Bibliography
- "Charge transfer imaging devices", U.S. Patent 4,085,456, priority date March 16, 1971; filing date August 30, 1972; publication date April 18, 1978 (retrieved December 23, 2009).
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Michael Tompsett (born 1939) 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, [1] 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. [2] [3] Tompsett received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2017, with Eric Fossum, George Smith, and Nobukazu Teranishi. [4] [5] Tompsett has also received two other lifetime awards; the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame 2010 Pioneer Award, [6] and the 2012 IEEE Edison Medal. [7] The thermal-imaging camera tube developed from his invention also earned a Queen's Award in 1987.
Tompsett is known particularly for his work on infrared imagers and CCD imagers. He pioneered compact, low power, high performance, and low cost solid-state infrared imagers, CCD imagers, and digital cameras and made contributions in several fields with patents and publications over an extended period of time. He is credited with applying the principle behind the charge-coupled device to invent the CCD imager, used in devices such as digital cameras. [8]
He studied physics at the University of Cambridge and also completed an engineering PhD there (1962–66).
Tompsett built a reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) system to study surfaces. While at English Electric Valve (EEV), he built the first ultra-high-vacuum RHEED system with in-situ deposition to study the structures of thin-films of lead oxide as they were deposited. This understanding was needed to make Plumbicon television camera-tubes. He consulted with VacGen (now VG Scienta) to make a commercial system, the first of which was sold to IBM Labs.
In 1968 while still at EEV, Tompsett invented the un-cooled Pyro-electric thermal-imaging camera tube. He also invented a solid-state version, which is now the basis for thermal imagers made today. These imagers are used with great impact by the military for night-vision, by firefighters to see through smoke, and for other search-and-rescue and civilian uses worldwide. [9]
In 1969, he moved to New Jersey with his wife, and joined AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he made the first charge-coupled device (CCD), and led the development of CCDs. He exploited the device’s potential for digital imaging and, together with his team, developed a series of CCD cameras and produced the first pixel CCD colour image in 1972. It was a picture of his wife and made the cover of Electronics Magazine. [10]
In 1979, he pioneered the development of the first, integrated circuit, data modem using Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOSFET) silicon switched-capacitor filters, and a patented Automatic Gain Control circuit. This was the first mixed analog-digital integrated circuit/system to go into manufacture. This technology has now grown into a multibillion-dollar industry. In the 1980s Tompsett applied himself to finding a solution to a major challenge to reduce the size, power, and cost of digitizing video signals from imagers and scanners. He invented an integrated, two-step recycling video analog-digital converter. [11]
After taking early retirement from Bell Labs in 1989, he joined the US Army as Director of Electron Device Research for six years. In 2010 the US Government awarded him the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, [12] its highest honor for engineers and inventors. In 2016, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for the design and development of the first charge-coupled device imagers. [13]
Tompsett made technological contributions in several different specialty areas including materials science, night vision, charge-coupled devices, and integrated circuit design over a lifetime of work. He is responsible for significant invention, development, and leadership of several socially beneficial enabling technologies in use today. These include the in-situ monitoring of deposited epitaxial films, un-cooled night-vision thermal imaging camera tubes, un-cooled solid-state thermal imagers, CCD imagers and CCD cameras, MOS mixed analog-digital integrated systems, and integrated video analog-digital converters.
A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a major technology used in digital imaging.
A video camera is an optical instrument that captures videos, as opposed to a movie camera, which records images on film. Video cameras were initially developed for the television industry but have since become widely used for a variety of other purposes.
A digital image is an image composed of picture elements, also known as pixels, each with finite, discrete quantities of numeric representation for its intensity or gray level that is an output from its two-dimensional functions fed as input by its spatial coordinates denoted with x, y on the x-axis and y-axis, respectively. Depending on whether the image resolution is fixed, it may be of vector or raster type. By itself, the term "digital image" usually refers to raster images or bitmapped images.
Shuji Nakamura is a Japanese-American electronic engineer and inventor of the blue LED, a major breakthrough in lighting technology. Nakamura specializes in the field of semiconductor technology, and he is a professor of materials science at the College of Engineering of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).
Steven J. Sasson is an American electrical engineer and the inventor of the self-contained (portable) digital camera. He joined Kodak shortly after his graduation from engineering school and retired from Kodak in 2009.
Willard Sterling Boyle, was a Canadian physicist. He was a pioneer in the field of laser technology and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device. As director of Space Science and Exploratory Studies at Bellcomm he helped select lunar landing sites and provided support for the Apollo space program.
