Quartet All We Are Saying The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved Big Sur With Eyvind Kang The Narrow Garden With Christian McBride Live at Tonic With Madeleine Peyroux Standing on the Rooftop With Rova Saxophone Quartet Electric Ascension With Lucinda Williams West With Lou Reed and Metallica Lulu Jenny Scheinman's Website 2008 interview w/State of Mind NPR June 10, 2008
Petrolia, California
Petrolia is an unincorporated community in Humboldt County, California, 10 miles southeast of Cape Mendocino, at an elevation of 121 feet above sea level, within ZIP Code 95558, area code 707. Petrolia was the site of the first oil well drilled in California. Petrolia has an estimated population of 300-500 people within a 15-mile radius, it is located in the Mattole Valley, part of the Lost Coast region, one of the largest wilderness areas and the longest stretch of undeveloped coastline in the continental United States. Petrolia's isolation is due to its position on the rocky, treacherous coastline adjacent to the King Range mountains that isolate this area from mainland California and continue to leave the area completely undeveloped. A travel magazine has called this area "too lovely to be believed too beautiful to last." It has been recognized as the top "still wild" place in California. The area is the only significant stretch of California without a shoreline highway, so far has "thus escaped tourism's aggressive paws."The 35 miles of steep roadways beneath the King Range Mountains include coastal redwoods, rocky shorelines, black sand beaches, as well as a menagerie of fauna, including black bears, black-tailed deer, river otter, California quail and porcupine, reptiles such as rattlesnakes, western fence lizards and alligator lizards, various amphibians and bald eagles.
Petrolia has been described as "a river valley town with Norman Rockwell flavor." Petrolia is 5 miles from the Pacific Ocean, the 25-mile section of beach protected by the King Range National Conservation Area and Sinkyone Wilderness State Park, the Punta Gorda Light. The Mattole River is home to a variety of California wildlife, including river otters, steelhead trout, more than 250 bird species, an threatened salmon, the subject of a book about the community's attempts over two decades to preserve the Mattole salmon, it is one of the few remaining areas with virgin old-growth stands of Douglas fir. Petrolia is located near the Mendocino Triple Junction, where three fault lines meet, experiences frequent earthquake activity; the last large earthquake to affect the area was a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in 1992, which resulted in a fire that destroyed the Petrolia General Store. The store lacks the charm of the 100-year-old landmark that it replaced. Two remaining landmarks in Petrolia are a small wooden church and the Petrolia Pioneer Cemetery, which has the graves of original residents of Petrolia dating from November 1857.
On the evening of March 9, 2014 a magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck 50 miles to the west. It was felt, yet caused little to no damage, nor generate a tsunami; the lack of any significant damage or land deformation was attributed to the shallow strike-slip fault movement in deep water. In 2010 two other large quakes had hit the area, a 6.5 on January 9 and a 5.9 on February 3. The weather in Petrolia is temperate; the town is located in a banana belt, sheltered from the fog that reaches Eureka and some of the northern towns, such as Arcata and McKinleyville. As a result, the summers are dry and sunny around 70 °F with temperatures reaching as high as 90 °F. Winters are rainy from November through April, with temperatures around 50 °F and falling to the high 30 °F's or low 40 °F's at night. Honeydew, located only 14 miles south of Petrolia, has a less temperate climate and its summers and winters are more extreme, with one of the highest amounts of winter rainfall. There are only two roads that lead into Petrolia, one from the north from Ferndale and one from the south from Honeydew, leading through scenic redwood forests that were the site for the filming of Jurassic Park and After Earth.
Both roads are winding and sometimes unpaved, passing large tracts of scenic overlooks and wilderness areas. They are popular routes for visitors mountain bikers and motorcyclists, have been described as leading to "an comically steep drop to the sea"; the road from Petrolia to Ferndale follows the ocean and has unbroken vistas of rocky ocean coastline and beach. Petrolia is surrounded by large tracts of farms; the Mattole area is popular with visitors the Lost Coast beaches, which feature tide pools, pristine beaches and deserted hiking trails. At certain times of year, migrating gray whales can be seen from shore, as well as colonies of harbor seals and sea lions. Local residents use the Mattole River for swimming, canoeing and catch and release fly fishing; the South Cape Mendocino State Marine Reserve and Sugarloaf Rock are offshore and are closed to public access. The area was settled by the Mattole or Pacific Coast Athapaskan Indians, who arrived at the Pacific Coast late in the first millennium from what is now Canada.
