Day 22 - James Edward Mateo West - Testing, 1,2,3 Testing

James West

I am a fierce advocate of using a microphone when you are performing. It is an amazing tool that allows you to fill a room without straining your instrument. Who knew there was an African American inventor to thank for it?

James West was born in Farmville, Prince Edward County, VA in 1931.

He was a smart kid who was fascinated with - wait for it - taking things apart. Because of his love for dismantling things, he had a bad experience with electricity when he was a kid. It had something to do with taking a radio apart.

"If I had a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, anything that could be opened was in danger,"  James West

Me? I stuck a knife in a toaster when I was a kid and got a bad shock up my arm. What did I learn? Electricity is not a thing to play with. Oh, and I never stuck a knife in a toaster again.

What did James West learn from getting shocked while taking a radio apart? He shocked himself badly and decided he really needed to play with electricity some more.

This is why he is an amazing inventor, and I am a person who just points at amazing inventors and says, "Wow, look at that."

West's parents were not too keen on his love of tinkering. They knew their son was brilliant, and they were worried if he wasn't careful he wouldn't be able to get a job. Jim Crow was still ravaging the southern United States and his parents couldn't think of any black scientists who were working or making a living.

They wanted him to be a doctor.

He wanted to play with electricity.

So, he went off to Temple University and in 1957 he got a Masters in Physics.

Bell Labs hired him.

(An aside here - we owe quite a bit to Bell Labs. They were clearly more worried about getting trained scientists than having a homogenous workforce.)

Electric Transducer

In 1962, James Edward Mateo West, physicist, invented electric transducer technology. He was working to improve hearing aids. Today, this technology is in use in baby monitors, telephones, camcorders, hearing aids, audio recording devices, and microphones.

That's right! West is responsible for the technology that you can find in ninety percent of the microphones manufactured in the world.

Look at all of these storytellers using microphones!

Sherry Lovett

Nancy Donoval

Donald Davis

me

Lyn Ford

I have never James West. I love him.

He is something called an acoustician. He helps balance acoustics in a space and measures sound levels in people's workplaces. Spaces can be designed to either increase the pleasures of a sound in a performance space or decrease the stress of a work environment by tempering the level of noise.


He has also done a great deal of activism work encouraging minority middle and high school students who are interested in going into the sciences.

He co-founded the Association of Black Laboratory Employees (ABLE) which deals with placement and promotional concerns of minority staff members.

He established the Corporate Research Fellowship Program  for Grad Students In Science as well as a summer institute for non-white students

In 2015 Dr. West served on the board of directors for the Ingenuity Project in Baltimore that supports talented middle school students who want to go into the sciences.

Aside from holding over 250 patents that deal with acoustics, he also has been given tons of awards. Here are a few:

National Medal of Technology

- National Medal of Technology and Innovation
- 2010 The Franklin Institute - The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering
- He's been elected into the National Academy of Engineers
- In 1999 he was inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame

Thank you, for the microphone Dr. James West!

Celebrate Black History!

Day 18 - Dr. Shirley Jackson - Who's Calling?

who first tamed fire???

Every single piece of technology you have ever used had to be invented by someone. Everything you wear had to be woven or created by some other process. The names of people who first figured out how to create those things are lost to us. We don't know the name of the first person who figured out how to cook over open flames, or created writing or made the first paintings, or anything like that.

That is understandable. Most of those things were invented so long ago, nobody has any idea when and how they came into being.

What about some of the things you use every day? Do you know much about who created the technology we take for granted?

Dr. Jackson

Once you meet Dr. Shirley Jackson, you will know a great deal more about some everyday things!

Dr. Jackson did so many things and is still doing so many things that there is no way to encapsulate it in this quick bite.

Shirley Ann Jackson was born in 1946. She graduated as the valedictorian from her high school, and was pleased to be accepted into MIT!

That's when things got difficult. Not because of the work. That was hard, but that wasn't the biggest thing. Her classmates shunned her.

She tells a tale of being told to go away the first time she tried to join a study group with her white peers.

Being the only black woman getting a physics degree did not make her a popular person in the 1960s.

If you want to read about the journey that saw her decide to stay at MIT, fight to get more minority students admitted, create the first Black Student Union on campus, and keep excelling until she'd become the very first African American woman to graduate with a PH.D. from MIT in 1973, click here.

Her Ph.D. is in Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics!

Once she left MIT, she did a whole bunch of very cool stuff.

She did her post-doc work with Fermilab and CERN. CERN is the European organization for nuclear research. It is where they have the Large Hadron Collider! I am seriously geeked out by that! Fermilab is the American particle physics laboratory.

Where did she go from there?

Bell laboratories - for those of you who don't know, this means she went to work in telecommunications.

What on earth is a particle physicist going to do at a telephone company?

Simple -

Dr. Shirley Jakson is responsible for a few wee bits of technology that you might have used in your lifetime.

- Touch Tone Telephones
- Portable Fax Machine
- Caller ID
- Call Waiting
- Fiber Optic Cables

After she left Bell Labs. she did some other stuff.

1995 - President Clinton appointed her to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She led international efforts to promote nuclear safety.
1997 - She helped establish the International Nuclear Regulators Association. She served as the first chairperson.
2001 - She was the first African American Woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering
2004 - She was the President of the Association for the Advancement of Science

National Medal of Science

2009 - President Obama appointed her to the President's Council of Advisors on Science.
2015 - President Obama awarded Dr. Jackson the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest honor for contributions in science and engineering.

She currently holds 53 honorary degrees and is president of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institue in Troy, New York.

So, the next time you don't have to answer the phone for that annoying telemarketer, or you get a beep because someone else is trying to reach you, give a silent thank you to Dr. Jackson!

#Celebrate Black History!