Things to come … Methane-powered mobiles
First published in Management Today, April 2003Recharging phone, laptop and PDA batteries is a pain, and the coming of power-hungry mobile broadband will make it worse. PolyFuel, a spin-off of SRI International based at Menlo Park, California, hopes to introduce a lightweight power pack that promises to eliminate the hassle.
It’s a miniature fuel cell – a reactor that turns fuel into electricity. Methanol, drawn from a replaceable cartridge, is broken down into protons, electrons and carbon dioxide. The protons pass through a proton exchange membrane, while the electrons pile up on a wire to produce electricity.
PolyFuel, whose backers include Intel, has done 14 years of patenting. On launch in ’04 or ’05, one cartridge will last three times as long as a regular battery, but its life could become much longer.
Innovators I like
Robert Furchgott – discovered that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body
Barry Marshall – showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid
N Joseph Woodland – co-inventor of the barcode
Jocelyn Bell Burnell – she discovered the first radio pulsars
John Tyndall – the man who worked out why the sky was blue
Rosalind Franklin co-discovered the structure of DNA, with Crick and Watson
Rosalyn Sussman Yallow – development of radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body
Jonas Salk – discovery and development of the first successful polio vaccine
John Waterlow – discovered that lack of body potassium causes altitude sickness. First experiment: on himself
Werner Forssmann – the first man to insert a catheter into a human heart: his own
Bruce Bayer – scientist with Kodak whose invention of a colour filter array enabled digital imaging sensors to capture colour
Yuri Gagarin – first man in space. My piece of fandom: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10421
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield – inventor, with Robert Ledley, of the CAT scanner
Martin Cooper – inventor of the mobile phone
George Devol – 'father of robotics’ who helped to revolutionise carmaking
Thomas Tuohy – Windscale manager who doused the flames of the 1957 fire
Eugene Polley – TV remote controls
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