Showing 51 - 75 of 83 results
Edmund O. Schweitzer III
Digital Protective Relay
Edmund O. Schweitzer III invented the first microprocessor-based digital protective relay, revolutionizing the performance of electric power systems…
Gordon Moore
Method for Fabricating Transistors
As a cofounder of both Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, Gordon Moore set the pace and standards for Silicon Valley's chip manufacturing methods.…
James L. Fergason
Liquid Crystal Display
James Fergason held a series of patents that form the foundation of the multi-billion dollar LCD industry which has been rapidly growing since 1971.…
Clair Lake
Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Mark I)
Already a prolific inventor at IBM in May 1939, Clair Lake was chosen to be chief engineer for the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, also…
Louis Stevens
Data Storage Machine
Louis Stevens, working with William Goddard and John Lynott and a team of engineers, invented a unique magnetic disk storage device. Their disk drive…
John Pierce
Communications Satellite
John Pierce invented the first communications satellite, enabling radio waves to bounce from one ground-based station to another. Pierce learned from…
H. Gene Slottow
Plasma Display
Gene Slottow was on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign when he worked with fellow faculty member Don Bitzer and graduate…
George Heilmeier
Electro-Optic Liquid Crystal Device
George Heilmeier discovered four new electro-optic effects in liquid crystals in the 1960s and pioneered the first liquid crystal displays (LCDs)…
Louis Marius Moyroud
Photo Composing Machine
Louis Marius Moyroud and Rene Higonnet developed the first practical phototypesetting machine. This, along with Merganthaler's Linotype machine, is…
George E. Smith
Charge-Coupled Device
Physicists George Smith and Willard Boyle invented the charge-coupled device (CCD) while working at Bell Labs in 1969. Smith, working to improve…
C. Donald Bateman
Ground Proximity Warning System
C. Donald Bateman invented the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS), one of a series of innovations he developed to dramatically improve aircraft…
William A. Goddard
Magnetic Disk Drive
William Goddard and John Lynott, together with Louis Stevens and a team of engineers, invented a unique magnetic disk storage device at the IBM Lab…
Stanford R. Ovshinsky
Nickel-Metal Hydride Battery
Stanford Ovshinsky was a prolific, self-taught inventor and physicist whose pioneering work in multiple fields had an impact on many aspects of…
Dawon Kahng
MOSFET
Dawon Kahng was an inventor of the first practical field-effect transistor, a device that controls electronic signals by switching them on or off or…
Steven Van Slyke
Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED)
Steven Van Slyke and Ching Wan Tang pioneered the organic light emitting diode, or OLED, an advance in flat-screen displays found in computers, cell…
Jacob Rabinow
Optical Character Reading
Jacob Rabinow invented machines that could recognize text, making it possible to automate vast amounts of routine work formerly done by hand.
A…
Otis Boykin
Electronic Resistors
Otis Boykin's work on improved electrical resistors made possible the steady workings of a wide variety of electrical devices. Variations of his…
Ross Freeman
Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)
Ross Freeman invented the field programmable gate array (FPGA), a computer chip full of "open gates" that engineers can reprogram as much as needed…
Donald L. Bitzer
Plasma Display
In the mid-1960s, Don Bitzer, Gene Slottow, and graduate student Robert Willson worked together to create the first plasma display.
Bitzer was a…
Robert H. Willson
Plasma Display
While a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Robert Willson and faculty members Don Bitzer and Gene Slottow suggested…
Harold Stephen Black
Negative Feedback Amplifier
Research engineer Harold S. Black revolutionized telecommunications by inventing systems that eliminated feedback distortion in telephone calls. Born…
Willis Whitfield
Clean Room
Willis Whitfield invented the clean room in 1962 at Sandia National Laboratories. To solve problems of dust particles causing reliability and quality…
James McEwen
Automatic Surgical Tourniquet
Canadian biomedical engineer James McEwen invented the first microprocessor-controlled automatic surgical tourniquet system. Devices based on his…
Frank Wanlass
Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS)
Frank Wanlass invented the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS), the technology employed in most modern microchips.
Wanlass joined…
John T. Parsons
Numerical Control
John Parsons changed the control of machines and industrial processes from an imprecise craft to an exact science, spawning a second industrial…