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Motion sensors allow users to control the screen of a device without having to touch it.

It’s the latest in mobile technology, inspired by an invention nearly a hundred years ago.

At this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona,  chipmaker STMicroelectronics is showcasing screen technology that works by just hovering your hand a few inches away from the surface. Thanks to motion sensors, users don’t have to touch a screen to flip through an e-book or surf the Web. No more finger smudges.

Little do tech addicts know that a similar hovering gesture was invented about a century ago in Russia. In fact, that is what inspired STMicro’s device, said Benedetto Vigna, the Geneva-based company’s head of MEMS and sensor products.

“There was a nice instrument invented in 1919 by a Russian guy called Theremin,” Vigna said in an interview. “You could play music with your hands by hovering above it, without even touching the device. That’s how we came up with the idea.”

Leon Theremin, also known as Lev Termen, invented what he called the termenvox, an electronic musical instrument built around two antennas. Also known as a theremin, the device has been used to create those eerie sounds found in old sci-fi movies.

STMicro’s hover screen technology will be used later this year in a multimedia tablet, said Vigna, who declined to say which manufacturer will make the device. The company’s clients include Samsung, Apple, Nokia and Blackberry.

Those who can’t wait for the hover-screen devices can try their hand now on the theremin.

Original post is How an Old Russian Invention Inspired STMicro’s Hover Screen by Tech Blog.

Photograph by John B. Carnett/Bonnier Corporation via Getty Images

A series of tubes at Terremark’s Miami headquarters, where undersea Internet cables emerge from the Atlantic and connect to the rest of the country.

It’s time for investors to hit the history books. A 150 year-old business with more than 300,000 miles of cable laid at the bottom of the ocean may be about to change hands, as Alcatel-Lucent’s undersea telecommunications cable business attracts interest from potential buyers.

The unit, Alcatel’s last production site in France, has been manufacturing cables north of Paris and loading them on so-called cable layer ships for more than a century. In fact, the Franco-American company’s lineage has been involved in submarine cables since the first such link was established across the Atlantic back in the 1800s.

In August 1858, a signal –a message just under 100 words long– was emitted using the first undersea telegraph link, which went from Ireland to Newfoundland, Canada using 17,000 miles of cable to cover a 2000-mile distance. The message arrived… 16 hours later! The 1 bit-per-second capacity copper cable, a technological feat for its time, thus allowed Queen Victoria and U.S. President James Buchanan to communicate.

That piece of history still lies in deep-sea waters at the bottom of the ocean, next to newer generations of fiber-optics cables which can carry data at 3.8 terabits-per-second — 3.8 trillion times the original speed.

Original post is Deep-Sea History for Alcatel-Lucent’s Submarine Cable Unit by Tech Blog.