Inventor, solar innovator Stanford R. Ovshinsky dies at 89

Source: Detroit News

October 18, 2012 at 12:12 pm
Inventor, solar innovator Stanford R. Ovshinsky dies at 89
By Dale Buss
Special to The Detroit News


Inventor and solar technology innovator Stanford R. Ovshinsky died Wednesday evening at the age of 89, but not until he had seen the commercial establishment of a technology revolution that he helped launch in his Detroit laboratory more than a half-century ago.

Ovshinsky died peacefully at home in Bloomfield Hills after ailing from prostate cancer, said his son, Harvey Ovshinsky. There will be a private burial in Akron, Ohio, where Ovshinsky was born.

Best known nationally as a hero of the electric-car movement, Ovshinsky also is credited with discovering in the late 1960s what became known as the "Ovshinsky effect" — the principle that described how glass can be engineered to conduct electricity.

He predicted then that the effect could be harnessed to produce smaller desktop computers, cheaper electronics and flat, tubeless television sets that could be hung on the wall like a picture — and did lead to personal computers, inexpensive electronics and flat-screen TVs.



Read more: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20121018/BIZ/210180478#ixzz29fUW5rHG