Switching and Amplification
(d'amplification et de commutation)
This is the last day of the consecutive-holiday season between late April and early May in Japan, which is one of the best seasons in Japan.
I love this season, too, since everything in fields look fresh and green leaving the last memory of dry winter. Most of snow stacked in mountains facing the Sea of Japan finally melts away in this season, though Mt. Fuji is still snow capped.
But, Myanmar is suffering almost ten thousand deaths due to a big cyclone; and Bolivia is faced with a split of the nation between the richest province and poor provinces.
A Japanese journalist killed in Yangon, Myanmar, in the last fall, while holding his camera till his death, and Japanese and Israeli tourists recently killed in an unthinkable car accident on a huge salt lake in Bolivia might be really foretelling the present tragedy and turmoil in these two poorest countries in East Asia and South America, respectively.
If you can sense any divine will or warning in these pieces of news, an Angel may be close to you so as to boost your faith more.
But, I will write some on technology.
SECTION I: KEY OF COMPUTERS: HIGH SPEED SWITCHING
Computers and electronic equipment mankind today uses are based on a high-speed switching technology and a signal amplification technology.
On a road you can see hundred cars running to one direction. But, they suddenly stop when a traffic signal changes from green to red.
Cars can be regarded as electrons, a mass of which is electric current. And as cars run on the road, the surface of the road causes heat due to friction between tires of the cars and the road material. The total heat can be regarded as voltage.
A higher voltage means a signal level "1," meaning all the cars are running, while a lower voltage means a signal level “0,” meaning a state of cars all being stopped and standing still without causing friction and heat to the surface of the road.
(So, hundreds (of millions) of cars as a mass generate a level "1" but not a single car which can be regarded as one electron.)
If you can change the traffic signal one billion times per second (Giga Hz), the movement of cars would really show how electric current, though very small, flows in your computer.
As every data in your computer is logically a mass of the numbers “1” and “0,” handling them at a high speed in electronic circuits is a basic requirement for a PC.
But, you cannot use a metal wire and a mechanical switch or relay for this high speed switching, since they cannot follow the speed needed and meet the size requirement.
On the other hand, a very small semiconductor chip can be used for this purpose, since it can change its state at a high speed from a kind of metal to a normal stone which cannot flow electric current.
Only you have to do is apply a small bias current from a different path to a semiconductor device just like a traffic signal by the road; then a main big electric current on the main path can be stopped or allowed to flow following a high-speed change in the bias current.
The most primitive type of this device is a vacuum tube.
That is why the world first computer was built just after WWII, using, say, 18,000 vacuum tubes for switching of electric circuits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC
But, there was a new discovery after WWII: a new material which is half metal and half non-metal. It is thus called a transistor or a semiconductor.
By changing the sate between metal and non-mental at a higher speed, say one billion times per second, you can control the flow of electric current and thus the level of voltage, so as to handle data, a mass of 0 and 1, in your computer.
SECTION II: A LITTLE HISTORY OF WWII
Once a convenient device used for this switching in an electric circuit was a vacuum tube.
Copper and other ordinary metals for a simple electric circuit are put in a vacuum tube to let electrons fly between metal terminals without obstacles in the air.
Before WWII, America had well advanced in the vacuum tube technology. They could apply it to a weapon. They put it in a blasting fuse of a cannon ball to be shot from an anti-aircraft gun mounted on a navy ship. When a Japanese fighter plane got closer to a cannon ball, a metal detection circuit in a cannon ball worked, causing a change in an electric current which is amplified by a vacuum tube so as to trigger the blasting fuse.
http://njb.virtualave.net/web/rl2004/P9292253.jpg
Even if a cannon ball did not hit an airplane, it could blast and damage or destroy the airplane as long as it came closer enough for metal detection to the flying plane.
Many Japanese fighter and bomber planes were shot this way during WWII.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze
So, it is natural that after WWII Japanese engineers tried hard to adopt and apply a transistor invented in the U.S. just after WWII. The key to Sony’s success also lies in their active efforts in this field to apply this technology to consumer products.
