Electrical and Aeronautical Engineering Achievements, 1960-1975

1960

• IBM engineer Forrest Parry develops the magnetic stripe card; adopted as an American standard in 1969; a worldwide standard in 1971.
• Construction starts on the Arecibo Observatory on the northern coast of Puerto Rico which housed, until 2016, the world’s largest single-aperture telescope; becomes a center for pulsar research; considered a milestone in computing, as well as in electrical and mechanical engineering.
• John Francis Mitchell joins elements of Motorola’s walkie-talkie with automobile radio technologies to create the first transistorized pager.

1961

1962

• GE engineer Nick Holonyak invents the first light-emitting diode (LED), a semiconductor device that gives off light when an electric current runs through it.

1963

1964

1965

• Bell Labs electrical engineer Robert Lucky invents the adaptive equalizer that corrects distorted signals to improve data performance and speed in devices like modems.

1966

1967

• Engineer Jack Kilby designs the first IC-based electronic calculator; gains Texas Instruments valuable patents.

1968

1969

• George Smith and Willard Boyle invent the charge-coupled device (CCD) at AT&T Bell Labs shortly after Philips Research Labs developed the so-called bucket-brigade device. Together they revolutionize the movements of electrical charges within a device, and have wide applications in astronomy, photography, medical imaging, and sensors.

1970

1971

• American engineer and inventor, Wilson Greatlatch, introduces the first lithium-iodide cell battery for pacemakers; in 1974 manufactured by Cardiac Pacemakers, Inc (becomes Guidant Corp, which today is Boston Scientific); now the world standard.
• Electrical engineer Godfrey Hounsfield develops X-ray computed tomography (CT scan) at EMI, Ltd; first used on a patient with a cerebral cyst at Atkinson Morley Hospital in London; develops eponymous “Hounsfield Scale” of radiodensity (opacity to radio waves) for reading and interpretation of results; awarded CBE, knighted, and Nobel Prize for Medicine.

1972

1973

• Marty Cooper makes first cell phone call on the Motorola DynaTAC (the “brick”)

1974

1975