Verified

James E. West

Co-inventor of the electret microphone

At a glance

Inventor: James E. West
Life: b. 1931
Birthplace: Farmville, Virginia
Country: United States
Region: United States
Era: 1950–2000
Fields: Technology & Computing, Everyday Life
Evidence: Verified
Records: 1 in this archive

What they did

At Bell Laboratories, West and Gerhard Sessler developed the foil-electret transducer: a microphone using permanently charged polymer film instead of a power-hungry condenser supply.

Historical context

Microphones were bulky, expensive and needed large bias voltages, which kept them out of consumer devices.

The legacy

The overwhelming majority of microphones ever made are electret-based — phones, hearing aids, laptops, baby monitors. West holds more than 250 patents.

The evidence

[1]US Patent 3,118,022 — Electroacoustic transducer
Primary record
United States Patent Office · Patent record
[2]James E. West oral history
Institutional record
Johns Hopkins University / IEEE History Center · University archive

Documentation strength

Strong

2
Sources: 1
Primary: 2
Publishers

Calculated from the sources actually attached to this record — the closer a source sits to the original document, the more it counts. It is never asserted by hand.