Karl Küpfmüller, 1928: an early time-domain, closed-loop, stability criterion

Karl Küpfmüller was a German engineer who worked for eight years during the 1920s at Siemens & Halske in Berlin. During that time he carried out fundamental work on telegraphy and telephony, network theory, and the systems theory of electrical signal transmission. Like his contemporary in the US, Harry Nyquist, he derived fundamental results in information transmission and closed-loop modelling. In contrast to Nyquist, though, his name is not well-known in the English-speaking world. Indeed, little has appeared in English about him or his work – although his pioneering results in systems theory informed later American work, particularly through the contributions of Ernst Guillemin, a prolific writer of highly influential student texts and a great engineering educator at MIT, who was well-acquainted with the ideas of Küpfmüller (and other German electrical engineers)

The social construction of educational technology through the use of proprietary software

Major strands of science and technology studies (STS) in recent decades have been the 'social shaping of technology' (SST) and 'social construction of technology' (SCOT) movements, whose adherents maintain that technological systems are determined just as much by social forces as by technological ones. Taking this 'co-construction' notion as a starting point, and putting a focus on the user, I look at some examples of the use of proprietary software in which the learner, instead of being constrained by a rather deterministic pedagogy of educational technology, can exploit the functionality of the software in ways far removed from the original design. For example, spreadsheets can be used to incorporate modelling assumptions directly to simulate digital signal transmission, or the workings of the binomial function. Audio editing software can be used to teach about the technology of music by allowing the student to explore waveform characteristics. The manipulation of images, if combined with a teaching of the principles behind data compression, can engender a deep understanding of the processes involved. And translation software can be used for language learning in a way very different from what was envisaged by the designers. Educational technology has tended to suffer from an emphasis on, and excessive claims for, technological innovation and novelty. Film, radio, television, programmed learning, interactive video discs, CD-ROMs, a 'computer in every classroom', 'one laptop per child', the web, computer-mediated communication, smartboards; and now mashups, Second Life, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter – all have all been seen as radical new technologies that would revolutionize learning. Here I make the case for the social construction of educational technology by users and teachers, based on exploiting to far better effect the possibilities of mature, often proprietary, software not originally designed for pedagogical purposes. The approach outlined here not only helps students gain experience with the sort of software they are likely to encounter in their professional life, but also fosters and sustains a healthy spirit of enquiry that too often is lacking in much educational software. Although the examples presented have been situated in the context of the individual learner, similar principles can be applied to a whole range of networked educational technologies

The anglocentric tendency in the history of information engineering

This paper examines the anglocentric nature of much writing on the history of technology, taking as an example important research results from the first half of the last century published in German and Russian in the field of information engineering. By ‘information engineering’ is meant such disciplines as electronics, telecommunications, control engineering and signal processing. The seminal German and Russian results discussed here, untranslated at the time into English, remained largely unknown in the English-speaking world

The Celtic Languages in the Age of Globalisation: Problems and Possibilities [In Russian]

The article discusses the current state of Celtic languages ​​in the UK and Republic of Ireland, as affected by recent developments in globalization and devolution. After a brief history, the current position of the lanuages Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic is discussed. The importance of the influence of the media is considered, paricularly developments in ICT

Control engineering and the professional societies

By the time control engineering emerged as a coherent body of knowledge and practice (during and just after WW2) professional engineering societies had existed for many decades. Since control engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of the profession, new sections devoted to control were quickly established within the various existing technical societies. In addition, some new bodies devoted specifically or primarily to control were established. This brief paper will present in outline the history of how control engineering as a distinct branch of engineering became represented in technical societies – or their equivalent – in the USA, UK, USSR, Germany and France

A great disappearing act: the electronic analogue computer

One historian of technology has called the analogue computer 'one of the great disappearing acts of the Twentieth Century'. This paper will look briefly at the origins, development and decline of the electronic analogue computer .

ICT support at the British Open University for student projects at a distance

In recent years the British Open University has been providing increasing ICT support to distance learners carrying out projects within the Faculty of Technology and elsewhere in the University. This paper reports briefly on three generic research tools ..

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kotelnikov: Pioneer of the sampling theorem, cryptography, optimal detection, planetary mapping

In 1933 the young Russian communications engineer Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kotelnikov published a paper in which he formulated for the first time in an engineering context the sampling theorem for lowpass and bandpass signals. He also considered the bandwidth requirements of discrete signal transmission for telegraphy and images. Kotelnikov subsequently worked on scrambling, cryptography, optimal detection, and planetary radar (including the radar-assisted cartography of Venus). He was awarded numerous Soviet and international prizes and played a major role in Soviet academic and professional life in the field of radio engineering. Yet his achievements are still comparatively little known outside Russia

OER and open licenses: the dual-pub solution

OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. The global standard for open licenses is the suite of Creative Commons (CC) licenses; however, there are several different types of CC licenses, and deciding which licenses are appropriate for different circumstances remains a significant point of contention for the OER community. Herein, we recommend that the debate shift focus, from "Which license?" to "Which assets (and when)?" It is widely understood that only the CC BY license (and, in certain circumstances, the CC BY-SA license) provides users with all of the necessary permissions to build on a global learning commons3. Thus, we recommend that OER be licensed CC BY plus in an open format, but we accept that resource publishers may only want to publish a subset of their assets as OER, thereby retaining additional rights on key assets for technical and business reasons. We believe that this approach substantially simplifies the OER landscape, gives clear opportunities to build sustainability and value-add models around OER publishing, and will ultimately increase the impact of OER in transforming educational access and practice

Polymeric binder for explosives

Chemical reaction for producing a polymer which can be mixed with explosives to produce a rigid material is discussed. Physical and chemical properties of polymers are described and chemical structure of the polymer is illustrated