Weigh in on the greatest hits in electronics

5/9/2012 5:37 PM EDT

This project is designed to celebrate our readers, our industry and our engineering community. Share your stories with us!

5/9/2012 7:18 PM EDT

Bob Widlar. Grey & Meyer.

5/9/2012 7:35 PM EDT

The 8080 microprocessor.

5/9/2012 8:00 PM EDT

- Akio Morita (Sony)
- Stephen Wolfram (Wolfram Research, Mathematica)
- Linus Torvalds (Linux)
- Marc Andreesen (Mosaic, Netscape, other software ventures)
- Andy Bechtolsheim (Sun, Google)
- I also would like to suggest a symbol for a company: The VLSI Technology Unsung Hero(first fully integrated EDA tool suite, ASIC model, library developer including compilers and standard cells, fab, ASSP innovator and leader in chip sets for PC, cell phones, co-founder ARM and a few other firsts including incubating many technology leaders in the semiconductor industry). Many heroes there so Douglas Fairbairn can represent them. Disclosure: I worked there :-)

5/9/2012 8:15 PM EDT

Junko,

Here's a name that I think deserves consideraton:

Mark Bluhm

He spearheaded the R&D effort at Cyrix that resulted in an X86 processor (around 1995/1996) that actually outperformed the equivalent Intel product(s).

Even though I'm not an engineer, I thought it was quite an engineering accomplishment. Don't hold me to this, but I think the entire Cyrix design team was 15 folks or so.

Great example of a tiny upstart disrupting before it became fashionable.

I have no idea what happened to Mark Bluhm. Steve Tobak who knows how to articulate a compelling narrative and was a VP at Cyrix at this time might be a good resource to tap.

5/9/2012 8:17 PM EDT

I think you're looking for individual names, rather than inventions and discoveries, which makes the job a little harder. Some innovations cannot e attributed to one person, yet they are very major milestones.

Robert Metcalfe can't be overlooked. He invented a practical protocol for a packet-switched asynchronous network - Ethernet.

Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf. Also Jon Postel and Steve Crocker. The fathers of the Internet.

Harry Nyquist, Ralph Hartley, and Claude Shannon for describing the theoretical limits of digital communications channels. In precise terms. It's what permits digital communications channels to be designed, rather than guesstimated using trial and error.

And perhaps Martin Cooper of Motorola and Joel Engel of Bell Labs, for creating practical cellular telephony (1973). Although theoretical work had been going on as far back as 1947, at Bell Labs.

5/9/2012 8:58 PM EDT

LASER and optical communication - Corning industry.

5/9/2012 10:16 PM EDT

I nominate

Dr. Dan Maydan,

Pioneer in transforming Semi Equipment Industry, from just a hardware tool to a leading-edge technology equipment.

Mali

5/9/2012 10:22 PM EDT

Pong--the seminal mass-market video game.

5/9/2012 10:46 PM EDT

Few of you have any sense of being Electrical Engineers, including mathematicians, physicists, business, and computer science people in your lists. What? You can't come up with EE's?

5/10/2012 10:39 AM EDT

PCI transformed the PC industry, and every other market for computing, from HPC to the simplest Embedded Electronics. Intel, IBM, Digital Equipment, NCR, Adaptec, ATI Technologies, Compaq , HP , Microsoft..(I was there, have complete list somewhere)
The original PCI architecture Intel team included, among others, Dave Carson, Norm Rasmussen, Brad Hosler, Ed Solari, Bruce Young, Gary Solomon, Ali Oztaskin, Tom Sakoda, Rich Haslam, Jeff Rabe, and Steve Fischer.

5/10/2012 12:42 PM EDT

Dr. Fujio Masuoka of Toshiba for inventing "flash memories," without which none of the the hand-held computing revolution and digital video was possible....imagine a world without flash memories - a world with iPad/iPhone/insert your favorite camera here with hard drives

5/10/2012 1:59 PM EDT

In the "unsung hero" category, I'd add Mineo Yamatake. He is an excellent engineer who worked closely with the likes of Bob Widlar and Bob Dobkin. Although Widlar and Dobkin become well known names in the industry, Mineo Yamatake was the quiet support behind these guys. He generated many great products for National Semiconductor, back when there was a National Semiconductor.

