James West
Nine of every ten microphones made today — in smartphones, laptops, hearing aids, earbuds — descend from the electret microphone he co-invented at Bell Labs in 1962.
James Edward Maceo West was born in 1931 in Farmville, Virginia — in his grandfather's house, because the local hospital would not admit Black patients. His parents warned him a Black man would never find work in electronics and stopped supporting him when he switched from pre-med to physics at Temple University. He went anyway.
At Bell Labs in 1962, West and colleague Gerhard Sessler invented the foil electret microphone — tiny, cheap, requiring no external power source. It made high-quality sound capture small and affordable enough to put anywhere. Today roughly 90 percent of all microphones produced annually are built on their design: every smartphone, laptop, hearing aid, baby monitor and earbud.
West holds more than 250 patents, received the National Medal of Technology in 2006, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1999. At Bell Labs he co-founded the Association of Black Laboratory Employees and built fellowship programs that carried over 500 non-white graduate students into the sciences. Now in his 90s, he is still a professor at Johns Hopkins.
Why You Should Know Them
You are almost certainly within arm's reach of his invention right now. Every voice note, every call, every 'Hey Siri' passes through a device this man made possible — after being told his race disqualified him from the field.