For example, the keyboard was positioned towards the back of the bottom half of the laptop, providing room at the front for palm rests and a trackball. Up until that point most laptops had the keyboard positioned at the front, with the space at the back for function key reference cards and instructions.The included trackpad was also noteworthy, as it provided a convenient way of controlling a pointing device. With operating systems moving away from text-only command line interfaces to graphical user interfaces, these pointing devices would become pivotal.The Apple PowerBook series was immensely popular, and over the years the PowerBook line brought in more innovative features that we now take for granted in laptops. In 1994, the PowerBook 500 series was the first laptop to include a true touchpad, and the first to include a built-in Ethernet network adapter.In 1992 IBM released its first ThinkPad laptops, the 700, 700c and 700t, and these, along with the Apple PowerBook 100 series, can be considered some of the first modern laptops, helping to shape the laptop landscape for the next 25 years.
The ThinkPad came with a red TrackPoint in the middle of the keyboard, which was used to control the pointer, and the iconic feature is still found in modern ThinkPads.The ThinkPad 700 also really showcased what a laptop device could be capable of. It had a full-color 10.4-inch display, which was larger than any laptop screen that had come before, a 120MB hard drive and a powerful IBM 486 SLC processor.The design of the ThinkPad was both stylish and functional, and it won a host of design awards. IBM was keen to highlight how well built the ThinkPad was in a series of promotional events, with, for example, the laptops being used by archaeologists in Egypt. The ThinkPad 750c was taken into space by NASA, proving just how capable these modern laptops were.
With innovative features and design choices used to overcome the technological issues of the time, these early laptops paved the way for the modern machines we now use daily, and it's these early pioneers we have to thank for making laptops the brilliantly versatile devices we have in our homes, schools and workplaces.Global Prismatic Lithium Battery Market research report presents a Detailed segmentation of the market by end user and by geography (North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India). with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2013 to 2018, and forecast to 2025.The global Prismatic Lithium Battery market is expected to reach an estimated $14.5 billion by 2025 and it is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 3.2% from 2018 to 2025
Batteries are our lifeblood. Lithium-ion power cells, first commercialized by Sony in 1991, enable nearly every 21st century convenience: Phones, laptops, wireless headphones, cordless power tools -- even electric vehicles.But like the other great conveniences of our modern age -- automobiles and air travel -- on the rare occasions lithium batteries go wrong, they can go catastrophically wrong. Just ask the family of Nazrin Hassan, the Malaysian tech incubator CEO who died after one of his phones burst into flame. Consider Tallmadge D'Elia, who expired when his exploding vape pen sent fragments into his skull. Or think of the hoverboard owners who watched their houses burn down.You're far more likely to be struck by lightning (1 in 1,042,000) than ever see a battery flame up (1 in 10 million is the number experts tend to quote). But the fact remains: Like your car's gasoline engine, lithium-ion batteries require flammable liquids to generate their power in a controlled chemical reaction.
If that reaction gets out of control because the battery's structural integrity is breached -- or if there's a widespread manufacturing defect like one that afflicted 2016's Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 -- all bets are off. That's why, even as we surround ourselves with more lithium-ion-powered devices, we don't fully trust them yet.But what if that fraction of a doubt could be removed? What if the safety profile of lithium-ion batteries could be made to be so reliable that even a catastrophic structural failure -- up to and including being pierced by a bullet -- wouldn't cause them to explode?That's exactly the promise of SafeCore, by a company called Amionx. The tiny California firm claims it's created a lithium-ion battery that won't catch fire even if crushed, shot or otherwise breached.
CNET flew to Amionx's Carlsbad facilities earlier this year, where we submitted SafeCore batteries -- and some normal lithium-ion competitors -- to a full range of torture tests. You'll want to watch our video below. According to Amionx, the company's breakthrough isn't just a battery that doesn't easily combust. It's that the company's scientists discovered a formula they claim could easily be applied to existing battery manufacturing lines -- no new machines required -- to bring this breakthrough to any lithium-ion battery in the world.A palm-tree laden Carlsbad business park just past Legoland California may not be where you'd think to find the next leap in battery safety. But walk through a special door past the normal business trappings -- the vacant receptionist's desk, the cubicles and conference rooms -- and you step onto a miniature factory floor with its own lithium-ion battery assembly line.
The company says these machines can produce a million lithium-ion battery cells per year, and they're not just here for show: American Lithium Energy, the parent company of Amionx with which it shares the building, supplies batteries to the US military for use in heavy-duty trucks and lightly armored vehicles like the MRAP, among other projects. (Public records show the company has received $2.77 million in R&D grants from the Army to date.)Today, the humming machines are being used to show what Amionx's secret sauce can do. One spoonful at a time, a technician drizzles the black goop onto a thin sheet of metal winding through the machine from reel to giant reel. This particular apparatus is an electrode laminator, which coats the battery's all-important positive and negative terminals in an array of chemicals before they get sliced into smaller pieces and stacked (or wound) into a complete battery cell.What we're seeing seems to be a typical, ordinary battery making process, goop and all -- but Amionx's compound is a special formula that took four years to create.
When a battery heats up, threatening to catch fire, Amionx's special material acts like an electrical fuse, creating a physical gap between two key components of the battery. That gap means electricity is forced to take a far more difficult path through the cell, which dramatically slows down the reaction to the point a battery doesn't get hot enough to catch fire or explode.It's not like there aren't other ways to protect a battery. Amionx founder and CTO Dr. Jiang Fan admits that today's lithium-ion batteries have a variety of other mechanisms that can prevent fires, including current interrupters, shutdown separators and PTC (positive temperature coefficient) devices, but he says all of them can fail -- a battery can heat up so fast that some safety mechanisms may literally melt before they can take action.
"That's why sometimes even though they have the shutdown separator for 20 years, they still have these thermal incidents," says Fan -- adding that his SafeCore kicks in right away.To test out Amionx's safety promise, we open another door at the back of the factory floor, and walk outside into a fenced area of the building's parking lot -- where industrial-strength battery crushing and puncturing test chambers are waiting to let the smoke out of these cells. One machine is designed to drop a huge, heavy weight onto a metal bar laid flat across the top of the battery, completely crushing a large portion of a battery in an instant, while the other slowly punctures it with a giant nail.