The Mattole Indians were slaughtered by the Western settlers, including gold rush settlers and miners. The last remaining descendants of the Mattole live today in Bear River on the Rohnerville Rancheria, but there are no remaining native speakers of the Mattole language. There are estimated to be more than 80 archeological sites of significance in the Lost Coast area; the white settlers called the place New Jerusaleum. It was the site of the first oil well drilled in California; the oil was fine and dried up. The Mattole post office opened in 1863
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University is a private research university in Stanford, California. Stanford is known for its academic strength, proximity to Silicon Valley, ranking as one of the world's top universities; the university was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr. who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford was a U. S. Senator and former Governor of California who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon; the school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Stanford University struggled financially after the death of Leland Stanford in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, Provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would be known as Silicon Valley; the university is one of the top fundraising institutions in the country, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.
The university is organized around three traditional schools consisting of 40 academic departments at the undergraduate and graduate level and four professional schools that focus on graduate programs in Law, Medicine and Business. Stanford's undergraduate program is the most selective in the United States by acceptance rate. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, the university is one of two private institutions in the Division I FBS Pac-12 Conference, it has gained the most for a university. Stanford athletes have won 512 individual championships, Stanford has won the NACDA Directors' Cup for 24 consecutive years, beginning in 1994–1995. In addition, Stanford students and alumni have won 270 Olympic medals including 139 gold medals; as of October 2018, 83 Nobel laureates, 27 Turing Award laureates, 8 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with Stanford as students, faculty or staff. In addition, Stanford University is noted for its entrepreneurship and is one of the most successful universities in attracting funding for start-ups.
Stanford alumni have founded a large number of companies, which combined produce more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue and have created 5.4 million jobs as of 2011 equivalent to the 10th largest economy in the world. Stanford is the alma mater of 30 living billionaires and 17 astronauts, is one of the leading producers of members of the United States Congress. Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford, dedicated to Leland Stanford Jr, their only child; the institution opened in 1891 on Stanford's previous Palo Alto farm. Despite being impacted by earthquakes in both 1906 and 1989, the campus was rebuilt each time. In 1919, The Hoover Institution on War and Peace was started by Herbert Hoover to preserve artifacts related to World War I; the Stanford Medical Center, completed in 1959, is a teaching hospital with over 800 beds. The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, established in 1962, performs research in particle physics. Jane and Leland Stanford modeled their university after the great eastern universities, most Cornell University and Harvard University.
Stanford opened being called the "Cornell of the West" in 1891 due to faculty being former Cornell affiliates including its first president, David Starr Jordan. Both Cornell and Stanford were among the first to have higher education be accessible and open to women as well as to men. Cornell is credited as one of the first American universities to adopt this radical departure from traditional education, Stanford became an early adopter as well. Most of Stanford University is on one of the largest in the United States, it is located on the San Francisco Peninsula, in the northwest part of the Santa Clara Valley 37 miles southeast of San Francisco and 20 miles northwest of San Jose. In 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped. Stanford's main campus includes a census-designated place within unincorporated Santa Clara County, although some of the university land is within the city limits of Palo Alto; the campus includes much land in unincorporated San Mateo County, as well as in the city limits of Menlo Park and Portola Valley.
The academic central campus is adjacent to Palo Alto, bounded by El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue, Junipero Serra Boulevard, Sand Hill Road. The United States Postal Service has assigned it two ZIP Codes: 94305 for campus mail and 94309 for P. O. box mail. It lies within area code 650. Stanford operates or intends to operate in various locations outside of its central campus. On the founding grant: Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a 1,200-acre natural reserve south of the central campus owned by the university and used by wildlife biologists for research. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is a facility west of the central campus operated by the university for the Department of Energy, it contains the longest linear particle accelerator in the world, 2 miles on 426 acres of land. Golf course and a seasonal lake: The university has its own golf course and a seasonal lake, both home to the vulnerable California tiger salamander; as of 2012 Lake Laguni
