Our modern world—smartphones, electric cars, wind turbines, the Internet of Things, AI, drones—relies upon humble transducers.
Transducers, technically speaking, are any devices that convert energy from one form to another, whether that be mechanical to electrical, electric to chemical, or chemical to EM—any form of energy into another.
In their purest form, any heat engine, be that rockets or car engines, steam engines or the rare sterling engine are transducers, converting heat to mechanical energy. The same applies to Nuclear Powerstations or the aforementioned wind turbine. But when we refer to transducers, we usually mean devices that convert a signal from one energy form to another, working at a much smaller scale rather than the machines and devices we use for generating electricity or motion.
Even with this slightly narrower definition, transducers are everywhere; you probably have several in your pocket or on your wrist. A mobile phone is an amalgamation of many transducers: speakers, microphones, the LCD screen, and multiple cameras, all transducers.
Everything that connects us to this hectic modern world is built upon these fascinating little components. From high technology on spacecraft that is pushing the edge of what we know to devices that keep us alive and monitor our health. In almost every aspect of modern life, there is a transducer doing a fundamental job.
Some types of transducers are well known—the infamous ticks of a Geiger counter are seared into our consciousness; others, such as piezoelectric crystals, are less well known, yet nearly every Ed Sheeran track is dependent on them to capture his acoustic guitar.
The hidden impact of these devices, how they work, what they do, is unknown or little appreciated by most of us. Here at Flintmore, transducers are our bread and butter; we work at the interface between physical and digital, and transducers are that bridge, fundamental to what we do.
Over the next weeks and months, we’ll be looking at some of these well-known and less well-known devices, giving you insight into the components that really do hold up our modern world.
