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 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. A ...
, 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 natio ...
, 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 m ...
, 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 Count ...
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 ...
s and authored a paper on the subject.
Test Systems Group, "International Scene" Fairchild Interface Vol.6 / No.2 1980,8
/ref>
Happy Computers
In 1982, Adams founded Happy Computers to market and sell add-in boards that he had invented for Atari 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