Sunday, June 24, 2007

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is an industrialized requirement for wireless personal area networks (PANs). Bluetooth provides a way to connect and swap information between devices such as mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers, digital cameras, and video game consoles over a secure, short-range radio frequency. The Bluetooth provisions are licensed and developed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group.


Bluetooth is a radio standard and communications protocol generally designed for low power consumption, with a short range based on low-cost transceiver microchips in each device. The device employs a radio communications system.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Punt

A punt is a flat-bottomed boat with a square-cut bow, planned for use in small rivers or other shallow water. Punting refers to boating in a punt; the punter normally propels the punt by pushing beside the river bed with a pole.
Punts were initially built as cargo boats or platforms for fowling and angling but in modern times their use is almost wholly confined to pleasure trips on the rivers in the university towns of Oxford and Cambridge in England and races at a few summer regattas on the Thames.
A customary river punt differs from many other types of wooden boat in that it has no keel, stem or sternpost. In its place it is built rather like a ladder with the main structure being two side panels connected by a series of 4 in (10 cm) cross planks, known as "treads", spaced about 1 foot (30 cm) apart.
The first punts are traditionally linked with the River Thames in England and were built as small cargo boats or platforms for fishermen. Pleasure punts — particularly built for recreation — became popular on the Thames between 1840 and 1860. Some other boats have a similar shape to a traditional punt — for example the Optimist training dinghy or the air boats used in the Everglades — but they are normally built with a box construction instead of the open ladder-like design of a traditional Thames pleasure punt.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Pinnace

A pinnace is a light boat, propelled by sails or oars, previously used as a "tender" for guiding merchant and war vessels. In modern parlance, pinnace has come to mean a boat linked with some kind of larger vessel, that doesn't fit under the launch or lifeboat definitions. In all-purpose, the pinnace had sails, and would be used to ferry messages between ships of the line, visit harbors ahead of the fleet with messages of state, pick up mail, etc.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Jet boat

A jet boat is a boat propel by a jet of water twisted out from the back of the craft. Unlike a powerboat or motorboat that uses a propeller in the water behind the boat; a jet boat draws the water from under the boat into a pump-jet inside the boat, and then expels it through a needle at the stern.
Jet boats were originally designed by Sir William Hamilton (who invented the water jet in 1954) for operation in the fast-flowing and shallow rivers of New Zealand, especially to overcome the problem of propellers striking rocks in such waters, although Italian inventor Second Camping had demonstrated a similar vessel as early as 1931 in Venice.
The difference between Campini's and Hamilton's inventions is that Campini's water jet had a very short lifetime in operation due to some unsolved material problems. Hamilton, unlike Camping, filed for a patent. Jet boats are extremely maneuverable, and many can, from full speed, be upturned and brought to a stop within their own length, in a maneuver known as a Hamilton turn.