Word: microchip
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...said it could save your life, would you do it? As Orwellian as it sounds, VeriChip is betting this will be a billion-dollar business. The firm's parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, won FDA approval last year for what it bills as the "world's first human implantable microchip." A radio-frequency identification (RFID) transponder the size of a grain of rice, the VeriChip contains a 16-digit personal ID number that can be scanned like a bar code, providing health-care workers access to your medical records online. That could be lifesaving in an emergency, cutting the likelihood...
...could eliminate some of the wires by sticking transistors onto a sliver of germanium--a close cousin of silicon--and etching circuits onto this crystal "chip," which was about half the size of a paper clip. Many of his peers dismissed such a simple solution as naive, and his microchip "provided much of the entertainment at major technical meetings over the next few years," Kilby later wrote. But Kilby ended up with the last laugh, not to mention a Nobel Prize in 2000. Bragging wasn't his style, though, and he often credited Intel's Robert Noyce...
...benefits of weightlessness on industrial processes. An isothermal heating oven melted samples of metals such as nickel and molybdenum to a temperature of 1,600°C to test a technique for creating stronger alloys, while a mirror-heater was employed to grow ultrapure crystals, which could someday benefit the microchip industry...
Until last year, that is, when Intel delayed production of its latest Pentium 4 chip and scaled back its proposed speed from 4 GHz to 3.8 GHz. That was partly owing to technical complications; pack too many transistors onto a microchip, and you have magnetic resistance and overheating issues that require bulkier fans and suck up more battery life in your laptop. But the bigger problem is simply that most of us no longer have such a need for speed, at least when it comes to everyday applications such as e-mail, Web browsers and spreadsheets, which work just...
...long foreseen, but when it finally happened, it still seemed spooky. The FDA last week approved an implantable microchip for medical uses. When activated by a handheld scanner, the tiny VeriChip emits, via radio signal, an ID number that can be linked to a patient's medical records. Critics see Big Brother. Enthusiasts say ambulance crews and ER doctors will be able to access such critical data as medications and drug allergies, even if a patient is unconscious. Future versions may have sensors to read vital signs like pulse, temperature and blood sugar...