Language, Literacy and Storytelling: Day 16 - Otis Boykin

Saturday, February 16, 2019

Day 16 - Otis Boykin - He Kept Hearts Beating

1920 - 1982

Who Was He?

Otis Boykin was born in Dallas, Texas. His mother was a maid and his father was a carptenter who later became a minister.

Otis was only a year old when his mother died of heart failure.

He graduated valedictorian from Booker T. Washington High School then went off to Fisk University in Illinois.

(A word about Booker T. Washington High. In Boykin's day, it was a segregated school. Today, it is an arts magnet and one of the highest acclaimed schools in the United States.)

While at Fisk, he worked as an assistant in a nearby aerospace lab. In 1941, he got a job as a lab assistant testing automatic aircraft controls.

From those beginnings, he was hired by P.J. Nilsen's lab in Illinois.

Boykin attempted to get a higher degree at the Illinois Institute of Technology, but (depending on the source you cite) two years he either couldn't afford the tuition, or he left because he had a job opportunity too good to resist.

He always meant to go back for that degree, but he never did. It wasn't too great a loss. Turns out he didn't need it.

What Did He Invent?

Boykin's work in the aerospace labs and with PJ Nilsen influenced the rest of his life. Boykin's thing was resistors in electronics.

Okay, let me see if I can explain this for the non-mechanical amongst us...I'm one of them.

Resistors

The purpose of a resistor is to control a current of electricity. It can reduce the amount flowing through a circuit, split it, release the energy as heat energy to help cool things down, and anything else that would somehow change the current of electricity flowing through a circuit.

Boykin's contribution was to make very effective resistors that were cheap and easy to produce. His first patent for resistors was granted in 1959.

Why is this such a huge thing? Well, because every single electrical thing we have uses them.

Every. Single. One.

Boykin's first resistors were excellent at splitting currents. These ended up in televisions and radios everywhere.

Two years later, in 1961, he created another resistor. This one was even cheaper to produce, very durable and could keep its efficacy despite huge changes in temperature, pressure and being thrown about and battered.

The Department of Defense put those resistors into their new generation of guided missiles and aircraft.

IBM put them into computers.

All of the nascent high tech industries of the day wanted Boykin's resistors.

In 1964, Boykin moved to Paris. He had a company called Boykin-Furth Inc.