A Techie’s Tour of New York City
Here are some NYC attractions that you won’t find in the guidebooks
17 Oct 2018
A Techie's Tour Of NYC
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Do your travel plans include New York City? Are you a techie? If the answer to those questions is yes, let IEEE Spectrum be your guide! We've put together a list of some of our favorite places to visit, including important locations in the history of electrotechnology (New York was once the center of the electrical and electronic world) and places where fun and interesting things are happening today. See where Nikola Tesla lived, check out cutting-edge artists working with technology, or take the kids to see an Atlas and Titan rocket.
All the locations are accessible via the subway, and many are free to visit. If you do visit, take a selfie and post a link in the comments below.
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Michael Koziol is an associate editor at IEEE Spectrum where he covers everything telecommunications. He graduated from Seattle University with bachelor's degrees in English and physics, and earned his master's degree in science journalism from New York University.
Eliza Strickland is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum, where she covers AI, biomedical engineering, and other topics. She holds a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.
With 360-degree video, IEEE Spectrum puts you aboard drones that are flying high above the Tanzanian landscape: You’ll ride along as drones soar above farms, towns, and the blue expanse of Lake Victoria. You’ll also meet the local entrepreneurs who are creating a new industry, finding applications for their drones in land surveying and delivery. And you’ll get a close-up view from a bamboo grove as a drone pilot named Bornlove builds a flying machine from bamboo and other materials.
You can follow the action in a 360-degree video in three ways: 1) Watch on your computer, using your mouse to click and drag on the video; 2) watch on your phone, moving the phone around to change your view; or 3) watch on a VR headset for the full immersive experience.
If you’re watching on an iPhone: Go directly to the YouTube page for the proper viewing experience.
For more stories of how drones are changing the game in Africa, check out IEEE Spectrum’s “Tech Expedition: East Africa’s Big Bet on Drones.”
Michael Koziol is an associate editor at IEEE Spectrum where he covers everything telecommunications. He graduated from Seattle University with bachelor's degrees in English and physics, and earned his master's degree in science journalism from New York University.
Eliza Strickland is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum, where she covers AI, biomedical engineering, and other topics. She holds a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.
With 360 video, IEEE Spectrum takes you behind the scenes with one of the world’s first drone-delivery companies. Zipline, based in California, is using drones to deliver blood to hospitals throughout Rwanda. At an operations center in Muhanga, you’ll watch as Zipline technicians assemble the modular drones, fill their cargo holds, and launch them via catapult. You’ll see a package float down from the sky above a rural hospital, and you’ll get a closeup look at Zipline’s ingenious method for capturing returning drones.
You can follow the action in a 360-degree video in three ways: 1) Watch on your computer, using your mouse to click and drag on the video; 2) watch on your phone, moving the phone around to change your view; or 3) watch on a VR headset for the full immersive experience.
If you’re watching on an iPhone: Go directly to the YouTube page for the proper viewing experience.
For more about Zipline’s technology and operations, check out the feature article “In the Air With Zipline’s Medical Delivery Drones.”
Stephen Cass is the special projects editor at IEEE Spectrum. He currently helms Spectrum's Hands On column, and is also responsible for interactive projects such as the Top Programming Languages app. He has a bachelor's degree in experimental physics from Trinity College Dublin.
In the early hours of 5 February 1971, Don Eyles had a big problem: Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell were orbiting the moon, preparing to land, but it looked like they were going to have to come home without putting so much as a single footprint on the surface. The only way to save the mission was for Eyles to hack his own software.
Don Eyles's recent memoir details how the mission software for the lunar module was developed.
Shepard and Mitchell were onboard their lunar module, the Antares. The Antares flight computer was registering occasional presses of an Abort button in the cabin, even though the astronauts hadn't touched it. A loose ball of solder was floating around in zero gravity inside the switch and shorting it out. The button was intended for extreme emergencies. But once the descent to the lunar surface had begun, the rogue bit of solder could activate the switch, ordering the Antares computer to try to rocket the lunar module back into orbit. Eyles had written the mission software running in the Antares computer, and his challenge at that moment was this: Find a way to lock out the emergency switch behavior that he had carefully programmed into the computer.
Eventually, Eyles was able to come up with a few lines of instructions that the astronauts were to punch into their computer, bypassing the code that paid attention to the switch. Apollo 14 landed on the moon later that day. His fix was elegant and creative, and it's not hard to see why Eyles finds no discontinuity between engineering and art. In fact, in later life, he himself went on to become a photographer and sculptor.
IEEE Spectrum was able to speak to Eyles at the Vintage Computer Festival East in May. He shared interesting anecdotes from his career, including how he saved the Apollo 14 mission. He was there to give a talk and promote his recently released book, Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir, which provides a wealth of inside detail about how the Apollo software was developed at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, then a part of MIT.