Our Time Machine :: essays research papers

Our Time MachineH.G. Wells once wrote a novel called The Time Machine, it was published in 1895. This exciting little risk featured a device that had power over time. Who knew that in 2001 we too would have such a device? One invention that has made it obvious that we have reached the twenty first century is named Tivo. With this, one has the ability to pause, fast forward, and essentially tamper with live television. This gadget is, in a sense an developed time machine. Were living in an age where the word digital seems to come into play with every new invention. Digital technology includes all types of electronic applications that use schooling in the form of numeric code. This information is usually in something called a binary codethat is, code that can be delineate by strings of only two numeric characters. These characters argon usually 0 and 1. Devices that process and use digital information include personal computers, calculators, automobiles, barter light controllers, compact disc players, cellular telephones, communications satellites, and now Tivo. Most of the information we sense is analog in naturethat is, it varies constantly, and an infinite hail of value can be assigned to the information. For example, the brightness of a light bulb dimmed gradually from on to off could be considered analog information. This infinite number of brightnesses can be broken up into ranges. If the possible brightnesses are broken into two ranges, then the values 0 and 1 can hold digital information relating to the brightness of the bulb. However, each of the two digits still represents a countless number of analog values. The ranges of brightnesses can be divided again and again, until there are thousands of ranges of values, each of which can be represented by a numerical value. Once analog information has been broken up into digital information, it is impossible to short reverse the process and re-create all of the possible analog signals from the correspo nding digital signals. This is why most analog signals are represented by a great number of digital information levels. For example, the sound stored as digital information on a CD is broken down into 65,536 levels. A CD player translates the digital information into analog information so that a speaker can convert it into sound waves. Some devices process digital information using a tiny computer called a microprocessor. It performs calculations on digital information and then makes decisions based on the results.