Leon D. Harmon (1922 - 1983) was a researcher in mental/neural processing, particularly regarding vision, who worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated.
Harmon started his career as a radio serviceman and electronics hobbyist. In 1950, he went to work as a wireman on the
IAS machine
The IAS machine was the first electronic computer built at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey. It is sometimes called the von Neumann machine, since the paper describing its design was edited by John von Neumann, a ...
at the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
, where he worked for
Julian Bigelow and encountered
John von Neumann
John von Neumann (; hu, Neumann János Lajos, ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest cove ...
and
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...
. At the same time he began taking night courses in engineering at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, ...
. When the IAS project ended in 1956, he joined
Bell Laboratories
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mul ...
where he worked on human perception, computer vision and graphics.
In 1966, Harmon and
Kenneth C. Knowlton were experimenting with
photomosaic, creating large prints from collections of small symbols or images. In ''Studies in Perception I'' they created an image of a reclining nude (the dancer
Deborah Hay
Deborah Hay (born 1941 in Brooklyn, New York) is a choreographer, dancer, dance theorist, and author working in the field of experimental postmodern dance. She is one of the original founders of the Judson Dance Theater. Hay's signature slow and ...
), by scanning a photograph with a camera and converting the analog voltages to binary numbers which were assigned typographic symbols based on halftone densities. It was printed in
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
on 11 October 1967, and exhibited as part of the Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) competition at, ''The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age'', held at the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, ...
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 U ...
from November 25, 1968 through February 9, 1969. Knowlton characterized it as a "sophomoric prank."
[Kenneth C. Knowlton, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Scientist,” YLEM Journal, Vol. 25, No. 2, January/February 2005, pp. 8-11.]
Harmon is best known for his highly
pixelated, block portrait of
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...
from the
five dollar bill
''Five Dollar Bill'' is the third album by Canadian country artist Corb Lund, and the first on which his backing band was credited as The Hurtin' Albertans. It was also Lund's first album to be certified gold for sales of 50,000 copies in Canad ...
. It was created to illustrate his November, 1973, ''Scientific American'' article, "The Recognition of Faces." In 1976,
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in ...
used Harmon's image as the basis of his ''
Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea'' and ''
Lincoln in Dalivision''.
Around 1973, Harmon went to the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, and became the head of that department. During this time, he conducted studies on facial recognition, as well as robotic control. He supervised one graduate student,
Thomas F. Collura, who received his Ph.D. in 1978 for studying brainwave (EEG) signatures of attention in human subjects, using an analog computer. Harmon served in the department, having stepped down as head in 1976 to become professor, until his passing in 1983.
Publications
*
Goldstein, A. J., Harmon, L. D. and
Lesk, A. B. (1971). ''Identification of Human Faces''.
Proceedings of the IEEE
The ''Proceedings of the IEEE'' is a monthly peer review, peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The journal focuses on electrical engineering and computer science. According to ...
, 59(5):748-760.
*
Goldstein, A. J., Harmon, L. D. and
Lesk, A. B. (1972). ''Man-Machine Interaction in Human-Face Identification''.
Bell Syst. Tech. J., 51(2):399-427.
*Harmon, L. D. (1972). ''Automatic Recognition of Print and Script''.
Proceedings of the IEEE
The ''Proceedings of the IEEE'' is a monthly peer review, peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The journal focuses on electrical engineering and computer science. According to ...
(60), No. 10, October 1972, pp. 1165–1177.
*K. Knowlton and L. Harmon, "Computer-Produced Greyscales," Computer Graphics and Image Processing No. 1, 1972, pp. 1–20.
*Harmon, L. D. and
Julesz, B. (1973). ''Masking in Visual Recognition: Effects of Two-Dimensional Filtered Noise''.
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...
(1973 Jun 15) 180:1194–1197
*Harmon, L. D. (1973). ''The Recognition of Faces''.
Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...
(1973 Nov) 229(5):71-82
*Harmon, L. D.,
Kuo, S. C.,
Ramig, P.F. and
Raudkivi, U. (1978): ''Identification of human face profiles by computer''.
Pattern Recognition
Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphic ...
10(5-6): 301-312
*Harmon, L. D. and
Hunt, W. F. (1978). ''Automatic Recognition of Human Face Profiles''.
Computer Graphics and Image Processing, 6(2):135-156.
*Harmon, L. D.,
Khan, M. K.,
Lasch, R., and
Ramig, P.F. (1981). ''Machine Identification of Human Faces''.
Pattern Recognition
Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphic ...
, 13(2):97-110.
References
External links
Computer Oral History CollectionPioneers of New MediaBar Code Art*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harmon, Leon
1922 births
1983 deaths
Scientists at Bell Labs
Case Western Reserve University faculty