Edwin Armstrong
Radio's premier inventor, Armstrong created the electronic circuits that form the foundation of all modern radio, radar, and television technologies: the regenerative circuit, the superheterodyne circuit, and a complete FM system. While a junior at Columbia University, he designed a regenerative circuit that became the first radio amplifier and the key to the continuous-wave transmitter. As a U.S. Army Signal Corps officer in Paris during World War I, Armstrong adapted a little-used technique called heterodyning to design a receiver that amplified weak signals to a previously unheard-of degree. The superheterodyne circuit remains the basic component in virtually all radio and television receivers. In 1933, Armstrong's wide-band FM system provided clear reception through the most violent storms and the highest fidelity yet heard in radio.
John Backus
Working at IBM in 1949, Backus invented "speedcoding," the first program to include a scaling factor. This enabled the easy storage and manipulation of both large and small numbers. In late 1953, he was given the go-ahead to design a programming language for IBM's new 704, which had a built-in scaling factor, also called a floating point, and an indexer, which significantly reduced run time. For Backus and his team of programmers and mathematicians, the real challenge was coming up with a way to translate that language into something the computer could understand while eliminating the laborious hand-coding that had hampered programming. They came up with the IBM Mathematical FORmula TRANslating System, or FORTRAN. Designed for mathematicians and scientists, FORTRAN remains the pre-eminent programming language in those fields.
Paul Brokaw
Inventor of the "Brokaw cell," a bandgap voltage reference technique that resulted in monolithic voltage references, Brokaw has designed a wide variety of leading-edge products. These include analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, sensors, voltage references, amplifiers, power-management circuits, and application-specific ICs. Long before these achievements, he cultivated his versatility by designing geophysical instrumentation and earth satellite and planetary probe instrumentation. In 1963, Brokaw joined Arthur D. Little Inc. as a circuit design consultant to industrial, scientific, and government clients. In 1971, he joined Nova Devices, which became the semiconductor division of Analog Devices. Holder of nearly 90 U.S. patents in analog IC designs, Brokaw now concentrates on developing new products and engineering resources for Analog Devices.
Hans Camenzind
In 1970, Camenzind founded Interdesign Inc., the first company to develop, manufacture, and market semicustom ICs. During the company's startup phase, Camenzind conceived and designed several standard linear ICs, notably the 555 timer for Signetics, which has become the highest-volume IC. He also developed the concept of the phase-locked loop for ICs for Signetics. For Intersil, he conceived and designed the 8038 waveform generator. Camenzind sold Interdesign to Ferranti (GEC Plessey) in 1977. Since 1978, Camenzind has been responsible for the development of linear ICs (bipolar and CMOS) at Array Design Inc. Designer of more than 100 standard, custom, and semicustom linear ICs, and holder of 20 patents on linear ICs, Camenzind has written more than 25 articles and two books on linear circuit and system design.
Vinton Cerf
Recognized as one of the "fathers of the Internet," Cerf co-designed (with Robert E. Kahn) TCP/IP. This computer networking protocol was used for communications between the diverse university, government, and commercial data networks known collectively as the Internet. From 1976 to 1982, Cerf played a key role at the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency, where he sponsored the development of Internet and Internet-related data packet and security technologies. As vice president of MCI Digital Information Services from 1982 to 1986, Cerf acted as the chief engineer of MCI Mail, the first commercial e-mail service connected to the Internet. Currently senior vice president of architecture and technology for WorldCom, Cerf leads a team in designing advanced networking frameworks.
Seymour Cray
Cray devoted his entire career to the design of large-scale computer equipment. In 1957, he helped found Control Data Corp. He was responsible for the design of that company's most successful large-scale computers: the CDC 1604, the CDC 6600, and the CDC 7000. In 1972, Cray founded Cray Research to design and build the highest-performance, general-purpose supercomputers, notably the Cray-1, which established a new standard in supercomputing in 1976. In 1981, Cray relinquished his position as chairman of the board to devote himself full-time to the design of the Cray-2, which was introduced in 1985. Cray invented of a number of large-scale computer technologies, including the Cray-1 vector register technology, the cooling techniques for the Cray-2, the CDC 6000 freon-based cooling system, and a magnetic amplifier for ERA.
Bob Dobkin
Dobkin developed the first three-terminal adjustable voltage regulator and the first bipolar low-dropout regulator. He has been involved in designing high-performance linear ICs for more than 30 years, from boosting the speeds of early operational ampifiers to generating many industry-standard circuits. Dobkin was director of advanced circuit development at National Semiconductor for 11 years until 1981, when he co-founded Linear Technology Corp. to design, develop, and manufacture proprietary high-performance analog ICs. As vice president of engineering and chief technical officer at Linear, Dobkin spearheaded all new product development until 1999. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dobkin holds more than 50 patents pertaining to linear ICs and has written more than 50 articles and papers.
William Dubilier
The mica capacitor—a Dubilier design that revolutionized wireless communications—was inspired by a demonstration of a wireless telegraph transmitter by Guglielmo Marconi. The transmitter required more than 50 Leyden jars for circuit capacitance. Dubilier's mica capacitor was sturdier, more efficient, smaller, and lighter than the Leyden jar. It made smaller electronic equipment possible. Dubilier became chief electrician of the Continental Wireless Co. at the age of 19. In 1915, he founded Dubilier Condenser Corp. of New York, where he pioneered the development of self-healing, metallized dielectrics for capacitors, high-voltage transmitting capacitors, and antenna-shortening capacitors. Dubilier was granted more than 355 patents. In 1933, Dubilier's company merged with the Cornell Electric Company to form the Cornell-Dubilier Electric Corp.
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