an improved electrical resistor

Middle sentence of second paragraph is the most relevant.

Otis Frank Boykin was born in 1920 in Dallas, Texas. His mother was a homemaker and his father was a carpenter. He worked as a laboratory assistant at the nearby University's aerospace laboratory. Otis attended Fisk University and Illinois Institute of Technology, but dropped out after two years because his parents could not afford his tuition.

Boykin, in his lifetime, ultimately invented more than 25 electronic devices. One of his early inventions was an improved electrical resistor for computers, radios, televisions and an assortment of other electronic devices. Other notable inventions include a variable resistor used in guided missiles and small component thick-film resistors for computers.[2] ---------------

So how can one improve an electrical resistor?

Reply to
mm
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A careful read of the actual patent filed for this "improved resistor" shows that the improvement was more for reliability and ease of manufacture. This also implies that the cost would be minimized for the more accurate resistors (1% etc). Search the web for patent #2972726 for more details. The patent itself is 4 pages and was dated 2/21/1961.

Dan

Reply to
abrsvc

Stability and tolerance comes to mind.

-- Boris

Reply to
Boris Mohar

!:better stability

2:lower temperature coefficient 3:mechanically stronger. 4:Less ageing. 5:higher admissable peak voltage/current.

Warn us when you produce something like that.....

Reply to
Sjouke Burry

The invention was easier to manufacture while simultaneously lowering both self-inductance and self-capacitance.

Reply to
spamtrap1888

A change of materials might allow a resistor of a given physical size to dissipate heat more effectively, or run at a higher body temperature without damage or change-of-value, or survive a catastrophic fault better (e.g. "flame-proof" construction), or be less expensive to manufacture.

--
Dave Platt                                    AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page:  http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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Reply to
Dave Platt

This is a bit misleading, because Boykin was a grad student at IIT from 1946 to 1947. Around that time, he formed the Boykin-Fruth corporation with fellow inventor Hal Frederick Fruth, PhD. (Dr. Fruth, a physicist, was perhaps best known today for telling W. Edwards Deming that Western Electric might pay him as much as $5000 a year when he got his PhD, but that they were looking for men who would be worth $50K a year to them.)

Reply to
spamtrap1888

I must have really low standards if I didnt think of any of these. My ex-girlfriend tells me that's what I have.

Okay.

Reply to
mm

So he had graduated from Fisk. Yes, definitely misleading. Although now I do see that it could mean what you say , I thought he only had two years of post-high school. Six years is a lot more. Wikipedia often has paragraphs out of chronlogical order and hard to follow, or even conflicting paragraphs, written by different people, I guess.

Hmmm.

Thanks all.

Boykin was black, btw. Fisk is a historically black college.

Reply to
mm

There are a lot of hits for him in "famous black people" sites, some of which make a variety of improbable claims*. He did receive a dozen patents, mostly for CTS (originally Chicago Telephone Supply). When CTS moved to Indiana, Boykin stayed in Chicago -- perhaps educated blacks weren't welcome in Indiana**. One patent lists his address as

8251 S. Maryland, which I note is a three-flat according to the pic at the Cook County assessor site. *Improbable that Boykin invented the pacemaker or a guided missile, or that pot fueled his inventiveness. **Pioneer hormone synthesizer, Percy Julian, had to leave Indiana to find work, ending up at the Glidden Paint company in Chicago.
Reply to
spamtrap1888

The Klan was big in parts of Indiana, mostly the southern half. While schools in Indianapolis weren't officially segregated against Blacks, they created a high school just for Blacks to suck up most of them and keep them out of the other schools, and black students from other high schools were forced to attend Crispus Attucks H.S. It accepted its first white students in 1967.

It didn't say that in the wikip page,

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only that he invented a valuable part.

It shows "An ink drawing of Otis Boykin from a U.S. Department of Energy biographical sketch of 1979." on which is written "Electronic Devices for heart stimulators and guided missiles.

LOL I think pot refers to potentiometer. "Other notable inventions include a variable resistor used in guided missiles"

Reply to
mm

On Tue, 17 May 2011 18:23:23 -0400, mm put finger to keyboard and composed:

Did you trade up to a girlfriend of a higher standard? ;-)

- Franc Zabkar

--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
Reply to
Franc Zabkar

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