Aiken, William R.

Biography

William Ross Aiken was born February 19, 1919, in Maui, Hawaii. He attended Los Angeles City College for two years, but his education was interrupted by war work. From 1941-1947, he worked in the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California, as an electrical and mechanical draughtsman and supervisor of communications. In 1946, he founded Ross Radio Corporation, wich produced high quality radio-phonographs. Aiken graduated in 1947 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and subsequently joined the University of California Radiation Laboratory (now Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory), where he developed instrumentation and controls for nuclear accelerators.

In 1940 Aiken took a leave of absence at the request of the Laboratory's director, Dr. Ernest O. Lawrence, to help develop the Lawrence color tube. Upon returning to the Lab in 1951, Aiken led a group working on instrumentation for nuclear devices for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission as part of Project Greenhouse. He applied this experience to his work in Livermore, California, and Mercury, Nevada, where he developed devices and techniques for nuclear research while working on a prototype of the thin cathode ray tube.

In the early 1950s, Aiken became Director of Research at Kaiser Aircraft and Electronics (now a part of Rockwell-Collins). There he further developed the Kaiser-Aiken Thin Cathode Ray Tube, used in aircraft instrumentation and other flat screen displays. Mr. Aiken formed Electronics Ten, Inc., in the early 1960s to improve on the Kaiser-Aiken thin tube, and produce an automatic audio control he designed. In the 1970s, he became Vice President of Research and Development for Display Technology Corporation (DTC) of Cupertino, California, which produced an indoor/outdoor electrostatic sign developed by Aiken.

In 1959, Aiken successfully ran for city councilman in his home town of Los Altos Hills, California. He served as a councilman from 1960-1970, during which time he served one term as mayor. He was a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a fellow of the Society for Information Display. Aiken held over 100 patents. Of particular interest are those for the thin cathode-ray tube, quadular modulation audio control, an electrostatic display system, and solid state displays. In the early 1980s, after his retirement, he wrote and published two computer manuals, Hard Disk, Made Easy, and Cheatbook for Wordstar .

Aiken died in Los Altos Hills in February 2007.

From the guide to the William Ross Aiken Papers, 1944-2007, (bulk 1955-1996), (History San Jose Research Library)