Showing 51 - 75 of 169 results
Irving Langmuir
Incandescent Electric Lamp
Irving Langmuir's work led to two major inventions: the high-vacuum electron tube and the gas-filled incandescent lamp. Born in Brooklyn, New York,…
Samuel F. B. Morse
Telegraph
Samuel F.B. Morse, once a portrait painter, turned to inventing to make his fortune. Morse had little training in electricity but realized that…
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…
Nikola Tesla
Electro-Magnetic Motor
Nikola Tesla invented the induction motor with rotating magnetic field that made unit drives for machines feasible and made AC power transmission an…
Kenneth C. Jordan
Radioisotopic Thermoelectric Generator (RTG)
Ken Jordan worked as a nuclear physicist at Monsanto's Mound Laboratory for 36 years, and in 1954, he and colleague John Birden invented the…
Willem Einthoven
Electrocardiograph
Willem Einthoven designed the first instrument that accurately recorded the electrical activity of the heart and produced the first reliable…
Charles G. Page
High-Voltage Induction Coil
Charles Grafton Page invented the first high-voltage induction coil in 1836. The high-voltage induction coil became an important tool of scientific…
Robert H. Dennard
Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM)
Robert Heath Dennard invented one-transistor Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), which significantly increased computer memory density while…
Thomas A. Watson
Improvements to the Telephone
Thomas Watson is best known for working as Alexander Graham Bell's assistant during the development of the telephone. It was Watson who heard the…
Charles Sumner Tainter
Sound-Recording Instruments
Charles Tainter invented various sound-recording instruments, including an improved version of Thomas Edison's phonograph known as the graphophone,…
Ernst F. W. Alexanderson
High-Frequency Alternator
Ernst Alexanderson was the General Electric Company engineer whose high-frequency alternator gave America its start in the field of radio…
Edwin Howard Armstrong
FM Radio
The inventions of engineer Edwin Howard Armstrong were so important that to this day every radio or television set makes use of one or more of his…
Ashok Gadgil
Water Disinfecting Device
Physicist Ashok Gadgil has helped over 100 million people across four continents by making efficient electric lighting affordable, water safe to…
Charles Proteus Steinmetz
Alternating Current
Without Charles Steinmetz's theories of alternating current, the expansion of the electric power industry in the United States in the early 20th…
J. Presper Eckert
ENIAC
J. Presper Eckert was co-inventor of ENIAC, introduced to the public at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946. ENIAC was considered a computer…
Theodore Harold Maiman
Laser
Physicist Theodore Harold Maiman invented the first operable laser. Born in Los Angeles, California, Maiman in his teens earned college money by…
Nick Holonyak, Jr.
LED
Nick Holonyak invented the first visible light-emitting diodes (LEDs), today commonly found in applications ranging from traffic lights to consumer…
Alonzo G. Decker
Portable Hand-Held Electric Drill
Virtually all of today’s electric drills descend from the original portable hand-held drill patented in 1917 by S. Duncan Black and Alonzo Decker,…
Louis W. Parker
Television Receiver
Louis W. Parker invented the intercarrier sound system for television sets, the modern basis for coordinating sound and picture. Born in Budapest,…
George de Mestral
VELCRO® Fasteners
In 1955, George de Mestral patented VELCRO® hook and loop fasteners, an efficient way to fasten fabrics and other materials. The idea came to him…
John Macdougall
Ion Implantation
John Macdougall is one of the inventors of the first commercially viable method of ion implantation, a process that changes the conductivity of areas…
David Huang
Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT)
David Huang, James Fujimoto and Eric Swanson invented a revolutionary method for imaging the internal structures of body tissue with unprecedented…
Carl Auer von Welsbach
Incandescent Device
Carl Auer von Welsbach, an Austrian scientist and inventor, had a talent for discovering techniques for purifying rare earth elements and using these…
Claude Shannon
Pulse Code Modulation
Claude Shannon produced one of the great conceptual breakthroughs of his generation with the publication of his seminal work, "A Mathematical Theory…
Lanny Smoot
Theatrical Technologies and Special Effects
At The Walt Disney Company, Lanny Smoot, with over 100 lifetime patents, has developed interactive attractions, special effects, new concepts for…