Modern Practice
Much equipment which for most of the 20th century would have used electromechanical devices for control, beginning from the last third of the century have come to use less expensive and more reliable integrated microcontroller circuits containing ultimately a few million transistors and a program to carry out the same task through logic, with electromechanical components only where moving parts, such as mechanical electric actuators, are a requirement. Such chips have replaced most electromechanical devices, are used in most simple feedback control systems, and appear in huge numbers in everything from traffic lights to washing machines.
Read more about this topic: Electromechanics
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or practice:
“I tell you, sir, the only safeguard of order and discipline in the modern world is a standardized worker with interchangeable parts. That would solve the entire problem of management.”
—Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944)
“As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea’s foot and marveling at a midge’s humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)