Reading without seeing the text, extracting water from air, bringing sunlight to a basement, or communicating with a humanoid ...

History is rich with examples of scientific discoveries that have contributed to the wider development of breakthrough inventions in the health, energy, transport, and telecommunications industries, ...

On Oct. 3, 1950, three Bell Labs scientists received a patent for a "three-electrode circuit element" that would usher in the ...

If you graph the history of economic growth, it looks a lot like a hockey stick laid on the ground with its blade sticking up ...

Last week the U. S. Patent Office, making its annual report, signaled distress. It would have to have more employes, larger quarters, greater appropriations. The nation’s inventive genius, or more ...

How do you know that someone is “The One?” Gernsback tackled that question in 1924 with an idea for an invention that was supposed to inject some science into the world of romantic attraction. From ...

Hugo Gernsback was a pioneer in the world of science fiction during the first half of the 20th century—so much so that the Hugo Awards are named after him. But Gernback also edited serious tech ...

¶ By FBI: a war-born alloy so magnetic (it can lift 4,000 times its own weight) that FBI plans to use it to fish in rivers and ponds for criminals’ discarded weapons and other metallic clues. ¶ By a ...

If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in ...