The son of West Area Computer Matilda West, Dr. James Edward Maceo West was a distinguished electrical engineer at the tech giant Bell Laboratories. In 1962, right at the start of his four-decade career with Bell, he and research partner Gerhard Sessler developed the foil electret microphone, the first microphone model that didn’t require batteries. To this day, 9 out of 10 modern microphone designs (including those in phones and recording equipment) employ West’s ingenuity.
West was named a Bell Laboratories Fellow, the organization’s highest honor, before his retirement in 2001. He now works at Johns Hopkins university as a research professor, developing improved teleconferencing technology, and actively pushes forward programs to get more women and minorities in STEM fields.
More on West:
Famous Black Inventors
The History Makers