Jack McCauley is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

engineer, hardware designer, inventor,

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

developer and philanthropist. As an engineer at

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...

, he designed the guitars and drums for the

Guitar Hero ''Guitar Hero'' is a series of music rhythm game video games first released in November 2005, in which players use a guitar-shaped game controller to simulate playing primarily lead, bass guitar, and rhythm guitar across numerous songs. Player ...

video game series and was the Chief Engineer at

Oculus VR Reality Labs is a business of Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc.) that produces virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hardware and software, including virtual reality headsets such as Quest, and online platforms such as Horizon W ...

, which was later acquired by

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

for $2 billion. At Oculus, McCauley was chief developer of the Oculus DK1 and DK2

virtual reality headsets A virtual reality headset (or VR headset) is a head-mounted device that provides virtual reality for the wearer. VR headsets are widely used with VR video games but they are also used in other applications, including simulators and trainers. VR ...

. ''

Grunge.com 7Hops.com Inc., doing business as Static Media, is an American internet company established in 2012 based in Indianapolis. It operates ZergNet, a content recommendation business. ZergNet Established around 2011, ZergNet has been compared to Ou ...

'' named him "one of the greatest inventors alive today", along with

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Bori ...

Kia Silverbrook Kia Silverbrook (born 1958) is an Australian independent inventor and scientist. He is one of the most prolific inventors in the world,Shunpei Yamazaki is a Japanese inventor in the field of computer science and solid-state physics. He is a prolific inventor who is listed as a named inventor of 11,000+ patent families and 26,000+ distinct patent publications for his inventions. In 2005, he wa ...

, and

Lowell Wood Lowell Lincoln Wood Jr. (born 1941) is an American astrophysicist who has been involved with the Strategic Defense Initiative and with geoengineering studies. He has been affiliated with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Hoover In ...

, among others.

Early life and education

The son of a

United States Armed Forces The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...

officer, McCauley’s early life began in

De Bilt De Bilt () is a municipality and town in the province of Utrecht, Netherlands. It had a population of in . De Bilt houses the headquarters of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). It is the ancestral home and namesake for the pro ...

, Netherlands. From an early age, McCauley loved taking things apart, building them into something new, exploring everything from basic spatial relationships to electronics. When he was 9,

Tinkertoy The Tinkertoy Construction Set is a toy construction set for children. It was designed in 1914—six years after the Frank Hornby's Meccano sets—by Charles H. Pajeau, who formed the Toy Tinker Company in Evanston, Illinois to manufactu ...

named him a "Junior Tinkertoy Engineer". In 1980, McCauley was accepted into the U.S. Navy Nuclear Power School. The Department of Defense awarded him a full scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley, College of Engineering, where he specialized in electronics and

circuit theory Circuit may refer to: Science and technology Electrical engineering * Electrical circuit, a complete electrical network with a closed-loop giving a return path for current ** Analog circuit, uses continuous signal levels ** Balanced circui ...

and earned a BSc. in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) in 1986. McCauley credits U.C. Berkeley with moving him into his career as an engineer.

Career

McCauley began his professional career at the U.S. Department of Defense. Upon graduating from Berkeley, he worked at various technology and gaming companies including

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...

, Activision, Atari,

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...

and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

. He helped develop USB drivers, kernel mode drivers, arcade machines and video game related peripherals."More Guitar Hero World tidbits," by Gieson Cacho, A+E Interactive, October 16, 2008
retrieved March 22, 2015. McCauley designed the guitars and drums for the

video game series and invented the first scrolling feature for the computer mouse. Through his development work on Guitar Hero and

, McCauley has been a key figure in incorporating microelectricalmechanical systems (MEMS) technology into video games.

Guitar Hero

In 2005 McCauley joined

RedOctane RedOctane, Inc. was an American electronic entertainment company best known for producing the ''Guitar Hero'' series, beginning in November 2005. RedOctane became a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision in 2006. In February 2010, Activision clos ...

