Showing 101 - 125 of 167 results
Katharine Burr Blodgett
Langmuir-Blodgett Films
Working as a research assistant to Irving Langmuir, Katharine Blodgett experimented with monolayers, organic films only a single molecule thick,…
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…
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…
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…
Valdemar Poulsen
Magnetic Wire Recorder
Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen demonstrated magnetic recording in 1898. While working at the Copenhagen Telephone Company, Poulsen began…
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…
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 (…
Herman A. Affel
Coaxial Cable
Herman Affel and Lloyd Espenschied invented coaxial cable at AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1929. The coaxial cable opened a wide spectrum…
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…
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…
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…
Eric R. Fossum
CMOS Active Pixel Image Sensor Camera-on-a-Chip
Eric Fossum invented the CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) active pixel sensor camera-on-a-chip, the miniaturized camera technology that…
Ivan E. Sutherland
Display Windowing by Clipping
In 1963, Ivan Sutherland engineered a revolution in computer graphics with his highly-interactive program Sketchpad. It enabled users to design and…
Edmund Germer
Fluorescent Lamp
Edmund Germer's development of the fluorescent lamp and the high-pressure mercury-vapor lamp increased the efficiency of lighting devices, allowing…
Philip Drinker
Respiration Apparatus
Philip Drinker invented the first iron lung, a respirator that has helped save lives, especially those afflicted with polio and other cases of…
Jack S. Kilby
Integrated Circuit
In 1959 electrical engineer Jack S. Kilby invented the monolithic integrated circuit, which is still widely used in electronic systems. Born in…
Charles Jenkins
Motion Picture Projector
Charles Jenkins was an innovator of early cinema and one of the first inventors of television, though he used mechanical rather than electronic…
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…
Dennis L. Moeller
Peripherals
Dennis Moeller and Mark Dean together created a microcomputer system with bus control means for peripheral processing devices. The bus serves as the…
James A. Parsons Jr.
Durimet 20 (Alloy 20) Stainless Steel Alloy
Metallurgist James A. Parsons Jr. invented Durimet 20, also known as Alloy 20, stainless steel alloy. Developed in the 1930s, this corrosion-…