Bernard J. Lechner

Bernard J. Lechner ( born 1932 in New York City, USA) is an American electrical engineer and inventor.

Life

Lechner grew up in New Rochelle, New York, the son of the same father, Bernard J. Lechner as one of five children.

In Rochelle, he attended secondary school (English High School ). Already at that time he was interested in radio and television and tinkered appropriate devices together. In addition there was commercial devices for self.

Then he made during two years of service in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, both in USA and Karlsruhe, Germany.

Subsequently, he studied electrical engineering at Columbia University in New York City, which he as a bachelor ( BSEE ) graduated in 1957.

After having worked already with RCA, he made further studies at Princeton University and Harvard Business School.

Creation

In 1957 he took a job at the RCA Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey, who was then the leading institution in the United States for further development of radio and television.

Under the direction of George H. Meier worked salvation in these laboratories in the second half of the 1960s, a team at the initial development of liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Lechner, interested in the potential application of LCDs for television, therefore, studied matrix arrays of such displays with a limited number of picture elements ( pixels) and found that in such passive - matrix displays were close limits on usable number of pixels and their switching speed. His invention was to control each LCD - pixel and a connected in parallel with the electricity storable capacity of a field effect transistor. Thus, the state of charge and therefore the contrast of an image point could be appropriately controlled and stored. At a news conference at the headquarters of RCA in New York, this concept was in 1968 with a matrix consisting of 36 pixels, built with discrete components, presented as potentially suitable for television. A corresponding publication followed in 1969. Though not then so called, invented Lechner so the concept of active matrix displays (now flat screens abbreviated AMLCD or AMOLED called ).

After RCA had first reduced the LCD activities and 1976 all set Lechner improvements and further development of the standard was dedicated in the U.S. television technology. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the standardization definition of HDTV through the organization CCIR, Geneva, 1989-1990.

He was known by the Lechner distance in the United States. The eye has a typical maximum discrimination ability (resolution) expressible. Than angular, which Lechner sat in relation to the distance from the viewer to the television screen and the height of the image So he could for the typical in U.S. households distance of nine feet ( 3 m ) determine the optimum height of the TV screen of 525 lines between the viewer and the screen, and then the vertical resolution of television images according to U.S. standard NTSC. It also could be explained that in Japanese households with smaller average distance between the viewer and the screen makes sense to most units sold were smaller than in the U.S.. Applied to today's high definition television can be determined with the Lechner distance at a given distance between the viewer and flat screen in which screen size as the eye can barely perceive the image resolution.

Lechner was Staff Vice President of Advanced Video Systems of the RCA laboratories. He is also a member of Tau Beta Pi Honor Societies, Eta Kappa Nu and Sigma Xi.

When the company General Electric bought RCA and then the David Sarnoff Research Center at SRI International abdicated in 1987, Lechner chose early retirement. He then worked as a consultant in Newtown, Pennsylvania.

Honors

  • Fellow of the Society for Information Display ( SID), which he was president from 1978 to 1980
  • SID Frances Rice Darne Award, 1971
  • SID Beatrice Winner Award, 1983
  • Fellow of the IEEE
  • IEEE Jun- ichi Nishizawa Medal, 2011
  • David Sarnoff Medal, 1996
  • Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE )
  • SMPTE Progress Medal, 2001
  • Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC ) Outstanding Achievement Award. ATSC called this award since 2000, the Bernard J. Lechner Award, which is awarded annually.

Writings (selection )

  • Lechner, BJ: Testing HDTV terrestrial broadcasting system, IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting, Vol 37 (1991 ), 4, pp. 148-151
  • Kressel and H. Lechner, BJ (guest editors ): Scanning the issue- Special issue on consumer electronics, Proc. of the IEEE, Vol 82 (1994 ), 4, p 445-458
  • Lechner, B. J.; Chernock, R.; Eyer, M. K.; Goldberg, A.; Goldman, MS: The ATSC Transport Layer, Including Program and System Information Protocol ( PSIP ), Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol 94 ( 2006), 1, pp. 77-101
Princeton (New Jersey) George H. Heilmeier Field-effect transistor Active-matrix liquid-crystal display Flat panel display Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
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