Albert H. Medwin (October 27, 1925 – October 26, 2020) was an American electrical engineer. He held several US patents, including ones in the field of electronic encoders. Medwin was involved in the early development of integrated circuits while working at

RCA RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghou ...

in Somerville, New Jersey. In the 1960s he led the engineering group that developed the world's first low power

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss ", , ) is a type of MOSFET, metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) semiconductor device fabrication, fabrication process that uses complementary an ...

chips including a high speed shift register. He is also credited with leading the RCA group that introduced the 4000 series CMOS integrated circuit to the market. Medwin was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

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. He served in the

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during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. Medwin died on October 26, 2020, a day short of his 95th birthday.

Technical Background

Medwin's first patent (US 3,390,314) was issued in 1968 when he was 43. It is entitled "Semiconductor Translating Circuit" and was assigned to Radio Corporation of America (

). His second patent (US 3,588,635) was issued in 1971 and is simply titled "Integrated Circuit." It was also assigned to the RCA Corporation. At this point, Medwin left RCA to start his own integrated circuit development company called Ragen Semiconductor. He received his next patent (US 3,789,388) in 1972, titled "Apparatus for Providing a Pulsed Liquid Crystal Display." This was the first of his patents that was assigned to Ragen Semiconductor. A number of companies were competing in the early 1970s to develop and commercialize a pocket sized calculator. Medwin's activities in this space were chronicled in Business Week, Electronics and other periodicals."Liquid Crystals, Once Merely Curiosities, May Become Boon to Industry, Consumers" The Wall Street Journal, February 29, 1972 Several years later, Medwin started another company call CGS Systems, Inc. in Princeton, New Jersey. His next patent (US 4,110,701) was issued in 1978 and is titled "Method and Apparatus for Near-Synchronization of a Pair of Oscillators, and Measuring Thereby." His final two patents are related to electronic encoders, "Electronic Measuring Apparatus" (US 4,367,438) issued in 1983 and "Electronic Vernier" (US 4,459,702) issued in 1984. Neither of these was assigned to a company.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Medwin, Albert 1925 births 2020 deaths American electrical engineers City College of New York alumni Engineers from New York City Military personnel from New York City