Albert H. Medwin (October 27, 1925 – October 26, 2020) was an American electrical engineer. He held several US patents, including ones in the field of electronic encoders. Medwin was involved in the early development of integrated circuits while working at

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

in Somerville, New Jersey. In the 1960s he led the engineering group that developed the world's first low power CMOS chips including a high speed shift register. He is also credited with leading the RCA group that introduced the

4000 series The 4000 series is a CMOS logic family of integrated circuits (ICs) first introduced in 1968 by RCA. It had a supply voltage range of 5V to 20V, which is much wider than any contemporary logic family. Almost all IC manufacturers active during th ...

CMOS integrated circuit to the market. Medwin 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 ...

, New York. He served in the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. Medwin died on October 26, 2020, a day short of his 95th birthday.

Technical Background

Medwin's first patent (US 3,390,314) was issued in 1968 when he was 43. It is entitled "Semiconductor Translating Circuit" and was assigned to Radio Corporation of America (

). His second patent (US 3,588,635) was issued in 1971 and is simply titled "Integrated Circuit." It was also assigned to the RCA Corporation. At this point, Medwin left RCA to start his own integrated circuit development company called Ragen Semiconductor. He received his next patent (US 3,789,388) in 1972, titled "Apparatus for Providing a Pulsed Liquid Crystal Display." This was the first of his patents that was assigned to Ragen Semiconductor. A number of companies were competing in the early 1970s to develop and commercialize a pocket sized calculator. Medwin's activities in this space were chronicled in Business Week, Electronics and other periodicals."Liquid Crystals, Once Merely Curiosities, May Become Boon to Industry, Consumers" The Wall Street Journal, February 29, 1972 Several years later, Medwin started another company call CGS Systems, Inc. in Princeton, New Jersey. His next patent (US 4,110,701) was issued in 1978 and is titled "Method and Apparatus for Near-Synchronization of a Pair of Oscillators, and Measuring Thereby." His final two patents are related to electronic encoders, "Electronic Measuring Apparatus" (US 4,367,438) issued in 1983 and "Electronic Vernier" (US 4,459,702) issued in 1984. Neither of these was assigned to a company.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Medwin, Albert 1925 births 2020 deaths American electrical engineers City College of New York alumni Engineers from New York City Military personnel from New York City