Richard Billings Merrill (1949–2008), a.k.a. Dick Merrill, was an American inventor, engineer, and photographer. Merrill was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, the son of Dr. Frederick Hamilton Merrill and Joan Williams Merrill. He was the adoptive grandson of Richard Billings (son of Frederick H. Billings), and the grandson of Norman Williams of the family that donated the library in

Woodstock, Vermont Woodstock is the shire town (county seat) of Windsor County, Vermont, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town population was 3,005. It includes the villages of Woodstock, South Woodstock, Taftsville, and West Woodstock. History Cha ...

. He was married in 1996 to Sengchanh (Seng) Phomphanh. They made their home in

Woodside, California Woodside is a small incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, United States, on the San Francisco Peninsula. Woodside is among the wealthiest communities in the United States, home to many technology billionaires and investment manager ...

. Merrill earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

, and worked for

National Semiconductor National Semiconductor was an American semiconductor manufacturer which specialized in analog devices and subsystems, formerly with headquarters in Santa Clara, California. The company produced power management integrated circuits, display dr ...

from 1980. He was a founder of

Foveon Foveon, Inc., is an American company that manufactures and distributes image sensor technology. It makes the Foveon X3 sensor, which captures images in some digital cameras. Foveon was founded in 1997 and is based in Santa Clara, California. In 2 ...

in 1997, and worked there until his death from cancer in 2008. He invented the "vertical color filter" technology of the

Foveon X3 sensor The Foveon X3 sensor is a digital camera image sensor designed by Foveon, Inc., (now part of Sigma Corporation) and manufactured by Dongbu Electronics. It uses an array of photosites that consist of three vertically stacked photodiodes. Each o ...

that is at the heart of the novel

digital camera A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices ...

s sold by

Sigma Corporation is a Japanese company, manufacturing cameras, lenses, flashes and other photographic accessories. All Sigma products are produced in the company's own Aizu factory in Bandai, Fukushima, Japan. Although Sigma produces several camera models ...

(the SD9, SD10, SD14, DP1, DP2 and DP3). Merrill's vertical color filter invention was originally based on a triple-well CMOS DRAM process. He later refined the idea using multiple epitaxially grown silicon layers for each of the vertically stacked color-detecting photodiodes. Merrill shared the Royal Photographic Society's Progress Medal in 2005 with Dick Lyon and

Carver Mead Carver Andress Mead (born May 1, 1934) is an American scientist and engineer. He currently holds the position of Gordon and Betty Moore Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), ...

for the development of the Foveon X3 technology. Shortly before his death in 2008, he received the Kosar Memorial Award, "for significant contributions to an unconventional photographic system," from the Society for Imaging Science and Technology. According to

, Merrill was "the most creative engineer I have ever met." Merrill explained his inventive process this way, "There's a lot you can get in this world just by looking for symmetry, looking for patterns;" and "Look for a technological trend in one area and apply it to another." On February 8, 2012, Merrill was honored by business partner

by renaming Sigma's flagship DSLR SD1 to SD1 Merrill. Sigma SD1 utilizes the latest Foveon image sensor.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Merrill, Richard B. 1949 births 2008 deaths People from Woodside, California 20th-century American inventors