A dark ride or ghost train is an indoor amusement ride on which passengers aboard guided vehicles travel through specially lit scenes that typically contain animation, sound, music and special effects. Appearing as early as the 19th century, such exhibits include tunnels of love, scary themes and interactive stories. Dark rides are intended to tell stories with thematic elements that immerse riders, which unfold throughout the course of the attraction.
John Robinson Pierce, was an American engineer and author. He did extensive work concerning radio communication, microwave technology, computer music, psychoacoustics, and science fiction. Additionally to his professional career he wrote science fiction for many years using the names John Pierce, John R. Pierce, and J. J. Coupling. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, he earned his PhD from Caltech, and died in Sunnyvale, California, from complications of Parkinson's Disease.
Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development, Inc., commonly referred to as Imagineering, is the research and development arm of The Walt Disney Company, responsible for the creation, design, and construction of Disney theme parks and attractions worldwide. The company also operates Disney Live Entertainment and The Muppets Studio and manages Disney's properties, from Walt Disney Studios in Burbank to New Amsterdam Theatre and Times Square Studios Ltd. in New York City. Founded by Walt Disney to oversee the production of Disneyland, it was originally known as Walt Disney, Inc., then WED Enterprises, from the initials meaning "Walter Elias Disney", the company co-founder's full name. Headquartered in Glendale, California, Imagineering is composed of "Imagineers", who are illustrators, architects, engineers, lighting designers, show writers and graphic designers.
Frederick McKinley Jones was an American inventor, entrepreneur, engineer, winner of the National Medal of Technology, and an inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Jones innovated mobile refrigeration technology. Jones received 61 patents, including 40 for refrigeration technology, and also revolutionized the cinema industry by creating a superior sound system for projectors at the time. Jones co-founded Thermo King and also served as a sergeant in World War I. Due to his contributions to refrigeration technology, he is called the "Father of Refrigerated Transportation", and the "King of Cool".
The Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) is an international non-profit association that represents creators, developers, designers and producers of themed entertainment. It is also noted for its THEA Awards, which were founded in 1995 and are distributed annually in a range of themed entertainment categories.
Alfred Yi Cho is a Chinese-American electrical engineer, inventor, and optical engineer. He is the Adjunct Vice President of Semiconductor Research at Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs. He is known as the "father of molecular beam epitaxy"; a technique he developed at that facility in the late 1960s. He is also the co-inventor, with Federico Capasso of quantum cascade lasers at Bell Labs in 1994.
The New Jersey Inventor's Hall of Fame was established in 1987 to honor individuals and corporations in New Jersey for their inventions. Award recipients are recognized at the annual Award Banquet Dinner. The New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame operated from 1987 to 2002 at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, from 2003 to 2007 with support from the Research and Development Council of New Jersey. Starting in 2008 it was under the aegis of Stevens Institute of Technology Office of Academic Entrepreneurship. In 2010, Greenberg Traurig became a co-sponsor of the organization.
Radia Joy Perlman is an American computer programmer and network engineer. She is a major figure in assembling the networks and technology to enable what we now know as the internet. She is most famous for her invention of the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), which is fundamental to the operation of network bridges, while working for Digital Equipment Corporation, thus earning her nickname "Mother of the Internet". Her innovations have made a huge impact on how networks self-organize and move data. She also made large contributions to many other areas of network design and standardization: for example, enabling today's link-state routing protocols, to be more robust, scalable, and easy to manage.
Arogyaswami J. Paulraj is an Indian-American electrical engineer, academic. He is a Professor Emeritus (Research) in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University.
Krishan Sabnani is an Indian-American networking researcher. He has made many seminal contributions to the Internet infrastructure design, protocol design, and wireless networks. Krishan made a breakthrough in Internet re-design. The main idea behind this work was to separate control functions and complex software from the forwarding portions on Internet routers. This work made it possible for forwarding technologies to evolve and be deployed independently from control protocols. This contribution is a precursor to the current Software Defined Networking (SDN) revolution. A patent based on this work won the 2010 Edison Patent Award.
Michael Tompsett is a British-born physicist, engineer, and inventor, and the founder director of the US software company TheraManager. He is a former researcher at the English Electric Valve Company, who later moved to Bell Labs in the United States. Tompsett invented CCD imagers and designed and built the first ever video camera with a solid-state (CCD) sensor. Tompsett received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2017, with Eric Fossum, George Smith, and Nobukazu Teranishi. Tompsett has also received two other lifetime awards; the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame 2010 Pioneer Award, and the 2012 IEEE Edison Medal. The thermal-imaging camera tube developed from his invention also earned a Queen's Award in 1987.
James Falk is a research scientist, conceptual engineer, technological artist, inventor and U.S Patent consultant. His invention of the Groundstar style of Plasma globe was commercialized and marketed to collectors and science museums in the 1970s and 1980s. His techno-art was marketed through major retail catalog chains & stores such as The Sharper Image. In 2001 he became chief executive officer of EFX, an art and technology corporation specializing in technology commercialization, scientific research and development and performing arts center design.
William Novey (1948–1991) was an American special effects guru in Hollywood, Head of Special Effects at Walt Disney Imagineering in the 1970s, and co-founder of Art & Technology, Inc. with Disney executive Joe Garlington in the 1980s.
Jonathan Ackley is an American interactive theme park attraction and computer game designer, writer, and programmer. He is best known for being the Creative Director and Producer on Walt Disney World's Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom and co-project leader, with Larry Ahern, for LucasArtsGamesThe Curse of Monkey Island.
Richard D. Gitlin is an electrical engineer, inventor, research executive, and academic whose principal places of employment were Bell Labs and the University of South Florida (USF). He is known for his work on digital subscriber line (DSL), multi-code CDMA, and smart MIMO antenna technology all while at Bell Labs.
Marian Rogers Croak is a Vice President of Engineering at Google. She was previously the Senior Vice President of Research and Development at AT&T. She holds more than 200 patents. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 2013. In 2022, Croak was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for her patent regarding VoIP Technology. She is one of the first two Black women to receive that honor, along with Patricia Bath. Her invention allows users to make calls over the internet instead of a phone line. Today, the widespread use of VoIP technology is vital for remote work and conferencing.
Victor R. McCrary, Jr. is an American physical chemist who is vice president for research at the University of the District of Columbia. He is a fellow of the American Chemical Society and former president of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers.
Victor B. Lawrence is a Ghanaian-American engineer credited with seminal contributions in digital signal processing for multimedia communications. During his 30-plus-year tenure at Bell Laboratories, Lawrence made extensive and fundamental personal contributions to voice, data, audio and video communications. He led numerous projects that significantly improved or enhanced every phase in the evolution of early low-speed and today's high-speed data communications. He is a Research Professor and Director of the Center for Intelligent Networked Systems (iNetS) at Stevens Institute of Technology, where he also served as Associate Dean. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2016. He is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the IEEE for contributions to the understanding of quantization effects in digital signal processors and the applications of digital signal processing to data communications, a Fellow of AT&T Bell Labs, and a Charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
Eduard Feuer is a German-American mechanical engineer and Imagineer. His most notable works as project engineer are the American Adventure and World of Motion pavilions for Walt Disney's EPCOT Center, the Disneyland Mark V and Walt Disney World Mark IV monorails, as well as the Great Bronze Doors of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, California.
