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Ken Gabriel on why your smartphone is smart

Ken Gabriel talks to Jim al-Khalili about inventing micro devices found in smartphones

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 β€˜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

Available now

26 minutes

Last on

Sun 14 Apr 2019 23:32GMT

Broadcasts

  • Mon 8 Apr 2019 19:32GMT
  • Tue 9 Apr 2019 04:32GMT
  • Tue 9 Apr 2019 05:32GMT
  • Tue 9 Apr 2019 06:32GMT
  • Tue 9 Apr 2019 10:32GMT
  • Tue 9 Apr 2019 13:32GMT
  • Tue 9 Apr 2019 17:32GMT
  • Sun 14 Apr 2019 23:32GMT

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