Richard Adams (born December 8, 1954) is an

independent inventor An independent inventor is a person who creates inventions independently, rather than for an employer. Many independent inventors patent their inventions so that they have rights over them, and hope to earn income from selling or licensing them. U ...

and

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

. Since building and demonstrating a video camera as a child, his work has often garnered media interest.

TV camera

His first project was the construction of a video camera that he started building when he was ten years old and got working at age 12 in 1967. He worked entirely at home without the aid of his school. It originally gained coverage in the

Miami Herald The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by the McClatchy Company and headquartered in Doral, Florida, a List of communities in Miami-Dade County, Florida, city in western Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County and the M ...

when he had enlisted the newspaper's help to find a TV station that would help him tune the camera. Although he did not invent, the fact that a child could build one cheaply drove home a point that made others desirous of this technology. It continued to be publicized by the Herald and other newspapers each time the camera made a public appearance.

Music

In 1974, whilst attending

Florida Institute of Technology The Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech or FIT) is a private research university in Melbourne, Florida. The university comprises four academic colleges: Engineering & Science, Aeronautics, Psychology & Liberal Arts, and Business. Appr ...

, Adams created an interface and software to connect an electronic organ to a computer so he could record and play back entire musical scores with full polyphony.

Computer

Adams built an early 16 bit computer in his home. His brother,

Scott Adams Scott Raymond Adams (born June 8, 1957) is an American author and cartoonist. He is the creator of the syndicated ''Dilbert'' comic strip, and the author of several nonfiction works of satire, commentary, and business. ''Dilbert'' gained nation ...

, would use this computer to program his first computer game (while attending Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne Florida) and later found

Adventure International Adventure International was an American video game publishing company that existed from 1979 until 1986. It was started by Scott and Alexis Adams. Their games were notable for being the first implementation of the adventure genre to run on a ...

, a company notable for its text adventure games (also known as

Interactive Fiction '' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...

Codec testing

Whilst employed in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

between 1976 and 1982, Adams gave demonstrations on the testing of

codec A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or da ...

s and authored a paper on the subject.Test Systems Group, "International Scene" Fairchild Interface Vol.6 / No.2 1980,8
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Happy Computers

In 1982, Adams founded

Happy Computers Happy drives are series of disk drive enhancements for the Atari 8-bit and Atari ST computer families produced by a small company Happy Computers. Happy Computers is most noted for the add-in boards for the Atari 810 and Atari 1050 disk drives, w ...

to market and sell add-in boards that he had invented for

Atari Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc. (1972–1992), Atari, Inc., ...

computer disk drives. These boards greatly increased the speed at which disks could be read and written to and remained popular for many years.

References

More information

Richard Adams' autobiography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Adams, Richard 1954 births Living people American inventors Florida Institute of Technology alumni