Abstract :
It\´s the late 1970s, the U.S. economy is reeling from years of skyhigh oil prices, and President Jimmy Carter desperately wants to reverse the downward spiral in the nation\´s prosperity and morale. Seeking wisdom from the crowd, he brings ordinary citizens to Camp David, who, as he later recounts in his famous "malaise" speech, tell him: "Be bold, Mr. President. We may make mistakes, but we are ready to experiment." One person ready to experiment-in the literal sense-was B. Jayant Baliga, the recipient of this year\´s IEEE Medal of Honor. At the time, he was developing semiconductor power devices for General Electric, which used countless electric motors in its many products-countless motors that drew countless watts. Most were induction motors, whose speeds were governed by the power-line frequency. So when a machine required less oomph, there was no good way to slow it down. The usual work-around was to insert a physical barrier into the stream of air or water that was being pumped around. No wonder electric appliances of that generation were atrociously inefficient.
