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James Dyson

Inventive Journey of James Dyson: From Failure to Success

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James Dyson is a British industrial designer, billionaire businessman, farmer, and inventor, who established Dyson Ltd. He is best known for developing the dual cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner that employs the cyclonic separation principle. With an approximate wealth of £23 billion, he is the second-richest individual in the UK, as per the Sunday Times Rich List 2022.

James Dyson
Image Source: wired.com

Early Life

James Dyson encountered many setbacks and disappointments from his earliest years. But he was adamant about making a significant impact on the world. While a student at the Royal College of Art in 1970, Dyson contributed to the creation of the Sea Truck.

His first unique creation, the Ballbarrow, was a wheelbarrow modified to use a ball in place of the wheel. This was covered by the BBC television show Tomorrow’s World.

Also Read: Alexandr Wang: From MIT Dropout to youngest billionaire

He made the decision to monetize this and build a company around it. James Dyson initially attempted to sell directly to the garden and home shops, but no one was interested, so he established a mail-order business and sold the Ballbarrows to customers.

While it was originally a huge success, over the period there was a decline and the business was engulfed in enormous amounts of debt. He made the decision to monetize this and build a company around it.

James Dyson initially attempted to sell directly to the garden and home shops, but no one was interested, so he established a mail-order business and sold the Ballbarrows to customers. While it was originally a huge success, over the period there was a decline and the business was engulfed in enormous amounts of debt.

Success Story

James Dyson was no longer trusted by anyone, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up. Despite being exhausted, despondent, and heavily in debt, he had plenty of creative ideas. His biggest strengths were in this. He proceeded to start over completely from the beginning.

Dyson came up with the concept of using cyclonic separation in the late 1970s to make a vacuum cleaner that would maintain suction as it gathered up dirt. After five years and roughly 5,127 prototypes, Dyson released the “G-Force” cleaner in 1983, partially funded by his wife’s income as an art instructor.

Dyson’s product was introduced in Japan via catalog sales because no maker or dealer would handle it in the UK because it would disrupt the lucrative industry for replacement dust bags. It received Japan’s International Design Fair Prize in 1991.

In 1980, he submitted a number of patent applications for his dual cyclone vacuum cleaner, EP0037674. Following the main manufacturers’ rejection of his invention, Dyson founded his own manufacturing business, Dyson Ltd.

The Dyson Dual Cyclone outsold some of the businesses that turned down his invention and went on to become one of the most well-known brands in the UK.

Also Read: From Engineer to Entrepreneur: The Rise of Kyle Vogt

From 1986 to 2001, Dyson leased the technology in North America to Fantom Technologies before entering the market on its own. As a result of his success, other significant makers started to sell cyclonic vacuum cleaners of their own.

Hoover (UK) was sued by Dyson in 1999 for violating their patent. According to the High Court, Hoover intentionally duplicated a key component of his patented designs when creating its Triple Vortex bagless vacuum cleaner line. Hoover consented to make a £4 million loss payment.

James Dyson has demonstrated to us the value of tenacity and creativity. His failure served as motivation for his achievement.

4004 Intel Microprocessor (1)

Marcian Hoff : An Electrical Engineer Who Co-invented the First Microprocessor

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The modification of an already existing invention is much easier than proposing the idea of creating a new one. With time, advancement in technology and acceptance within mankind both took place, which seemed like far-fetched goals in the earlier days. Even though there were many obstacles in the past, many significant scientists emerged out on the surface with innovative innovations. And, today, these are the innovations that are helping us take a step forward towards building a smarter world.

Marcian Hoff, popularly known as Ted Hoff, is one such brilliant innovator who invented microprocessor in the early 1900s. Hoff started co-invented things while he was pursuing a PhD. But, in 1968, his life completely changed its course and became a roller-coaster ride, when he was approached by Robert Noyce, co-founder of Intel Corp.

Early Life and Education of Hoff

Marcian Hoff was born on 23rd October 1937 in Rochester, New York. He was lured by the scientific world from a very young age, especially when he received a subscription to Popular Science from one of his uncles at the age of 12. For his undergraduate degree, Hoff went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and graduated in 1958 with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical engineering. As an undergraduate student, he worked at Rochester’s General Railway Company during the summer breaks. During his time in this company, he worked with magnetic cores and transistors, and also developed his first two patents during this time.

