Black Inventors

James Edward Maceo West

• 2/10/1931 -

  • Born in Farmville, Prince Edward County, VA

  • born in the home of his maternal grandfather because the local hospital did not accept Black people

• His mother was a school teacher who later became one of the Black astrophysicists who worked for NASA at Langley Research Center during the time that Hidden Figures took place. She was also very active in the NAACP

• US inventor and acoustician

• Holds 250+ US & foreign patents for the production and design of microphones & technologies for creating polymer foil electrets

• Attended Hampton University on a pre-medical track before entering the US Army during the Korean War

  • received a Purple Heart after being wounded

• Attended Temple University to study physics

  • He was excluded from study groups due to being Black

    • was eventually added after he solved the most complex group problems solo

• 1957 - Completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Temple University

• 1962 - Invented the foil electret microphone

  • Invented while developing instruments for human hearing research

  • Patent No. 3,118,022

• 1998 - Elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering for “electret transducers and their applications to microphones”

• 1999 - Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame

• 2001 - Retired from Lucent Technologies

  • Had a 40-year career with the company

  • received the organization’s highest honor - a Bell Laboratories Fellow during his career

• Joined the faculty of the Whiting School at Johns Hopkins University

  • Professor in the Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering

  • worked on a device to detect pneumonia in the lungs of young children

  • Additional research included:

    • efforts to improve teleconferencing technology by transmitting stereophonic sound over the internet and new transducers

• 2007 - Awarded an honorary doctorate from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)

• 2010 - (w/Gerhard M. Sessler) received the Franklin Institute’s Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering

• Measured the acoustics of the Philharmonic Hall (NYC)

• Co-founded the Association of Black Laboratory Employees (ABLE)

  • formed to “address placement and promotional concerns of Black Bell Laboratories employees”

• Instrumental in the creation of:

  • Corporate Research Fellowship (CRFP)

  • Summer Research Program

• (since) 2015 - Served on the board of directors of the Ingenuity Project

  • a Baltimore non-profit that supports talented middle and high school students

• Received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation

• Received the Silver Medal in Engineering Acoustics from the Acoustical Society of America