Range of values

While reading "Bits on the Big Screen" [December], I was amused by the movie companies' stated approach when choosing standards and technology, which is: "using a minimum of protected intellectual property."

I thought these were the people who so strongly believe in the overwhelming economic and societal benefits of protected intellectual property. I guess they believe in that protection mainly when the property in question is theirs.

Dennis Nicoll

IEEE Member

Vancouver, B.C., Canada

EVs: Costly, dirty?

In a sidebar to your January article ["Winner: The Omnivorous Engine"], you quote an "expert" saying that "Electric cars can already run on about one-third of the cost of gasoline and with much less pollution." I'm amazed that your supposedly authoritative professional publication would cite such a fallacious claim! I don't know who your expert (T.J. Rodgers) is, or what his expert qualifications are, but even a little homework would reveal the flaws in this statement! I would like to see what kind of economic analysis it would take to support the notion that electricity costs one-third as much as gasoline! And no less than the California Air Resources Board staff have publicly concluded that today's gasoline vehicles have emissions equal to those associated with an electric vehicle.

Tom McDonald

Via the Internet

The editor responds: Rodgers did not, in fact, say that "electricity costs one-third as much as gasoline." Furthermore, many studies and reports can be found to support what Rodgers did actually say, which is that electric vehicles cost one-third as much to operate as gasoline-powered cars. For example, a calculating program at http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/~jarrett/EV/cost.php indicates that for typical parameters, Rodgers's statement is quite reasonable. The idea that, overall, electric vehicles are just as polluting as gasoline vehicles finds little support in the literature. See, for example, http://www.electroauto.com/info/poll.shtml.

How was his shorthand?

In your December 2006 IEEE Spectrum Online article "The First Electronic Device, Ever?" [http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/dec06/4792], the author refers to John Howell as Edison's secretary. Howell was not a secretary. He was one of Edison's key engineers on the incandescent lamp project. And he was the only engineer who successfully made by hand the tar-putty lamps to Edison's patent specifications during the 1890 patent trial. Thus he was the key witness at the trial, as well as the holder of many electrical patents. After 50 years with Edison, John retired as chief engineer of the Edison Lamp Works of General Electric. He was also awarded the 1924 Edison Medal (now sponsored by the IEEE) for his "contributions toward the development of the incandescent lamp." Some secretary, eh? You suppose he knew how to take dictation?

John T. Starr

Glendale, Calif.

Post-Tesla Power

The concept in "Air Power" in November's IEEE Spectrum Online [http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/nov06/4735] is an old, but attractive idea. More than a century ago, Nicola Tesla dreamed of sending megawatts through the air, without wires. The idea is much more realistic for milliwatt quantities of power, as demonstrated by any radio frequency identification (RFID) system. RFID tags have a coil that inductively scavenges, from a nearby RFID reader, the energy the tag needs to transmit its data. At the European company ABB, we have developed an induction-based wireless power-transmitting scheme called WISA-Power. It is designed mainly to power sensors and actuators in moving systems like robots, reducing the need for cables and wires, which are a common cause of failures. Using multiple modules, we have sent hundreds of milliwatts through the air.

By the way, MIT's power-transmitting system, which you described in your article, seems to incorporate a number of our ideas. ABB has openly discussed its developments with MIT for more than six years.

Guntram Scheible

Heidelberg, Germany

Corrections

In the December issue, in "Bits on the Big Screen," the size of the digital files "used in movie production to capture, store, and edit movies" should have been 6000 gigabytes. In "Doing Well by Doing Good," the correct name of the San Diego company mentioned in the article is Quantum Magnetics, not Quantum Mechanics.

In "Loser: Corn-o-copia" [January], Doug Koplow's name was misspelled.