Ted Hoff aka Marcian Hoff
Image Source: blog.parrikar.com

After completing his college, Hoff received a National Science Foundation Fellowship which gave him the opportunity to attend Stanford University. In 1959, he received an MS degree and a PhD from the same university in 1962. During this time, he co-invented least mean square filter with Bernard Widrow, his guide and a professor of Stanford University. The algorithm they invented is still used in modems today.

Hoff chose to stay in Stanford to carry out his studies on neural networks and integrated circuits, hence, continued research for another four years. While he was learning about integrated circuits, he realized how hard it was to build one.

During this time, Noyce was hiring for Intel, and he contacted a professor of Stanford to know if there was anyone in the campus who had the potential to become an Intel employee. And this is how Hoff ended up as Intel employee in 1968.

Intel 4004

Marcian Hoff joined Intel in 12th September 1968, as the company’s twelfth member. Intel was established with the main goal to replace all the magnetic core memories with semiconductor memories. Since, it totally diverted from the conventional idea about computer memory, creating a market demand was very tough. So, they decided to take up clients and develop memories as per their requirements. Intel’s first customer for this semiconductor memory was a Japanese company who sold calculators under the name Busicom.

They demanded different types of chips for performing various activities, and hence, both the companies signed a contract to create these chips in April 1969. After this contract, engineers were sent from Japan to work on this design, but at the same time, Hoff on behalf of Intel created another design, which used DRAM (dynamic random access memory). The company liked Intel’s approach better, as a lesser number of chips were able to perform more functions.

Intel, after successfully designing product for this client, wanted to expand the utility of silicon gate, and they hired Dr Faggin in April 1970 to conduct research and make progress on this area. Today, this metal oxide silicon (MOS) process is extensively used in what we call embedded system.

Hoff said that nobody in the company expected as much growth as took place in the following years.

What after Intel 4004 project?

After the 4004 project, Noyce’s next target was to implement their MOS technology in telephony. So, Hoff started working CODEC (a decoder working used in the telephonic industry to convert analog signals to digital and vice versa). Intel was able to come up with monolithic CODEC which could be used commercially.

Hoff left Intel in 1983 and joined Atari as it was working on some really advanced ideas. But, the business strategies of the company were very poor, which resulted in the dropping of the revenue from $2 billion to $1 billion within a single year. Hoff left Atari in 1985 when the company was sold.

From Engineering to understanding Business

Today, Hoff is the part of Teklicon, a company that deals with business and law; established by Gary Summers, who was the head of semiconductor designing in Atari, when Hoff joined the company.

Graphcore

Simon Knowles : A Pioneering Engineer in the Field of AI-ML

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In the 21st century, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have spread a cloak of mystique around the world that no one wants to drop off. Today, the prime area of learning, research and improvement have been revolving around these two things which so far seems to the two most important and necessary development of science.

With science already bringing a new wave of inventions to the shore of computation, Simon Knowles is ruling the world with his idea of creating chips for AI and ML which will make the computer’s brain work more like a human’s brain.

Simon Knowles is a famous entrepreneur and an engineer who is the co-founder of Graphcore, a semiconductor company that he founded along with Nigel Toon. Knowles’s main aim is to create an IPU (Intelligence Processing Unit) that can allow humans to explore the scope of AI more freely and not just scraping the surface.

Education and Early Career of Knowles

Simon Knowles
Image Source: http://scaledml.org

Simon Knowles graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cambridge. After graduating, he went to study early neural networks at a UK government research lab.

He co-founded his first start-up, Element 14, a wireless processor developing company in the 1990s, which came under the acquisition of Broadcom Inc. in 2000. He sold the company for $640 million and co-founded his second start-up, Icera, in partnership with Toon. The company was established for mobile chip making in 2002, which later was acquired by Nvidia for $436 million.

The Idea of Graphcore

After selling Icera to Nvidia Corp. in 2002, both the co-founders were trying to settle on one single idea, which could be their next field of research or next chance to make billions. Not being able to make a choice, Knowles decided to attend the series of lectures at Cambridge University. One day, he attended the presentation of Steve Young, a Cambridge professor of the Information Technology department, who was elaborating the limits of computational dialogue systems. Young is also known to invent a speech processing service which is now used in Siri.

