Ken Gabriel on why your smartphone is smart

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Ken Gabriel, the engineer responsible for popularising many of the micro devices found in smartphones and computers. Ken explains how he was inspired by what he could do with a stick and a piece of string. This led to an engineering adventure taking in spacecraft, military guidance systems and the micro-mechanical devices we use every day in our computers and smartphones. Ken Gabriel now heads up a large non-profit engineering company, Draper, which cut its teeth building the guidance systems for the Apollo space missions, and is now involved in developing both driverless cars and drug production systems for personalised medicine. Ken himself has a career in what he terms ‘disruptive engineering’. His research married digital electronics with acoustics - and produced the microphones in our phones and computers. He has also worked for Google, taking some of the military research methods into a civilian start up. This led to the development of a new type of modular mobile phone which has yet to go into production. Producer: Julian Siddle

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
0:04.7	Join me as I serve up personal conversations
0:07.1	with my sensational guests.
0:08.9	Do a leap, interviews, Tim Cook.
0:11.2	Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.
0:15.0	It's in the hands of the Creator.
0:16.7	It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.
0:20.6	If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes you're doing the wrong thing.
0:26.0	Julie, at your service.
0:28.0	Listen to all episodes on BBC sales.
0:31.0	This is Discovery from the BBC. I'm Jimel Killelli and in today's program I'm in conversation with a leading scientist about their life and research. Welcome to the Life Scientific.
0:44.0	Amongst all the smart things your smartphone can do, there are plenty of feats of engineering
0:50.0	you probably take for granted, like how you expand an image by moving your thumb and
0:54.6	forefinger apart on the screen or the way it responds to the different amounts of
0:58.7	pressure you apply, or even how the image changes from portrait to landscape mode when you rotate the device.
1:06.0	Well, many of these remarkably useful innovations were developed thanks to the work of my guest today.
1:12.0	He's an American engineer, inventor and
1:14.8	leader in disruptive technology. We'll find out more about what that means later.
1:19.6	His work spans both defense and civilian microelectronics from the stealth bomber to the digital microphone
1:27.7	Ken Gabriel may not be a name that's familiar to you, but I'm certain you'll have used some of the inventions and concepts that he's
1:34.9	most associated with. If you have a laptop, a smartphone, or have driven a car made in the last 30 years,
1:41.3	then you will have used MEMS, a technology pioneered by Ken.
	...

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