State-of-the-art

转自：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_the_art

The state of the art is the highest level of development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field achieved at a particular time. It also refers to the level of development (as of a device, procedure, process, technique, or science) reached at any particular time as a result of the latest methodologies employed.

Origin

The earliest use of the term "state of the art" documented by the Oxford English Dictionary dates back to 1910 from an engineering manual by Henry Harrison Suplee (1856-post 1943), an engineering graduate (University Of Pennsylvania, 1876), entitled Gas Turbine: progress in the design and construction of turbines operated by gases of combustion. The relevant passage reads: "In the present state of the art this is all that can be done."