While Knowles listened to Young’s speech, the former asked him multiple questions about numerical precision and energy efficiency. But, it seemed like Knowles’s questions were out of the field for Young, but that is where Knowles’s interest was stuck as he wanted to invent something instead of just swallowing the lump of information.

Few days after the lecture, Young contacted Knowles to tell him that his students found out that they were using 64 bits of data for one single calculation. They realized that this can be replaced by 8 bits data per calculation, as Knowles suggested in the lecture, which will save the energy that is consumed before. But the calculations won’t be that precise. Well, Knowles said that was his entire idea to manipulate the brain of the computer and make it more human-like. Knowles, in one of his interviews, said that if they could build this kind of processor, the performance factor will be increased by one thousand.

Everyone including, Young and Toon, was very impressed with his idea, and hence, Knowles and Toon decided to found Graphcore, to build this new kind of IPU. They started raising capital from 2013 and were finally able to launch Graphcore in 2016.

Success of Graphcore

After carrying out thorough research, for three years, to create energy-efficient and a cost-efficient chip, that can harness all the power at one single time, but uses less energy than a GPU, they designed a chip with 1,216 processor cores with 24 billion transistors. This chip was manufactured in 2018 and turns out, it was able to detect 10,000 different images per second.

The company is still working on these chips and making it recognize more complex data and not just simple objects. Knowles’s main goal is to provide the machine with lots of data, and the machine should find out a way to complete the given task. Knowles’s dream to make machines behave human-like is bringing a new era, an era of Artificial Intelligence.

The first funding round of Graphcore was led by Robert Bosch Venture Capital in 2016, followed by a round B funding in 2017 by Atomico, and a few months later, by Sequoia Capital. In 2018, Graphcore raised $200 million in series D funding from investors like Dell, Microsoft and Samsung, which resulted in its net worth to $1.7 billion in December 2018. The company also announced that it might hit $50 million revenue this year.

Graphcore also provides server blueprints to many big companies to guide them on how they should manufacture next-generation computers.

voicemail

Gordon Matthews : The American Inventor Who Invented the Voicemail

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Some inventions have become such an integral part of our lives that we cannot imagine our lives otherwise. One can even go to the extent and say that we have almost taken such services for granted. The biggest such example is a subtle yet impactful invention- the Voicemail. This telephone service has been a part of our life for a very long time. It is almost impossible for us to imagine our mundane lives complete without this. But the voicemail is the result of sheer hard work and novelty. Gordon Mathews, the inventor of Voicemail, teaches us some of the most important lessons of life as we unfold the story of how a normal man went on to become the visionary who changed the way people communicate.

The Beginning

Gordon completed his graduation in engineering science from the University of Tulsa in the year 1959. Soon after his graduation, Gordon joined the U.S Marine Corps, and this life decision laid the first foundation stone for Voicemail. We can all agree on the fact that there comes a day in everyone’s life when they have the make it or the break it moment. For Gordon Mathews, this time was when he witnessed the accident of his fellow pilot.

A part of him believed that he had a role to play in it. Soon after he was discharged from the U.S Marine, Gordon went on to join IBM and contributed hugely in developing voice-activated cockpit controls that would play a major role in decreasing air catastrophes such as his friend’s. The incident managed to influence and affected him in such a way that the man decided to dedicate the rest of his career trying to find a solution for such problems in transmitting information between people.

Gordon Matthews
Image Source: ithistory.org

There are a lot of stories that revolve around how Mr Mathews invented Voicemail. The most famous and widely accepted one among them is of his travel to his office in Dallas on a rainy day. On his way to the office, Gordon noticed a trash-filled with pink slips full of while-you-were-out messages and other important information. This sparked an idea in him, and later, led to the invention of the Voicemail.

Gordon once said that if he sees anything that irritates him, he tries to fix it. This was exactly what happened with Voicemail. At the time of his invention, there was already the existence of a simple home answering machine that could only store messages. It uses an ordinary typewriter to do its function. The system found by Gordon did so much more than just record and save messages, i.e., send, forward, receive, store and even erase messages.

VMX

With the rocketing success of voicemail, Gordon started his very own company called ECS Telecommunications, which later on went on to be known as VMX. Soon enough, he received a patent for his invention of Voicemail and sold his first system to 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company). It is believed that his wife Monica was the one to send the first commercial voice message over it.

