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	Mar/Apr 2013

There are smaller microscopes—if you include the endoscopic variety—but a miniature fluorescence microscope recently developed at Stanford University is a standout at just under an inch tall and weighing less than 2g. Though it can easily rest on your fingertip, the device grabs more attention for its technological prowess and, possibly, for looking as though actor Rick Moranis created the device by shrinking its larger cousin.

Antennas get bigger—and smaller

This just in: antennas continue to get larger and smaller.

Though the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is still home to the world’s largest antenna, at 305m in diameter, Arecibo will become the Second City of radio telescopes in 2016 when construction of the Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) in southwest China is completed.

Lightning strikes a cord

When the iPhone 5 debuted this fall, the “Lightning” connector that ships with the smartphone definitely came with a bit of shock for Apple fans. Based on bleeding-edge technology, the new connector is less than a third the size of its predecessor 30-pin connector and forces anyone with legacy accessories to purchase a bloody adapter.

Here’s an idea: powering down light bulbs

Among the accolades bestowed on Switch Lighting for its line of light-emitting diode (LED) light bulbs, one outshines all the others—the silver Edison Award earned for its Switch75 LED bulb. Though no smaller than the incandescent bulbs Thomas Edison perfected for commercial manufacture more than 130 years ago, the Switch75 consumes 80 percent less energy than an equivalent 75w incandescent bulb.

Moog goes micro

Though music synthesizers were the size of entire recording studios back in the days of vacuum tubes, and now can be played on an iPhone or iPad, it’s really the size of the sound that matters to musicians and consumers alike.

Silicon that goes pitter pat

Though implantable pacemakers now come in models as small as a half dollar, rampant talk on the Internet promises a future with devices that offer an exponential reduction in size and cost—not to mention reduced risk of infection.

To be sure, today’s pacemaker options are dwarfed by the first such device ever implanted. That Siemens-Elema pacemaker, implanted in 1958, was the size of a shoe polish tin.

‘Scary-small’ desktop computers

At 150' wide and labeled with the ENIAC acronym, the world’s first computer hit the stage in 1946 as if straight out of an old black-and-white science fiction movie. Except, as the Public Broadcasting Service aptly noted in its online “Transistorized” report, ENIAC probably “spawned those movies.”

Hitting the small time

With a volume of 16cm³, the Quantum Chip-Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC) from Symmetricom Inc., San Jose, Calif., is not only a third the size of its predecessors, it runs on just 1 percent of the power.

Tiny cameras, big impression

If you’ve ever been to an ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist to check out a sinus problem, you know there’s no such thing as a small camera—not when it’s going up your nose. Even at half the diameter of a pen, the flexible endoscope used by a physician exploring your sinus cavity can leave a huge impression on your psyche.

A hearty device

If exercising with a heart-rate monitor (HRM) is known as smart training within fitness circles, then working out with the Active 2 video game must be sheer genius because its HRM frees the user from wearing a chest strap.

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