Showing 76 - 100 of 169 results
Lonnie Johnson
Super Soaker®
Engineer and entrepreneur Lonnie Johnson is the inventor of the Super Soaker®, a bestselling toy generating well over $1 billion in sales over its…
Eric Swanson
Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT)
Eric Swanson, James Fujimoto and David Huang invented optical coherence tomography (OCT), a groundbreaking method for imaging the internal structures…
Robert Bryant
LaRC-SI (Langley Research Center-Soluble Imide)
NASA chemist Robert Bryant developed a polymer called LaRC-SI (Langley Research Center-Soluble Imide), taking it from laboratory discovery to…
James McEwen
Automatic Surgical Tourniquet
Biomedical engineer James McEwen invented the first microprocessor-controlled automatic surgical tourniquet system. Devices based on his innovations…
Andrea Goldsmith
Adaptive Beamforming for Multi-Antenna Wi-Fi
Andrea Goldsmith created technical innovations including adaptive beamforming for multi-antenna Wi-Fi. Her work has shaped the performance of…
Lynn Conway
Very Large-Scale Integration (VLSI)
Lynn Conway and NIHF Inductee Carver Mead invented VLSI, or Very Large-Scale Integration, which transformed the global microelectronics industry.…
Asad Madni
MEMS Gyroscope for Aerospace and Automotive Safety
Asad Madni led the development and commercialization of the MEMS gyroscope for aerospace and automotive safety. Commercialized as the GyroChip and…
Frederick McKinley Jones
Mobile Refrigeration
Frederick McKinley Jones invented the first successful system for mobile refrigeration. His invention eliminated the far less effective use of ice…
James E. West
Electret Microphone
James West and Gerhard Sessler invented the electret microphone, which has advanced the sound industry and become the standard microphone used in…
Katharine Burr Blodgett
Langmuir-Blodgett Films
Physicist Katharine Burr Blodgett experimented with monolayers, or organic films only a single molecule thick, initiating a new scientific discipline…
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…
Margaret Wu
Synthetic Lubricants
Industrial chemist Margaret Wu revolutionized the field of synthetic lubricants. Her work has changed how automobile and industrial lubricants are…
Albert B. Dick
Duplicating Machine
Albert Dick, who founded the A.B. Dick Company in 1883, invented the mimeograph stencil in 1884 based on an early design by Thomas Edison. Dick…
Alexander Winton
Automobile, Bicycle, and Diesel Applications
One of the most skillful and insightful automobile pioneers of his time, Alexander Winton was one of the first Americans to build automobiles for…
Martin (John) M. Atalla
MOSFET
John Atalla is one of the inventors of the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), the most widely employed type of integrated…
Vladimir Zworykin
Cathode-Ray Tube
Most people think of television as a development of the mid-20th century. But as early as 1929 Russian inventor Vladimir Zworykin was demonstrating a…
Frederick G. Cottrell
Electrostatic Precipitator
As industrial smokestacks became common at the turn of the century, Frederick Cottrell realized that pollution might be controlled and that valuable…
Harold Stephen Black
Negative Feedback Amplifier
Research engineer Harold S. Black revolutionized telecommunications by inventing systems that eliminated feedback distortion in telephone calls. Born…
Robert M. Metcalfe
Ethernet
Robert Metcalfe invented, standardized, and commercialized Ethernet. Developed as a way to link the computers at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (…
Harold McMaster
Tempered Glass
Harold McMaster achieved the centuries-old goal of producing high-quality strengthened, or tempered, glass. His invention is indispensable in modern…
Andrew J. Viterbi
CDMA Technology
Andrew Viterbi and Irwin Jacobs are co-founders of Qualcomm and also the Linkabit Corporation. At Qualcomm, they were major contributors to code…
Lubomyr Romankiw
Magnetic Thin-Film Storage Head
IBM researchers Lubomyr Romankiw and David Thompson invented magnetic thin film storage heads in the late 1970s, creating new designs for both read…
Alexander Graham Bell
Improvement in Telegraphy
Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone grew out of his research on improving the telegraph. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, he spent one…
Gerd Karl Binnig
Scanning Tunneling Microscope
Gerd Karl Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer based their scanning tunneling microscope (STM) on a principle of quantum mechanics which allows the surface of…
Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield
CT Scan
In the late 1960s, Godfrey Hounsfield began developing computer-assisted tomography, or CAT scanning, an improved form of diagnostic imaging. At…