5/10/2012 3:41 PM EDT

Yunko said: "Here, we are looking for a gem. Perhaps, a story behind stories. Or someone -- who may not have received a lot of press -- played an important role in a bigger team."

Oh, well in that case, you need look no further than Frank Eory. Back in 2000, he led the ATSC's Task Force on RF System Performance, to "examine the state of the art in 8-VSB transmission and reception equipment, and to make recommendations to the RF Task Force ..." to achieve more robust performance from ATSC digital receivers than what was originally the goal of the standard. Performance that real consumers of terrestrial DTV had come to expect, by the time the system was being deployed, specifically with respect to reception using simple indoor antennas.

Their findings were published in an ATSC report titled "Performance Assessment of the ATSC Transmission System, Equipment and Future Directions," July 10, 2000, which led to the the fourth generation (and beyond) DTV receivers, starting with the Linx receiver, non-integrated prototype demoed in 2002. As far as I'm concerned, "saving the day" for the ATSC standard.

5/10/2012 4:21 PM EDT

Nolan Bushnell, co-founder of Atari, co-creator of Pong and giant robotic mice.

5/10/2012 4:26 PM EDT

How about the hot electron effect in MOSFETs discovered by L. A. Kasprzak in 1972 on 2 micron channel length devices.

5/10/2012 4:26 PM EDT

I think its close to 40 years, but how about the HP calculators? These were so far ahead of everything at the time. I'm sure many of us still have more than a few, just for the RPN entry.

5/10/2012 4:35 PM EDT

Hans R. Camenzind,

Best known for inventing the 555 timer IC circa 1970 and selling the design to Signetics (pre Philips acquisition) to fund his fledgling start-up, InterDesign. The 555 is the most ubiquitous IC ever created .

5/10/2012 4:44 PM EDT

The 741 Op Amp should be mentioned somewhere, but I don't know who developed it.

5/10/2012 4:50 PM EDT

The microprocessor was huge, but the first one (the 4004) slightly predates the time frame of this list as it was released in 1971. The Internet is also off the list because the first operation of its predecessor, the ARPANET, was in 1969.

Skype is a curious choice for this list because it's a software technology, not EE. If we're going to look at software, I'd rank both the original Napster (for its disruption of the music industry) and BitTorrent (as the first hugely deployed peer-to-peer technology) as more disruptive than Skype.

5/10/2012 4:53 PM EDT

I nominate Sam Lybarger (1909-2000), the Father of the Electronic Hearing Aid. Even while he was in his 80's, he counseled me at the PHAA meetings in the early 1990's on electroacoustics and hearing aid prescriptive methods (he devised the first one all the way back in 1942, that is surprisingly close to the newest formulas!), the bone conduction (inertial) transducer, the telephone coil (all the way back in 1947).

From his obituary in The Hearing Review:
http://www.hearingreview.com/issues/articles/2000-12_11.asp

"Among engineers and industry leaders, Lybarger was known as one of the primary individuals responsible for the establishment of modern electroacoustical standards for hearing aids. He was a member of the technical committee that drafted “A Tentative Code for Measurement of Performance for Hearing Aids” in 1940 (published in JASA) and was the chair of the 1953 American Standards Assn. “Z24.14 Method for Measurement of Characteristics of Hearing Aids”—the forerunner of all the ANSI standards that followed. Lybarger chaired the ANSI Standards Hearing Aid Committee for more than three decades, from its inception to 1983. His involvement also included developing ANSI standards for bone conduction aids, as well as international (IEC) standards."

5/10/2012 5:20 PM EDT

I also nominate Mead Killion, PhD, of Etymotic Research in Elk Grove Village, IL. Over his 40+ year career, first at Knowles and then on at Etymotic, which he founded in 1983, his innovations have helped more people hear better than anyone else on the planet still alive.

