The National Inventors Hall of Fame recently held its 38th annual induction ceremony to honor the new class of 10 inductees. The innovative figures honored in 2011 join such inventors as the creators of the remote control, the laser and the helicopter. Here we look at the latest round of Hall of Famers joining the hallowed ranks.

Each year, the National Inventors Hall of Fame inducts a new group of groundbreaking and inspiring inventors from the worlds of science and engineering. Here we look at the latest round of Hall of Famers joining the hallowed ranks.

George Devol — Devol revolutionized industrial production when he created Unimate, the first industrial robot, which he began marketing in 1961 as a new machine to assist in assembly line production. Unimate, produced by Devol’s company Unimation, first saw work at a General Motors plant in New Jersey. Following Unimate, which has been inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame, industrial robots became a mainstay in manufacturing around the world.

Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman and Ralph Merkle — Diffie and Hellman created the Diffie-Hellman key exchange, a method of encrypting information on less secure Internet connections, in 1976, and Merkle later developed it. Although British intelligence agent Malcolm J. Williamson had devised the system two years earlier, his discovery was kept top secret by the UK government. The basis for the key gave rise to an entire system of encryption called public key exchange.

Eric Fossum — While working at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Fossum developed the CMOS active pixel sensor, a “camera on a chip,” that allowed NASA to shrink the cameras sent into space. The CMOS active pixel sensor was small and energy efficient. Fossum marketed the device in the private sector, founding his own company, Photobit Corporation, in the process, and cementing the technology’s place in camera phones, medical devices and vehicle safety systems. Fossum went on to develop the “camera on a pill,” a camera swallowed by patients to allow doctors better access to digestive images. In total, Fossum holds more than 90 patents.

Gary Michelson — Michelson, an orthopedic spinal surgeon, is honored not for one specific invention, but rather for a whopping 250 U.S. and 500 foreign patents on various pieces of technology related to spinal medicine. These devices include implants, surgical instruments and methodology, which have been used in hundreds of thousands of procedures worldwide. In 2005, Michelson sold the majority of his patents to Medtronic for more than $1 billion. He has used this money to found charitable organizations and sponsor the Michelson Prize and Grants in Reproductive Biology, a competition to challenge people to combat pet overpopulation.

Steven Sasson — In December 1975, electrical engineer Steven Sasson took the first ever digital photograph. While working at Eastman Kodak in 1975, Sasson was tasked with developing technology to determine if it was possible to “build a camera using solid-state imagers,” a sensor that collects optical information. He asked a lab assistant to pose for the shot, which took 23 seconds to record onto a digital cassette, and then another 23 seconds to transfer the image to a television set. The picture was blurry, but Sasson tweaked the wiring and began producing clear digital images regularly. Although it took a few decades, Kodak eventually became the leader in consumer digital camera sales.

Esther S. Takeuchi — Some cardiac patients require an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) to help jump-start their hearts in the case of emergency, but the lead in small batteries for these devices can pose a significant risk of infection. While at Greatbatch, Inc., Takeuchi helped invent the Lithium/Silver Vanadium Oxide Battery (Li/SVO) technology that circumvents these problems while also being safe, durable and dependable. More than 300,000 ICDs are implanted each year.

N. Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver (1935-1963) — Graduate student Silver overheard a food chain owner asking for a system to track product information at checkout. He and his friend Woodland began developing what eventually became bar codes, basing their invention on Morse code. Today, bar codes are used to track sale items, shop and military equipment, patients, livestock, toll customers and more.

“It is truly a privilege to celebrate and honor such a distinguished group of innovators,” David Kappos, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, said in an announcement of the induction ceremony. “Their ingenuity has transformed the very way we interact with the world, and their patented inventions have built businesses that have created jobs and inspired new technological development for generations to come.”

In addition to modern inventors, each year the Hall of Fame inducts a select group of 19th century innovators as “Historical Inductees.” Click here for the complete list.

Earlier

A Look at the 2010 Inventors Hall of Fame

The Latest Walk through the Inventors Hall of Fame

Inventors Hall of Fame: The New Class

Resources

Meet the 2011 National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductees
Invent Now, 2011

National Inventors Hall of Fame Honors 2011 Inductees
Invent Now, May 4, 2011

National Inventors Hall of Fame 2011 Inductees
GetListy, March 3, 2011

National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductees
Inventors Digest, 2011