Part 1 of 3 – Inventors and Engineers

By Mark Chisholm

Last night at a ceremony held at CEA’s Industry Forum in San Francisco, CEA inducted thirteen of the consumer electronics industry’s finest into the CE Hall of Fame. From engineers to executives, these individuals contributions to our industry have helped make it what it is today. In this first of a series of three blog posts on the CE Hall of Fame’s 2010 class, I’ll introduce the inventors and engineers portion. The technical expertise of these individuals served as the foundation for new technologies that today we take for granted.

Take for example the global positioning system (GPS) developed by Dr. Bradford Parkinson and Dr. Ivan Getting. Originally developed for, and used in military applications, this technology is nearly ubiquitous these days. With products ranging from standalone GPS units to GPS-equipped smartphones, consumers can pinpoint their location whether they are on land or sea or in the air.

Dr. Bradford Parkinson was made manager of the Air Force’s NAVSTAR GPS development program in 1973, and under his leadership the first GPS satellites were launched in 44 months. The GPS system was based on satellite-based navigation systems developed by Dr. Ivan Getting during his time at Raytheon Corp. Their research in this field led to numerous other developments: Dr. Bradford Parkinson led a Stanford research group to pioneer the wide area augmentation system (WAAS) used by the Federal Aviation Administration for air navigation, while Dr. Ivan Getting’s time as special consultant to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, on the Army’s use of radar led to the development of the SCR-584 microwave-tracking gunfire-control radar, which was used to defend against German V1 flying bombs during the Second World War.

Also with an eye to the sky, another of the 2010 class’ inventors, Dr. Lauren Christopher, developed the first digital satellite receiver for DirecTV. Dr. Christopher, who worked on developing integrated circuits for television sets at RCA before it was acquired by Thomson, helped win the DirecTV project with Hughes Electronics for the company. Dr. Christopher led thirty engineers to develop the digital receiver system, which launched in 1994. As a result of the team’s thorough work, the system needed no software updates for over two years after launch. After the success of the digital satellite receiver system, Dr. Christopher returned to school, developing image segmentation techniques in 3D medical ultrasound images to automatically detect cancer at Purdue University.

Dr. Larry Weber with his 60 inch Plasma HDTV

Rounding out our group of engineers and inventors is Dr. Larry Weber, whose contributions to plasma display technologies made plasma displays a viable product. Dr. Weber studied under Dr. Donald Bitzer and Dr. Gene Slottow – inventors of the plasma display and members of the CE Hall of Fame’s 2006 Class – at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Dr. Weber founded Plasmaco in 1987, where his contributions to the technology kept the plasma industry alive in the face of tough competition. Dr. Weber developed the energy recovery sustain circuit, which cut power consumption in plasma displays by as much as half. Dr. Weber also developed the high contrast ratio method for plasma displays, which played an important role in moving the technology forward in the mid-1990s. He was the first to demonstrate a high-quality 60-inch plasma HDTV in 1999. For his hard work dedication, Dr. Weber holds 15 patents on plasma display technologies.

Join us tomorrow for the second installment of our series on the 2010 CE Hall of Fame. To learn more about these inductees or previous inductees of the Hall of Fame, visit the Hall of Fame page.