Just a few of them are:

• The KEMAR (Knowles Electroacoustic Mannequin for Audiological Research) all the way back in 1972 but used by more and more businesses and researchers every year
http://www.Kemar.US
http://www.gras.dk

• The K-AMP® hearing aid circuit, developed under contract to the VA and released in 1988, was the first wide dynamic range compression (WDRC) hearing aid circuit utilizing the principles set out by Edgar Villchur
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/business/edgar-m-villchur-hi-fi-innovator-dies-at-94.html

• The sensitive microphones and measurement techniques necessary to measure otoacoustic emissions from the cochlea: These are the very faint sounds from the microscopic-sized outer hair cells vibrating in endolymph (yes, THAT faint). Because of this, thousands of newborns are screened every day around the world for hearing loss before they are even sent home, detecting deafness and and triggering audiologic intervention, including hearing aids & cochlear implants;

• Advanced audiologic speech-in-noise test protocols and materials which audiologists can use to weed out all sorts of hearing and neurologic problems for peds, adults and the elderly;

• Advanced hearing protection for musicians, and active hearing protection for soldiers, hunters, law enforcement, and others.

Dan Schwartz
Editor, The Hearing Blog
http://www.TheHearingBlog.com

5/10/2012 5:38 PM EDT

Jean Hoerni - inventor of the planar process at Fairchild. Has served semiconductors for many decades and still in use.

5/10/2012 6:13 PM EDT

There's one name I haven't seen mentioned here yet, but I bet all you 50+ EE's have at one time or other read his articles, built his projects, or perhaps even been inspired by this guy; Don Lancaster.

5/10/2012 6:32 PM EDT

These are all great responses and suggestions. As Junko mentioned earlier we are looking for gems that have not been unearthed yet. For instance all know that GPS was an inflection point for the way we live play and communicat today. So who is the unsung hero who either at its birth or since then and practicing today, or the genius who is working away in some research lab who will take GPS to the next level--pinpoint a position of a specific person inside a specific house or car? Orwellian, maybe. Possible, probably. So geek, who are you and what can you share?

5/10/2012 7:25 PM EDT

Via Facebook, Aaron Schuelke, the Polka King of the Fox River Valley in Wisconsin, nominates Internet Radio:

http://www.wrjqradio.com/about.html

5/10/2012 11:10 PM EDT

This is just in via e-mail from Rob Walker, one of the co-founders of LSI Logic:

Fairchild ASIC of the 60’s and 70’s. Invented the gate array, standard cell, VLSI testers (Sentry series) and integrated CAD system. See interviews of me, Jim Koford, Jim Downey and Harold Vitale in Stanford’s Silicon Genesis oral histories.

5/11/2012 2:27 AM EDT

I would nominate Mr. Sam Pitroda, an Indian engineer settled in US, as a pioneer of many a technologies in the field of telecommunications. He is also supposed to have pioneered the concept of hand held computing when he invented the first electronic diary sometime in 1975.

5/11/2012 11:55 AM EDT

Terry Scheffer was one of the key inventors of STN (super twisted nematic) LCD technology in the early 80's. The STN LCD made computer resolution LCD displays possible and practical for the first time. Prior to that invention, large LCD displays were thought to be impossible.

5/11/2012 3:01 PM EDT

As far as companies go, how about Philips and Sony? These two have a long and consistent record of innovations in consumer electronics. Their joint development of the Compact Disc is a marvel of engineering integrating such leading-edge technologies as lasers, optics, servo systems, materials science, manufacturing technologies, precision DACs, LSI and VLSI into an affordable consumer product. From the CD sprang both DVD and Blue-Ray technologies. Many innovations in CD audio begat the current MP3.

5/11/2012 3:13 PM EDT

Here are some of my nominations...


Engineers:
Tim Berners-Lee, HTML
Don Lancaster (I completely agree with the previous post.)


Technologies:
Inkjet printers
Linux
Optical Storage - CD/DVD
Capacitive Touch Screens (theory predates 1972, but implementation doesn't)
IEEE 802.11 Wireless standard
FPGA

Disruptions:
LCD Screen Technology
Surface Mount Technology

5/11/2012 3:19 PM EDT

William Shockley. Although John Bardeen and Walter Brattain (all three at Bell Labs) created the transistor, Shockley deserves credit for starting the first company--Shockley Transistor Laboratory--to try to commercialize it in what we now know as Silicon Valley.

