Slashdot Mirror
Electricity Over Glass
guddan writes "Running a live wire into a passenger jet's fuel tank seems like a bad idea on the face of it. Still, sensors that monitor the fuel tank have to run on electricity, so aircraft makers previously had little choice. But what if power could be delivered over optical fiber instead of copper wire, without fear of short circuits and sparks? In late May, the big laser and optics company JDS Uniphase Corp., in San Jose, Calif., bought a small Silicon Valley firm with the technology to do just that."
So, firing laser beams into fuel tanks is a safety feature now?
I think you're mixing up innovation and patent-worthiness. You must be new here.
-1 not first post
Don't cross the beams.
I am not a crackpot.
I've already invented a device to tell the level of a fuel tank without using electricity!
Through advanced hydrostatics, I found the level of the fuel tank could be remotely monitored via a capillary tube, from which the fuel level can be calculated from an ocular spectrogram in the VIS range.
Okay, okay.. so it's just looking at the level in a hose connected to the tank... and it's not new.
You trust PEOPLE more than machines?
Hand over your geek card!
"All gases are easily flammable! Carbon dioxide? Nitrogen? Argon?"
;)
I doubt it is "easy" to ignite steam
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
I dunno, electricity in glass could lead to some shocking panes.
OLD: The deal was finished on May 26, 2005 . The article referenced by the Slashdot story is from October 2005.
NOT NEW TECHNOLOGY: They are merely piping light using fiber optics, and then using the light with photocells to create small amounts of power for use with measuring devices. The measurements are communicated back through the fiber optics, using a different wavelength.
PATENTS? The article says, "Photonic Power owns key patents..." Can the generation of power using light be patented again? Can sending information using fiber optics be patented again? Maybe the company has patents, considering that the U.S. government has become corrupt, but it is difficult to believe that any patents could be valid.
IGNORANT: See this quote from the article referenced in the Slashdot story: "... the company's fastest growing sector is currently electric power transmission. One important application is eliminating the transformers used to step down high currents and voltages to measurable levels."
The article should have said, "... the company's fastest growing sector is currently powering and connecting the measuring devices used in electric power transmission."
The writer does not understand that the idea does not change the measuring system, only the method of transmitting the data. If step down transformers are part of the method of measurement, they will still be required. The "senior research analyst" who was quoted, Vincent Lui, doesn't understand that, either, apparently.
REALITY RULES: If you play video games too much, your brain will become partly useless for other things, and, if then try to be a Slashdot editor, you won't be able to do a good job. (This is a theory that seems to fit the facts.)
This is a useful idea for computer professionals in some cases where voltage isolation is needed, but the Slashdot story was mishandled, as often happens.
I really doubt that there would be an "again!!" in that sentence ;)