Lemelson-MIT "Inventor of the Week Award" to Fred Charles Thomas III. For the past 25 years, the Lemelson-MIT Program has given an annual $500K prize to a mid-career inventor whose work offers a significant value to society, for improving lives and communities, and has been adopted or has a high probability of being adopted for practical use. The 26 inventors celebrated over the last 25 years demonstrate the significant impact people can have in the world and serve as role models for young inventors, including those participating in the Lemelson-MIT Program’s invention education and Student Prize programs.
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Engineer-inventor Fred C. Thomas was born
on October 25, 1959 in Washington D.C. With
his diplomat parents he traveled and lived all
over the world, including time spent in
Pakistan, South Vietnam, India, Taiwan,
Germany and the Philippines, as well as the
United States. His father had been an
electrical engineer earlier in his career and it
was he who inspired his son’s interest in
technology, especially solar energy. When the
younger Thomas began to see media
coverage of innovations that were very similar
to ideas he had had years earlier, he realized
he might have a special talent for developing
new technological concepts. He entered
Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
where he completed his B.S. in Mechanical
Engineering in 1983.
That year Thomas began working for Texas Instruments Defense
Systems in Dallas, first as an electro-optics systems engineer and later
as manager of the Laser Ranging Systems Test Group. There he was
responsible for a number of innovations related to testing and analysis.
He parlayed this experience into his own business, Prototype Devices,
which he operated until 1991. Meanwhile, he completed his M.S. in
Mechanical Engineering at Bucknell in 1990.
In 1991, Thomas joined the Iomega Corporation, working his way up
from mechanical product design engineer to Chief Technologist in the
Advanced R&D division. At Iomega, Thomas has become one of the
most prolific innovators in the company’s 25-year history, with more
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Inventor of the Week: Archive
company inventions to his credit than any other employee. He has at
least 32 patents issued and more than 20 pending on technologies
developed for the organization.
One of Thomas’ first projects for the compan