George Elwood Smith is an American scientist, applied physicist, and co-inventor of the charge-coupled device (CCD). He was awarded a one-quarter share in the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor, which has become an electronic eye in almost all areas of photography".
An image sensor or imager is a sensor that detects and conveys information used to form an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves into signals, small bursts of current that convey the information. The waves can be light or other electromagnetic radiation. Image sensors are used in electronic imaging devices of both analog and digital types, which include digital cameras, camera modules, camera phones, optical mouse devices, medical imaging equipment, night vision equipment such as thermal imaging devices, radar, sonar, and others. As technology changes, electronic and digital imaging tends to replace chemical and analog imaging.
An active-pixel sensor (APS) is an image sensor, which was invented by Peter J.W. Noble in 1968, where each pixel sensor unit cell has a photodetector and one or more active transistors. In a metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) active-pixel sensor, MOS field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) are used as amplifiers. There are different types of APS, including the early NMOS APS and the now much more common complementary MOS (CMOS) APS, also known as the CMOS sensor. CMOS sensors are used in digital camera technologies such as cell phone cameras, web cameras, most modern digital pocket cameras, most digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLRs), mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras (MILCs), and lensless imaging for cells.
In digital imaging, a color filter array (CFA), or color filter mosaic (CFM), is a mosaic of tiny color filters placed over the pixel sensors of an image sensor to capture color information.
Richard "Dick" Francis Lyon is an American inventor, scientist, and engineer. He is one of the two people who independently invented the first optical mouse devices in 1980. He has worked in signal processing and was a co-founder of Foveon, Inc., a digital camera and image sensor company.
Eric R. Fossum is an Emmy award-winning American engineer who co-developed some of the active pixel image sensor with intra-pixel charge transfer, with the help of other scientists from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is a professor at Thayer School of Engineering in Dartmouth College.
Peter Brian Denyer was a British electronics engineer, academic, scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur who pioneered CMOS image sensor chips for many applications including mobile phones, webcams, video-conferencing cameras, and optical computer mouse. "Undoubtedly, his greatest legacy...was his work in fitting mini-cameras in mobile phones." wrote the Herald Scotland. From an EE professorship at the University of Edinburgh, he went on to found VLSI Vision Inc., later known as VISION Group plc, an early maker of CMOS image sensors that sold itself to STMicroelectronics. The first academic to grow a Scottish university spin-out company to PLC, he was described by the Royal Society as "a unique combination of electronics engineer, distinguished academic, inventor, company CEO and multiple entrepreneur."
M. George Craford is an American electrical engineer known for his work in Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs).
Ali Hajimiri is an academic, entrepreneur, and inventor in various fields of engineering, including electrical engineering and biomedical engineering. He is the Bren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, also known as the QEPrize, is a global prize for engineering and innovation. The prize was launched in 2012 by a cross-party group consisting of David Cameron, Nick Clegg, and Ed Miliband, then Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition of the United Kingdom. The £500,000 prize, and 3D printed trophy, are awarded annually in the name of Queen Elizabeth II.
Roger Douglas Melen (1946--2024) was an electrical engineer recognized for his early contributions to the microcomputer industry, and for his technical innovations.
Nobukazu Teranishi is a Japanese engineer who researches image sensors, and is known for inventing the pinned photodiode, an important component of modern digital cameras. He was one of four recipients of the 2017 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. His industrial career wasa at NEC Corporation (1978–2000) and Panasonic Corporation (2000–13). As of 2018, he is a professor at the University of Hyogo and at Shizuoka University.
Albert Thomas Brault is an American chemist who invented the fabrication process used for the first integral color image sensors. The curator of the Technology Collection at the George Eastman Museum, Todd Gustavson, has stated that "the color sensor technology developed by Albert Brault has revolutionized all forms of color photography. These color sensors are now ubiquitous in products such as smart phone cameras, digital cameras and camcorders, digital cinema cameras, medical cameras, automobile cameras, and drones".
Peter L. P. Dillon is an American physicist, and the inventor of integral color image sensors and single-chip color video cameras. The curator of the Technology Collection at the George Eastman Museum, Todd Gustavson, has stated that "the color sensor technology developed by Peter Dillon has revolutionized all forms of color photography. These color sensors are now ubiquitous in products such as smart phone cameras, digital cameras and camcorders, digital cinema cameras, medical cameras, automobile cameras, and drones". Dillon joined Kodak Research Labs in 1959 and retired from Kodak in 1991. He lives in Pittsford, New York.
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