A look at the more than seven decades of Scientific and Technical Awards shows that today’s tech marvels become tomorrow’s status quo. Here are a few of the most significant past winners.

Technology: Camera Stabilization

Nominee: David Grober | Perfect Horizon

Credits: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Step into Liquid, Blue Crush, Die Another Day



For the 2003 surf documentary Step into Liquid,

Technology: Compositing Software

Nominee: David Simons | Adobe After Effects

If you’re going to have a heart attack, you don’t want to do it while surfing
off a remote beach with no road access. “My chances of survival were 1,000 to 1,” says Steven Ludwig. So how was it that by dinnertime that day last August, Ludwig, 53, was watching an account of his own rescue on the six o’clock news? The answer: Ludwig was in San Diego, whose medical-tech innovations include making defibrillators as
common as fire extinguishers; a nearby rescue boat had just been equipped with one.

movie tech, cameras, april 1926

It was the fastest flight in history. On November 16, 2004, NASA's X43-A scramjet hit a maximum speed of Mach 9.8 in an experimental flight off the coast of California. The previous record, set just six months earlier by another NASA scramjet, stood at Mach 7. The scramjet engines could someday be used on passenger planes, potentially cutting a flight to the other side of the globe down to just a couple hours. To see a video of the record-breaking event, click on the link to the left.

If you were to toast the most dazzling gadget in your home, you might compose an ode to your plasma TV, recite a limerick about your computer-controlled telescope, or maybe sing the praises of your video conferencing, nose-hair-trimming espresso maker. But the invention most deserving of your adoration, the contraption that will one day

Slideshow:
� HP iPaq hx2700� IBM ThinkPad T42� Lexar JumpDrive TouchGuard� LG LP3800

The Cosmos 1 solar sail experiment was lost on Tuesday when the Russian Volna rocket carrying it to orbit failed, according to the Russian Space Agency. Had the launch been successful, the experiment would have tested whether sunlight could have pushed the spacecraft into a higher orbit. Explore the mission that was to be with our exclusive slideshow, pulled from the pages of Popular Science.

On June 21, the California-based nonprofit Planetary Society will attempt for the fourth time to launch its privately funded Cosmos 1 solar sail.

For many of the nation’s five million people suffering from congestive heart failure, treatment options are grim. When weak heart muscles stop pumping blood efficiently, many patients require cumbersome cardiac-assist devices driven by heavy external battery packs. Some even plug into an outlet, ruling out treks beyond the hospital.