HEROES OF… TECHNOLOGY
Stanford Ovshinsky
The environmentalist and tech genius whose inventions transformed the devices in your home
Ovshinsky invented ovonics, which converts materials from a non-conducting state to a conducting state
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Stanford speaks to his wife Iris outside Energy Conversion Devices, the company they started together
© Getty
You might not know much about Stanford Ovshinsky, but you are sure to have encountered his work. He is behind the batteries in our smartphones, the flat screen televisions on our walls and the rise of electric vehicles. Many of his inventions arose from his work in physics, where he discovered how to create an electrical current in materials that had not shown this capability before. In doing so, he was able to change the design of devices like the television. Before flat screens were made commercially available in the late 1990s, televisions were bulky and weighty, so hanging them on the wall simply wasn’t an option. But Ovshinsky had a vision. By proving that thin screens could conduct electricity and produce the same quality of image, the world of home entertainment was transformed.