Indeed, as the late Mr. Morita, one of founders of Sony, was an (engineering) officer of the Imperial Navy, it is more understandable that Sony aggressively introduced the transistor to its products.
It is a commonsense among engineers in Japan that the Empire of Japan lost the War against the U.S. since the US navy could use advanced electronics, such as a radar, a VT fuse, and other telecommunication equipment to decode ciphered messages.
(Of course, a Zero Fighter was equipped with a radio cimmunication equipement and the battle ships Yamato and Musashi were equipped with radars, but their performance was lower than American equipment.)
SECTION III: KEY TO TELECOMMUNICATIONS: SIGNAL AMPLIFICATION
When sending a signal far, it naturally loses its strength.
On a wire or on air, the further an electric signal is transmitted, the weaker it becomes.
But, such a signal or a radio wave usually keeps its original shape.
So, all you have to do is to amplify or magnify the weakened signal received in your TV set, cellular phone, or computer, so that you can hear and view contents the signal is carrying with your eyes and ears through or on such equipment.
In other word, electric signals received should be amplified at least to a voltage level at which electronic circuits in a cellular phone, a computer, a TV set can handle them appropriately.
This amplification or revitalization of signals can be done using a vacuum tube like a VT fuse used in WWII.
But, a transistor or a semiconductor can be also used to amplify or magnify the signal received.
In the analogy of a traffic signal, if all the cars on the road blink their headlight following the blinking of a traffic signal, you can see one small movement and rhythm of a traffic signal is multiplied by hundreds of cars in synchronization.
Without this signal amplification technology, you cannot even restore the signals used to transmit the image of the earth taken and sent by a Japanese space craft flying around the moon now.
SECTION IV: APPLICATION OF HIGH SPEED SWITCHING AND AMPLIFICATION
Now, you have grasped two key concepts of the PC, the TV, and the cellular phone technologies: High-Speed Switching and Signal Amplification.
In a sphere of technology, we use very advanced semiconductors, often called ICs or LSIs, or simply chips, to realize these functions.
But, there are other flows in this world: information, money, business transactions, and goods and people.
My idea is to apply those key technical concepts to the sphere of information, money, business transactions, and goods and people.
Smart guys in the financial sector have actually already applied this kind of concept to their daily operation, using advanced computer/communications systems and software.
But, my intention is to take hold on them and prevent them from further doing sinful business with advanced financial technology.
It is because a total amount of financial assets in the world has reached $150 trillion in 2006.
This is more than three times larger than a total amount of the global real economy.
And an amount of money being traded globally over the global high-speed communications/computers-complex systems has reached nowadays $3 trillion per day.
Though one dollar is not an electron, it may be useful to apply the above concepts to the control and regulation of the global money market.
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That is all for today.
Sometimes talk to engineers if you are not.
But, remember all the major religions in the world were established when there were no TVs, PCs, and cellular phones.
And, thus you have to leave every technology, if you have any, eventually to be called a follower of Judaism, Jesus Christ, and Islam or the Great Buddha.
(Now many workers in big cities in Japan are coming back from their holiday as the TV news have so reported.
Business will start again in Tokyo tomorrow.
But, if you have been working in these days, just change your view to see things from another standpoint.
Since you have been working so honestly and humbly, I will tell you that if you do not have any ideas on modern technology, you had better get interested in it as above stated, so that you will not be played down by cool experts in a certain field.
And, haven’t you achieved something great in these holidays along with the EEE Reporter, have you, good girls and Mlles.?)
Jud 5:1 Then sang Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam on that day, saying,
Jud 5:2 Praise ye the LORD for the avenging of Israel, when the people willingly offered themselves.
Jud 5:3 Hear, O ye kings; give ear, O ye princes; I, even I, will sing unto the LORD; I will sing praise to the LORD God of Israel.
Jud 5:4 LORD, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water.
Jud 5:5 The mountains melted from before the LORD, even that Sinai from before the LORD God of Israel.
Jud 5:6 In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through byways.
Jud 5:7 The inhabitants of the villages ceased, they ceased in Israel, until that I Deborah arose, that I arose a mother in Israel.