Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone here. Bill Gates studied here (before dropping out). The sewing machine, vulcanized rubber, the Polaroid camera, the microwave oven, artificial limbs, synthetic penicillin, the first computers, Arpanet, e-mail, inertial guidance systems—all are products of Boston ingenuity. Not so surprising when you consider that the city boasts more than 60 colleges and universities.

In San Jose, the unofficial capital of Silicon Valley, technology companies employ more than 300,000 people—practically a third of the populace. The city generates 30 percent more patents than its closest competitor (Boise, Idaho, home to Micron) and receives more than a third of the nation’s venture capital: $5 billion. Headquartered in Silicon Valley are Google, eBay and Cisco Systems; the world’s leading biotech company, Genentech, is up the road.

In Seattle, it seems, citizens have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of connectivity. The most wired (and wireless) city in the nation, Seattle has 57 Wi-Fi hotspots per 100,000 people; the national average is more like 18. A full 83 percent of Seattle homes have at least one computer, and almost all those homes are online, surpassing the national average by 21 percent.

Click here for the alphabetized list with overall rank and 6 subcategories

To determine which U.S. cities can claim the designation “high-tech,” we chose 36 technology indicators—our raw data—based on expert and staff opinion. Items such as “robotic surgery,” “number of Wi-Fi hotspots” and “R&D budgets at local universities” all qualified.

THE SUPERMARKET

Charlotte, NC
At Food Lion’s new pilot store, Bloom, shoppers get an RFID scanner along with their cart and total up their groceries on the go. Changed your mind about the frozen pizza? Just press “delete” and your tally will automatically adjust. Can’t find your favorite marinade? Stop at one of Bloom’s eight information stations and get a map pinpointing your item’s location. Paying at the self-service checkout takes about 60 seconds.

THE PLANETARIUM

At the height of World War I, nature unleashed the most effective bioweapon ever known. The 1918 influenza pandemic killed more than 20 million people. Then it disappeared, leaving behind corpses and lingering anxieties. Why was this particular flu so severe? Would it recur? Could we stop it if it did?

Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever | Nairovirus
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever most often infects goats and sheep, but people can contract the virus from ticks or the bodily fluids of infected animals. The fever is marked by the quick onset of gruesome symptoms, beginning with nausea and headache, and followed by bleeding within internal organs and underneath the skin as the virus attacks the body’s tissues.

Before entering his lab, Ramon Flick puts on a 10-pound plastic space suit with a bubble helmet, a double pair of rubber gloves sealed to the suit at the wrists, and boots. The 35-year-old director of the Biosafety Level 4 lab at the University of Texas Medical Branch
at Galveston walks past a chemical
shower and into the lab space, a 2,000-square-foot sterilized white room. An airtight door slams shut behind him.

Viruses and bacteria in the form of biological weapons and natural disasters have infected the storylines of science-fiction movies, books and best-selling documentaries. The country’s recent focus on anti-terrorism has brought more attention to the subject, but scientists and authors have been warning against bio-disasters for several decades.

As a kid growing up several hundred miles from the nearest metropolis, I used to draw fantastical visions of the great cities of the future. There would be moving sidewalks on every surface. (“Walking” was over.) Hover-taxis, hover-skateboards, hover-buses. (Hovering was a central element of my urban planning.) Also, sleek monorails conducted by robots, zipping noiselessly between glittering towers that vanished into cloudbanks and reappeared above them, miles in the sky.