Where strange things happen for even stranger reasons.
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For many years, the US government has been extracting important technology from a crashed alien spacecraft stored at a desert military base simply known as Area 51. Yes, sure they have. Here at techlib.com, we are better at keeping secrets. Which is why, until now, nobody has suspected that our intrepid team of experts has been engaged in a similar pursuit. After the discovery of Area 50, a vast warehouse of discarded alien inventions mainly used as props in alien sitcoms, three electronics experts on the techlib.com team have been reverse engineering selected items. Since most alien sitcoms make fun of the human race, these artifacts are often human-appropriate and have immediate application. Many are simply empty boxes with lights and knobs but these particular aliens are so advanced that even stage props often have full functionality, albeit often achieved with unorthodox circuitry.
The Area 50 staff is committed to the advancement of human technology by developing devices with ideas gleaned from the alien technology. The projects that result from our research might challenge the most advanced experimenter, use obsolete parts that are difficult to obtain or just seem excessively complex for the job they perform! But various tidbits from each project will be easy to adapt to other designs. In other sections of techlib.com you might encounter a one-transistor radio or a lightning detector whereas in Area 50 you are more likely to encounter a tunnel diode superregenerative military band receiver or an adaptive ELF receiver with digital filtering. We try not to violate alien patents, however; we've heard stories of violators being "abducted" and the alien lawyers' "discovery" techniques sound a bit uncomfortable.
Enrico Mathesar
Enrico is the inventor of the transistor, integrated circuit, and various special-purpose semiconductors. Unfortunately for Enrico, his isolated life in the heart of the Amazon rain forest prevented him from learning that these devices had already been invented years earlier. It was only after solving a fiendishly difficult pin-out problem between the rest of the world and his new invention, the "Enternet" that he learned that he had been seriously beaten to the patent office. Enrico has become techlib.com's "go to" guy when it comes to advancing the state-of-the-art by borrowing someone else's ideas.
Barney Garcia
Barney took an interest in electronics early in life, earning several PhDs from prestigious mail-order electronics institutes while still in high school. After the invention of the Internet, he received several honorary degrees from online colleges that would ordinarily take days or even weeks to earn. All of that "book learning" has made Barney an invaluable member of the team. Actually few books were involved but Barney has never been one to sit around reading a book when there is work to be done!
Pilar Ortega
Pilar hales from Paraguay and she joined the team shortly after a fact-finding mission to a downtown Galveston bar. After collecting her twelfth fact, Pilar found herself rendered paralyzed by an alien force field and abducted by creatures in blue space suits. Area 50 staff were quick to the rescue, securing Pilar's release with a small remuneration, believing that she were possibly an alien herself. It turned out that Pilar was simply a female. Although expert in all areas of electronics it is her feminine side (you know, microprocessors, software, etc.) that the team needed to be complete.
Note: this is a new section of techlib and content will be sparse for a while. Titles will become links or simply disappear. Who knows, we might all just disappear!
ELF Monitor with AGC and Hum Removal (Enrico)
World's Smallest Geiger Counter (Enrico)
Christmas Light Idea (Barney)
Aircraft Communications Receiver (Pilar)