Later on, Mr Mathews went on to sell major shares of his company to huge firms such as 3M, Intel, Hoffman La Roche and Zenith Data Systems. But later in the year 1988, VMX went into the verge of a major bankruptcy and was soon acquired by a firm named Opcom. This firm was in turn obtained by Octel communications which were then, the largest provider of voicemail services and equipment across the world.

The Legacy

The legacy that Gordon Mathews left behind is huge. He is someone who believed that he could make the world a better place and actually went on to do the same. Even though he did not have much of a success story to tell as a businessman, everyone has a lot to learn from Gordo, as an inventor. The world is always in dire need of new inventions and people like Gordon Mathews, who indeed makes a huge difference in how we perceive the world.

CMOS image sensor

Eric Fossum : The Inventor of Active Pixel Sensor

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Due to the high demand for mobile phones and digital camera, the production and development of image sensors have become an integral part of existing technology. And, among all the image sensors developed till date, active-pixel sensor (APS) is the widely used one, especially CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) APS. These image sensors are extensively used in smartphone cameras, digital pocket cameras, digital single-lens reflex cameras, and probably, in every other present-day camera you can name.

The history of these image sensors goes back to 1985 when Tsutomu Nakamura started working on the charge modulation device active pixel sensor. But it was Eric Fossum, who brought a giant wave of development in this field. So, next time you take out that pocket camera to take photographs, it’s Fossum you should be thankful for.

Early Life and Education of Eric Fossum

Born into a family in Simsbury, Connecticut, Fossum went to a local public school. From a very tender age, he developed an interest in science and engineering. So he spent the Saturdays at Talcott Mountain Science Center in Avon CT. In 1979, he graduated from Trinity College with a B.S in physics and engineering, followed by receiving his PhD in electrical engineering, in 1984 from Yale University.

Fossum’s Academic Career, Research and Invention

eric fossum
Image Source: yale.edu

After receiving his PhD, Fossum joined Columbia University as a professor in 1984. During his time at the university, he, along with his students, researched on CCD (charge-coupled device) focal-plane image processing and high-speed III-C CCDs. In 1990, Fossum joined the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California Institute of Technology and continued his research on the image sensor field. There he developed a modified version of the image sensor with intra-pixel charge transfer and un-pixel amplifier with more modifications and additional features. While he was working in the laboratory, Daniel Goldin, the then NASA-Administrator, wanted something faster, better and cheaper for the space missions. This led Eric Fossum to come up with CMOS APS, which today is incorporated in phone cameras, DSLRs, medical equipment, and automotive safety systems, etc.

According to Fossum, the growth in technology during the early 1990s was at a very slow rate, which led him to establish Photo bit Corporation along with his then-wife, Sabrina Kemeny, to develop and commercialize APS technology at a faster rate. In 1996, he joined the board as chairman and also as the chief scientist. In 2000, Fossum became the CEO of the company, which after a year came under the acquisition of Micron Technology. Even after the acquisition, he remained the part of the company and was named a Senior Micron Fellow. But in 2003, Fossum left Micron. In 2005, he joined at SiWave Inc. as the CEO and worked with the company for two years.

Eric Fossum, in 1986, founded the IEEE workshop on CCDS, which was later renamed as International Image Sensor Workshop.

He also had a sheer interest in robotics, and hence, he partially sponsored the Trinity College Fire-Fighting Robot Contest in 2007. In 2010, Fossum joined the Thayer School of Engineering to teach and conduct research on Quanta Image Sensor and also to coordinate the PhD Innovation Program.

Achievements

Throughout Fossum’s academic career, he had been a recipient of ample of awards. His was in 1984, which was the Yale’s Becton Prize. In the same year, he was honoured with the IBM Faculty Development Award. He also received the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1986, and within the next decade, he bagged NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal. And, this is just a mere preview of his glorious achievements.

Recently, in 2017, Fossum was honoured with Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, which is probably the biggest prize for an engineer. It’s a cash prize of £1 million, generally given to the engineers for inventing something which is globally beneficial.

Life after Retirement

Fossum founded Photobit in 1996 followed by another company Siimple within few years. But, he stepped down from every position, and finally, retired from his business life in 2010. He then moved to New Hampshire.

He was quite happy with his decision to leave his entrepreneurial life because he decided to embrace the retired life and pursue teaching. And thus, he joined Thayer School of Engineering to stay active in the journey of innovation and contribute to the technology as far as he can.