, where he served as Chief Engineer of the Guitar Hero video game franchise. He was a contributor in the acquisition of RedOctane by

, where he served as the Director of Research from 2005 to 2009. McCauley designed the electronics for the Guitar Hero guitars and drum controller, which formed the basis for all subsequent Guitar Hero versions.Kirsten Mickelwait
"Designer of scrolling mouse and Oculus Rift funds design innovation"
''Berkeley Engineer Magazine'', June 16, 2015; retrieved June 29, 2015. He designed key hardware for

Time Crisis II ''Time Crisis II'' is a 1997 light gun arcade video game developed and published by Namco. It is the second installment in the '' Time Crisis'' series. The game incorporates the same mechanics of its predecessor, with some minor changes, but with t ...

and Time Crisis III,

Silent Scope ''Silent Scope'' is a series of rail shooter video games that are developed and published by Konami. Games Silent Scope (1999) Silent Scope 2 (2000) Silent Scope EX (2001) ''Silent Scope EX'' was released in the arcades in 2001. It was ...

Dance Dance Revolution (''DDR'') is a music video game series produced by Konami. Introduced in Japan in 1998 as part of the Bemani series, and released in North America and Europe in 1999, ''Dance Dance Revolution'' is the pioneering series of the rhythm and dance V ...

, Area51, EA Sports Active 2 and

Grand Theft Auto ''Grand Theft Auto'' (''GTA'') is a series of action-adventure games created by David Jones (video game developer), David Jones and Mike Dailly (game designer), Mike Dailly. Later titles were developed under the oversight of brothers Dan Hous ...

Oculus VR

In July 2012, McCauley was recruited by

, where he joined

Palmer Luckey Palmer Freeman Luckey (born September 19, 1992) is an American entrepreneur best known as the founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality head-mounted display that is widely credited with reviving the virtual reality ...

Brendan Iribe Brendan Trexler Iribe (; born August 12, 1979) is an American game programmer, entrepreneur and the original CEO and co-founder of Oculus VR, Inc. and Scaleform. He is the managing partner at BIG Ventures, an early-stage venture fund. Early lif ...

, Nate Mitchell, and Michael Antonov. He served as Chief Engineer at Oculus until 2015 when the company was acquired by

for $2 billion. At Oculus, McCauley built Luckey's original prototype into a product for the company’s first Kickstarter campaign, and headed engineering while working on development of the DK1 and DK2 developer kits, both of which were completed in 120 days from concept to shipping. McCauley led production, designed the test equipment and managed production, engineering, and

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

-based manufacturing of the

Oculus Rift Oculus Rift is a discontinued line of virtual reality headsets developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a division of Meta Platforms, released on March 28, 2016. In 2012 Oculus initiated a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Rift's development, af ...

, the company's virtual reality head-mounted display.

Inventions and accomplishments

McCauley worked on creating audio effects; virtual reality motion control; computer peripherals; game controllers; haptic technology; sports and medical physiology measuring devices; light gun technology; composite HID USB device for gaming; and the guitar and drum controller for the Guitar Hero franchise. He is one of the originators of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) specification. He has authored numerous research papers in the field of

artificial intelligence (AI) Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

and mathematical modeling of AI-based systems. He won the

Red Dot The Red Dot Design Award is a German international design prize awarded by Red Dot GmbH & Co. KG. There are prize categories for product design, brands and communication design, and design concept. Since 1955, designers and producers can apply ...

award product design for the design of bone-conducting headphones.

Philanthropy

McCauley contributes to charities associated with the furtherance of education and science. In 2015 he, Paul Jacobs and others funded the

Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation The Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation is a building on the campus of UC Berkeley, part of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering. Construction began in August 2014 with a $20 million gift from the Paul and Stacy Jacobs Foundation. The ribbon-c ...

at the UC Berkeley College of Engineering; , he is an Innovator in Residence there.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McCauley, Jack American computer scientists American inventors 21st-century American engineers People from Battle Creek, Michigan Video game developers UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni Living people 1959 births