iCat, is a new invention of Philips Research of Eindhoven. The notion of robot as home companion is nothing new, but iCat adds a human dimension to the job: an expressive face.

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Inventor: Toshiba Corp
Availability: Prototype only
To Learn More: www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/ 2005_05/pr2001.htm
Robots may not invade anytime soon, but there’s no denying that they’re getting smarter. The ball-shaped ApriAlpha uses advanced voice-recognition technology to distinguish between voices coming from different locations. When Alpha hears a voice, it…

Airvision Inc., a joint venture of Warner Bros. and the Netherlands’ Philips, equips a Boeing 747 with a video system that allows passengers to watch anything of their choice on TV.

It may be enough to make the most dedicated couch potato feel right at home, even while cruising at 40,000 ft. Last week Northwest Airlines rolled out a Boeing 747 equipped with Airvision, a video system that allows passengers to watch their choice of anything from movies to cartoons on…

Annual sales of the newest high-tech wonder, the Compact Disk by Sony & Philips, which came on the U.S. market in 1983, will be the fastest-selling machine in home-electronics history.

The sound is as pure and compelling as a siren song, and consumers seem powerless to resist. They have been snapping up compact disk players, which reproduce music with near perfection, at a rate that is overwhelming both retailers and manufacturers. Annual sales of the newest high-tech wonder, which came…

European record companies, like Philips are willing to give young countrymen a push. Conductor Edo de Waart first gained recognition in America through some records issued by Philips.

American maestros preside over a vibrant orchestral scene

When the Cleveland Orchestra recently chose a new music director, it reached across the Atlantic to select Christoph von Dohnányi, a German of Hungarian descent who is head of the Hamburg State Opera. It is a familiar story. Once again a major…

40 chief executives of leading European and American business and banking firms assembled in the Brussels for a colloquy on their common concerns, among them: Philips and Shell.

THE best way to solve problems is to foresee them before they become problems.” Those words from Dr. Joachim Zahn, chairman of the executive board of West Germany’s Daimler-Benz, expressed as well as any the sense of an unusual meeting in Brussels this month. Nearly 40 chief executives of leading…

The casette, developed by Philips electrical manufacturer, has advantages over cartridges. New about cassettes is their use as a vehicle for commercially recorded music.

When the technique of tape recording was developed a quarter-century ago, it unreeled a whole new way of marketing recorded music. The best tapes had all the high fidelity of phonograph disks but none of their low resistance to wear and tear. The trouble was that they were cumbersome: wound…

To bridge the technology gap beteween the U.S. and Europe, The Netherlands has raised its scientific-research budget by 45% over the past two years.

WESTERN Europe is gripped by a growing, almost obsessive fear that it is falling victim to American economic conquest. And that conquest, so the lament goes, is spearheaded by American technology. Armed with technological prowess that European firms cannot match, giant U.S. corporations are winning control over crucial industries. Many…

After five years of glaring at their old colonial masters, the hard-pressed Indonesians are showing some willingness to do business with the Dutch. Frits Philips made an agreement.

∙ After five years of glaring at their old colonial masters, the hard-pressed Indonesians are showing some willingness to do business with the Dutch. Philips Lamp President Frits Philips, 58, whose giant corporation wrote off Indonesian factories worth $5,300,000 after President Sukarno kicked the Dutch out, is just back from…

Last week Philips presented its latest progress report on Philips’ amazing comeback. A short account on the history and current status of the electronics company from Eindhoven.

When Nazi Panzer divisions overran The Netherlands in World War II, one of the places they headed for first was the great Philips company electric works at Eindhoven. But hours before their arrival, 25 top Philips scientists and executives slipped away via British destroyers, carrying with them vital secrets that…

Two new major labels have been added to the U.S. market, one of them is Epic, controlled by Philips, releasing performences by such orchestras as Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw.

To the rich and growing roster of recording labels in the U.S., two new and distinctly major labels have been added. Their names are Angel and Epic, both feature luxurious recorded sound, and U.S. record buyers are due to hear a good deal more of them.

The Angel label reflects…

A manager of Time returned from W. Europe: “The Netherlands is certainly on its way back, a token of Dutch enterprise is the really remarkable television set I saw at Philips of Eindhoven.”

William S. Honneus, advertising manager of TIME International, returned recently from an extensive business trip to Western Europe with a dossier full of firsthand observations of the European scene. The following excerpts from his personal account may serve to add another viewpoint to the excellent reports of the trained correspondents…

The old Stirling “air” engine (power from expanding hot air) was redesigned by the big and smart Philips electrical company at Eindhoven, in The Netherlands.

The old Stirling “air” engine (originally patented by Robert and James Stirling of Scotland in 1816) was born in the wrong century. Its principle (power from expanding hot air) was good, but the crude materials and engineering methods of the time made it too clumsy and inefficient to be widely…

The news of Philips N.V. spending $20 million on the postwar expansion of its three war-working U.S. plants has set U.S. electronics industry on edge.

Quietly last week, the North American Philips Co., Inc. announced that it will spend $20 million on the postwar expansion of its three war-working U.S. plants (at Dobbs Ferry, Mt. Vernon, N.Y., and Lewiston, Me.). This was not a dazzling amount of money. Yet the news set the whole $3½-…