Day 6 Cordell Reed – 28 days of Black History in Technology

February 6th, 2011 Comments Off

Cordell Reed born in 1938 was in charge of nuclear licensing and environmental activities for Commonwealth Edison Company of Chicago.  Reed started with the company in 1960, starting as an engineer assigned to the design, construction, and operation of coal-fired generating stations.

In 1967 he transferred to their Nuclear division, his task was developing more efficient and productive power plants.  The work he did during that time lead him to a promotion in 1975 as he was appointed manager of the nuclear engineering department, where he headed a group of 75 engineers who were responsible for the engineering design of all nuclear projects.

During Reeds work Commonwealth became the Nations’ leading nuclear utility;  Reed is a native of Chicago, and holds a masters degree in engineering from the University of Illinois.

Here is my salute to Mr. Reed for leading the way in the improvements, and literally writing the book on Nuclear Policy.

TBTR

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Day 5 Mark Dean – 28 days of Black History in Technology

February 5th, 2011 2 Comments

Mark Dean born on March 2, 1957 is credited in two very important areas of the modern computer systems.  He was Chief engineer for the team that developed the IBM PC/AT the original home/office computer.  Later he helped develop the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) system bus.  This allowed multiple peripheral devices such as modems, and printers to be connected to a PC.

Dean owns three of the original nine patents that all PCs are based upon.  In early 1999 he and his team at IBM made history successfully testing the first gigahertz (1Ghz) CMOS microprocessor.  Overall Dean holds about 20 patents.

What you may not know is that Dean graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1979, and Florida Atlantic University in 1982.  While he was well accomplished, he decided to go back to school to achieve his PhD in Electrical Engineering graduating in 1992.

It says so much about him being that he was already a great contributor to modern computer history, but knowing he didn’t know it all he choose a path to higher learning.

TBTR

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Day 4 James Edward West – 28 days of Black History in Technology

February 4th, 2011 1 Comment

James Edward West

James West was a Bell Laboratories employee at Lucent Technologies; he specialized in electro, physical, and architectural acoustics.  His research in the early 1960′s help in the development of technology that is used in sound recording and voice communications.  That technology is used in 90 % of all microphones built today.

Dr. James West was born in Prince Edward County Virginia, he attended Temple University and interned at Bell Labs during his summer breaks.  When he graduated, he joined Bell Labs and begin work in electoacoustics, physical acoustics, and architectural acoustics.

His patent #3,118,022 file May 22, 1962 (along with Gerhard Sessler)  was approved January 14, 1964 it was for the electro microphone (what we know as the Condenser microphone).  West holds 47 US and more than 200 foreign patents on microphones and techniques.

West retired from Lucent Technologies in 2001, while I saw a posting that he was with John Hopkins University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, but looking through staff records I couldn’t find any current record of him.  I believe he must have moved on or retired again.

Some of the greatest voices on earth have been helped by this African American Inventor, image if he had never taken the path he did.

Electroacoustic Transducer

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Day 3 Marie Brown – 28 days of Black History in Technology

February 3rd, 2011 Comments Off

Do you have a home security system? Better yet do you have a home video suvallance system?  While the home security system is a very common item in most homes today, Marie Brown managed to do something no one had done before.

In 1966 she filed a patent for a closed-circuit television security system.  The patent was way a head of it’s time, it included 4 peep holes in the front door of a home.  A camera could slide up and down to look out each hole and that would be wirelessly beamed to a televison so the person inside could know who was at the door.  The person looking at the video could then unlatch the door by remote control.

Marie Van Brittan Brown was born October 30, 1922, she died on February 2, 1999 at the age of 76.  Mrs. Brown along with her husband Albert Brown also filed for other patents.

Patent #3,482,037 Filed August 1, 1966 Issued December 1969.

Below is the PDF of the patent with drawings, and explanation of this invention, please take a look at the drawings they are amazing.

Home Security System Utilizing Televison Surveillance

TBTR

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Day 2 Thomas Elkins – 28 days of Black History in Technology

February 2nd, 2011 3 Comments

Thomas Elkins

You might ask yourself who is Thomas Elkins?  He created something that we all know very well, we use it everyday and if it wasn’t for him refrigeration would not be possible.  Thomas Elkins designed a device that helped with preserving perishable foods through refrigeration.  This device was not the creation of the Refrigerator, but his design was instrumental in the creation of what we now know as the refrigerator.

Before he invented his device we had to bring in ICE from the mountains, and place that ICE with whatever we wanted to keep cool, in a self made hole in the ground.  This method of keeping items cold worked, but created pools of water after the ICE melted not to mention had to be attended to very frequently.

Elkins device used metal cooling coils which became very cold and would cool down items that they surrounded.   Elkins patented his device on November 4, 1879 patent #221,222.  An interesting fact someone posted on the internet, Thomas Elkins refrigerator was designed to chill human corpses.  I’m not sure if that was true or not but I thought it might be interesting information to add here.

Could you image a world without refrigeration?  I can’t…

TBTR

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