The Bionics

The Bionics

The English word bionic , composed of the words bio and electronic , came to our language as bionic . The concept may refer to the production of artificial organs that, by electromechanical mechanisms, imitate the functioning of natural organs . Bionics also refers to the action of applying knowledge of the phenomena of biology to mechanical and electronic systems .

Engineering, design and architecture are some of the sciences and disciplines that are nourished by the solutions and knowledge of bionics. Its resources make it possible to simulate the behavior of organisms with life.

It can be said that the bionic part of the principle that living beings are comparable to machines of great complexity . They have numerous instruments of different types that allow them to react to stimuli. That is why it is possible to aspire to the creation of machines that function in a similar way to that of living organisms, and even that they have the capacity to "learn" new behaviors.

Leonardo da Vinci is usually named as a precursor of bionics, since he applied his knowledge about living beings in the design of different kinds of devices and machines. Over the years, the development of prostheses and artificial organs became common, while progress was also made in the field of artificial intelligence (which pursues the creation of systems that can solve different situations by themselves, autonomously).

Bionic engineering is known as the specialization of engineering focused on the production of technological tools that simulate the functioning or shape of living beings. Its mission is that electronic systems and biological systems can work together.

This term is part of the title of one of the most successful television series of the 70s: The bionic woman . It emerged as a series derived from The Man of Six Million Dollars (name given in Spain by The Six Million Dollar Man , which in the rest of the Spanish-speaking countries was called El Hombre Nuclear ).

The series tells the story of a professional tennis player in the prime of her career called Jaimie Sommers , played by actress Linday Wagner , who suffers a terrible parachute accident with serious consequences, such as the loss of her legs and an arm. An American government official and a doctor, Oscar Goldman and Rudy Wells, respectively, carry out an experiment in which they implant two orthopedic legs, an arm and an ear that turn her into a being with superhuman abilities.

La mujer biónica era capaz de correr a velocidades muy superiores a las de un ser humano normal, poseía una fuerza descomunal en su brazo ortopédico y podía escuchar conversaciones a grandes distancias con su nuevo oído. El desarrollo de la serie estuvo a cargo de Kenneth Johnson, un guionista que creó el personaje en el año 1975. La transmisión comenzó al año siguiente, y se extendió a lo largo de tres temporadas (las dos primeras por ABC, y la última, por NBC, dos cadenas de televisión de gran renombre).

Despite the short duration of the series and belonging to a time already very remote, there are many fans who still remember and pay tribute. For example, in the year 2000 it was called The Cryonic Woman to an episode of the second season of Futurama , an animated television series by Matt Groening , the creator of The Simpsons , which shows the life of a young pizza delivery boy that gets stuck in a cryogenic capsule by mistake and wakes up a millennium later.