Marshall Amplification

Jim Marshall : The Guitar Amp Pioneer and the ‘Father of Loud’

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From a drummer to one of the most successful entrepreneurs and the inventer of the amplification system, the life journey of Jim aka James Charles Marshall has been quite an interesting one. Jim Marshall is the founder of the famous Marshall Amplification, a company that designs and manufactures music amplifiers and the other music-related products, including speakers cabinets, headphones, and earphones, etc. The company is also known for manufacturing customised products for its customers and is one of the biggest brands in the music industry.

Early Life & Career

Jim Marshal was born in a family of musicians and boxers settled in Acton, London, United Kingdom, on 29 July 1923. Being a part of a musical family, he got naturally inclined towards music. When he was a little kid, he got diagnosed with tubercular bones. So he had to spend most of his childhood in the hospital. At the time he grew a little older, the second world war took place. He also tried his luck in the army but was rejected due to his poor health condition.

Despite missing his school education, Marshall was able to get a day-time job as an electrical engineer at a small firm. He also worked part-time in the evening as a singer as well as a drummer. As an electrical engineer, he got to gain a lot of experience and designed and built a portable amplification system that he brought to his workplace in the evening. This was the first time when he built an amplification system by himself.

Jim Marshall
Image Source: allaboutbluesmusic.com

Soon in 1942, he joined a band as the lead drummer. At the same time, he started teaching music to people. Those people include some of the famous names of the music industry, including Mitch Mitchell and Micky Waller.

Career as an Entrepreneur

Through working with the band and the music classes, he was able to save enough money to start a music store in Hanwell, west London. Initially, he sold drums in the store and soon, on the request of many guitarists, he stocked guitars and their amplification system in the store. While selling those guitars and their amps, he often got to hear that these guitars were not producing the desired sound for them, not even with the amps. The customer wanted something bigger and louder. The customers had to buy different amps for different sounds. So on the suggestion of Ken Bran, the amp repairer, Marshall thought of building a single amplification system for all.

The Turning Point

Marshall started working on a new amplification system, along with his team, that included Ken Bran and the other worker at the store, Dudley Craven. Within a total of six attempts, using a Fender Bassman, Jim Marshall developed the first prototype of the Marshall Amplification in 1962. He named the system as JTM45. JTM is the acronym for Jim and Terry Marshall (Jim’s son).

The new Marshall Amplification became an instant hit and offered people with the sound they were seeking for. Soon the sales, as well as the products in the range of amplification, increased.

One of the most significant product from Marshall Amplification is the Marshall stack. The Marshall stack was designed specifically on the request of Pete Townshend, who wanted a 100 Watt head and an 8×12 cabinet amp. But instead of an 8×12 cabinet, Jim Marshall suggested him a 4×12. But Pete directed him to build what he wanted initially. At last, he had to come back to Marshall so that he could cut the cabinet into half and make it a 4×12. And eventually, the famous 100 Watt Marshall stack was developed.

In 1981, Marshall came up with the Master Volume Marshall amps and the classic Marshall JCM800 split-channel amps. The Marshall store also started including speakers and other music equipment for sale.

The Life After Success

In 1984, Jim Marshall became the recipient of the “Queen’s Award for Export” by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom for the extraordinary achievement of the Marshall Amplification.

Upon completing the 25 years of the company in 1987, it introduced a new Silver Jubilee series of amps, that included the 2555 (100-watt head) and the 2550 (50-watt head) models. The new models rendered the “semi-split channel” design, such that the user could set two different input gain levels through the same tone stack and master volume control.

In 1985, Marshall got his hands printed to the Rock and Roll Walk of Fame. Marshall also received an OBE honour from Buckingham Palace for his “services to the music industry and charity” in 2003.

Marshal participated in many charity works. When Marshall suffered from tuberculosis as a child, he was treated at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore, London. So after earning enough money, he donated a few million dollars to the same hospital.

Marshall had become the biggest name in the field of music through his invention. Today, Marshall Amplification is the first choice of every musician. In fact, in the 60s and 70s, the big-sized Marshall stack had become a status symbol for the musicians. Marshall died at the age of 88 on 5 April 2012. Today he is remembered as one of the four forefathers of rock music equipment and is often cited as the father of Loud.