I would also add Bob Noyce, who along with Gordon Moore, founded Intel.

5/11/2012 3:20 PM EDT

I nominate Stan Ovshinsky (NiMH Battery, re-writable CD, Phase Change Memory, thin film photovoltaic technology).

5/11/2012 4:16 PM EDT

Don’t forget the father of the electronic digital computer J.V. Atanasoff and his grad student Clifford Berry. This story includes the wholesale theft of the IP, large scale corporate blackmail by a third party and ultimately, Berry’s murder. This invention drove the development of the transistor and everything that came after.

5/11/2012 4:40 PM EDT

I nominate Chuck House, the father of the Logic Analyzer. This invention made possible today's high speed digital computers.

5/11/2012 5:38 PM EDT

What about Adam Osborne and Lee Felsenstein?
Before he founded Osborne computer, Adam Osborne published a series of books on microprocessors and their support chips.
Lee Felsenstein was the principal designer of the Osborne 1. His real interest was in using computers to allow people to connect to each other. I remember thinking back then that it was a very ambitious undertaking...

5/11/2012 5:42 PM EDT

I second Stan Ovshinsky and add Larry J. Hornbeck a MEMS pioneer who invented and developed Digital Micromirror Devices.

5/11/2012 5:51 PM EDT

Fred Terman. One time dean of engineering at Stanford. Advisor to Hewlett and Packard. Textbook author. One of the main reasons Stanford was at the center of so many engineering accomplishments at the birth of silicon valley.

5/12/2012 4:01 PM EDT

1. Clive Sinclair, father of the ZX80, ZX81 and ZX spectrum home computers - the first really affordable computers for the home - and a lot of other things too. My first scientific calculator. in 1977, was a Sinclair scientific.

2. Bernard Babani - founder of the publishing house that brought books on electronics to hobbyists, and helped a lot of young people - self included - get into eletrical engineering as a career.

5/13/2012 9:56 AM EDT

Mead and Conway. Authors of the foundational textbook behind VLSI.

5/13/2012 5:46 PM EDT

Cell phones, iPads, and GPS navigation seem to currently have more of a wow factor, but there are technologies that are so ubiquitous and integrated into society that they are almost overlooked. For example, barcode scanners, auto-pay gasoline pumps, and anti-lock brakes have all come into widespread use in the last 40 years, even if some of the prerequisite inventions came a bit earlier. Yet we have all but forgotten just how different checking out at a grocery was in 1972.

Nevertheless, the Internet is almost certainly the technology that historians will see as having the most profound effect. I truly believe it will be ranked close to the invention of writing in importance. Before about 5,000 years ago, information was exchanged by word of mouth. The invention of writing allowed society to accumulate information and pass it much more accurately, though to only a few poeple in each generation. The printing press made information available to far greater numbers of people. The Internet, in addition to making information available to most of the global population, is making searching for and accumulating information orders of magnitude faster.

5/14/2012 1:53 AM EDT

Scott Adams - Many more engineers would be in jail for killing managers/marketers/accountants with a blunt spoon if it weren't for Dilbert. And I'm not even sure life would be worth living without Wally.

5/14/2012 10:00 AM EDT

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard.

5/15/2012 10:33 AM EDT

Please don't forget the colmnist George Rotsky, who often reminded engineering teams of the big picture and common sense approach!

5/15/2012 6:50 PM EDT

Quantum computing has the potential to be a major "disruption".
Ditto other exotics, like metamaterials, quantum encryption, biolabs on a chip...

5/17/2012 1:45 PM EDT

In keeping with the "Greatest Hits" theme of this survey (borrowed from the music industry), I'd like to add to the list a few names that come to my mind that were key (pun intended) to advancing the technology of the music industry:

Ray Kurzweil
Craig Anderton
Tom Sholz
Eric Pritchard

5/26/2012 6:53 PM EDT

CMOS.

8/4/2012 9:55 PM EDT

It's sad to see what the United States has come to. From the days of engineers like George Rotsky guiding the editorial direction of EE Times, we now someone has a BA in Social Science from a Japanese company, with no engineering background.