HomeNews National Inventors Hall of Fame Releases Class of 2008
National Inventors Hall of Fame Releases Class of 2008
National Inventors Hall of Fame
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The National Inventors Hall of Fame honors and encourages invention and creativity by recognizing the men and women responsible for some of the great technological advances that make human, social and economic progress possible.
This year, the not-for-profit organization Hall of Fame welcomed its 36th class of inductees. The current number of inventors honored is 371. Among the 2008 honorees: the inventor of the light-emitting diode (LED), the discoverer of wrinkle-free cotton and, a hero to couch potatoes everywhere, the creator of the television remote control.
The following are the eight living inventors inducted into the Hall of Fame and the inventions for which they were honored.
Ruth Benerito — The 92-year-old chemist, widely recognized for the development of wrinkle-free cotton, worked for the United States Department of Agriculture's Southern Regional Research Center for more than three decades. Throughout her career, she has received over 55 patents.
Amar Bose — At age 13, this pioneer in modern acoustics began repairing radios in his basement during World War II, later graduating from MIT with Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees in Electrical Engineering. Dr. Bose later founded the internationally recognized audio company Bose Corp., of which he remains chairman and technical director. His invention was of a feedback control system that provides bass notes without distortion, along with noise-reduction headphones.
Nick Holonyak, Jr. — The inventor's III-V alloy visible LED was the first LED in the visible spectrum. Holonyak's research in optoelectronics has revolutionized the lighting, communications and entertainment industries; his work is responsible for the technology used to develop red lasers in CD and DVD players. Today, visible LEDs are commonly found in applications ranging from traffic lights to computer electronics.
Erna Hoover — This New Jersey-born inventor, awarded one of the first patents issued for software, came up with an invention that made it possible to monitor the frequency of incoming calls and adjust the call-acceptance rate. She made key contributions to the system architecture of the first electronic telephone central office developed by Bell Labs. This architecture used "stored program control" to achieve an unprecedented level of flexibility.
Amos Joel, Jr. — Another MIT graduate with Bachelor's and Master's degrees in electronic engineering, this inventor pioneered the mobile communication system for cell phones of switching communication links from one cell region to another in response to movement. The 90-year-old worked for Bell Labs for 43 years, all the while collecting 70 U.S. patents in the field of telecommunications with an emphasis on switching.
William Murphy, Jr. — A pioneer in applying engineering to medicine, this inventor's many successful medical devices include disposable medical procedure trays, blood bags, physiologic cardiac pacemakers, angiographic injectors and hollow fiber artificial kidneys. In 1957, he founded the Medical Development Corporation in his garage. Soon after, it became Cordis Corporation, which today, as a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, focuses on developing medical instrumentation. Murphy also founded Small Parts, Inc., now an Amazon company, which provides small and large quantities of specialized materials and tools to engineers.
Ken Richardson — Born in the British Midlands near Nottingham, this inventor is credited with discovering one of the most important breakthroughs in the history of anti-fungal research: fluconazole, or Diflucan®, the world's leading antifungal drug for human use. Fluconazole has saved the lives of millions around the world by treating transplant recipients, burn victims, chemotherapy patients, AIDS patients and others with weakened immune systems that make them targets of deadly fungal diseases.
Louis Stevens — This Texas native worked with previous inductees William Goddard and John Lynott along with other engineers on the invention of a magnetic storage device. The disk drive, announced in 1955, was a key component of the IBM 305 RAMAC machine, and allowed users to store and almost instantly access large amounts of data.
The Hall of Fame also offered posthumous recognition to 11 inventors who have contributed to the welfare of mankind and have promoted the progress of science and the useful arts. These are the deceased members of the class of 2008:
* Robert Adler (1913-2007) for the first wireless TV remote control, introduced as the "Space Command" by Zenith in 1956; * John Charnley (1911-1982) for developing low-frictional torque arthroplasty, or LFA, the hip replacement surgery, which became the gold standard and has been a clinical success for more than four decades; * Willem Einthoven (1860-1927) for developing the first instrument that accurately recorded the electrical activity of the heart and produced the first reliable electrocardiogram; * Calvin Fuller (1902-1994), Gerald Pearson (1905-1987) and Daryl Chapin (1906-1995) for developing the first practical means of collecting energy from the sun and turning it into a current of electricity, the silicon solar cell; * Clarence "Kelly" Johnson (1910-1990) for designing technologically advanced aircrafts, including the U.S.'s first operational jet fighter, the Lockheed F-80; * Otis Ray McIntire (1918-1996) for inventing extruded polystyrene foam, more commonly known by its brand name, STYROFOAM®; * Malcom McLean (1913-2001) for inventing containerized shipping, which revolutionized cargo handling within the shipping industry by eliminating the tedious process of loading, unloading and reloading; *. Harold McMaster (1916-2003) for achieving the centuries-old goal of producing high-quality strengthened — or tempered — glass, which is indispensable in applications where glass strength and safety are crucial (such as skyscrapers); and * David Pall (1914-2004) for his most well-known of 181+ patents, the leukocyte reduction filter that has become a standard in transfusion medicine.
In addition to honoring the new inductees, the National Inventors Hall of Fame awarded this year's Lifetime Achievement Award to Riccardo Giacconi, who pioneered the field of X-ray astronomy and fostered advancements in astronomy through his teaching and leadership. Giacconi, who has served as the first Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute and as Director General of the European Southern Observatory, was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics. His work has led to greater understanding of the formation, evolution and development of structures in the early universe.
Past Hall of Fame inductees have included the inventor of Ethernet, the developer of an inexpensive method for synthesizing ammonia, the inventor of genetic fingerprinting and the guy who brought us the first solid body electric guitar.
These people are recognized and honored for fostering technological innovation that has made possible raising the standard upon which people the world over live.
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