Inventor to speak at South Orange Middle School

James West

On Jan. 19, one of the men respon­sible for the sound your telephone makes every time it rings will be speaking at the South Orange Middle School. James West is the co-inventor of the electret microphone, the compo­nent that is used in almost all of the telephones being used today. The tech­nology that West co-developed is also responsible for almost 90 percent of all microphones manufactured to this day.
The event is being sponsored by the Martin Luther King Jr. Cultural Club of the South Orange Middle School. West will be speaking in the middle school’s auditorium at 9 a.m., with a reception following. The speech is open to the general public.

Johanna Wright is the founder and advisor for the Martin Luther King Jr. Cultural Club. She started the group in 1989 and has added many programs to its roster. According to Wright, “James West generally doesn’t come to mid­dle schools, but now that he’s retired, he decided that he wanted to still be working.”

After his retirement from Bell Labs in 2001, West realized he didn’t want to stop working. As he said in his press release from the office of news and information at Johns Hopkins Univer­sity, “One thing was clear: I’d had a great life in research. It wasn’t broken, so why fix it?” Currently, West is on the faculty staff of the Whiting School of Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University.
West will address the students and talk to them about his career and life in science. He was born in Prince Edward County, Va. Despite the fact that, in those days, most black men from the South were not expected to excel in science, West went on to attend Temple University, as a major in physics. In 1962, he and his col­league, Gerhard Sessler, invented and patented the electret microphone, for which he is still well-known today.

According to a press release, West stated that, “ In those days in the South, the only professional jobs that seemed to be open to a black man were a teacher, a preacher, a doctor, or a lawyer.”
When West addresses the students on Jan. 19, he is expected to talk about his career and his life in science. He will also speak about the problems he has encountered along the way.
“He will talk to people in the mid­dle school about respect and he will talk about giving back. He will talk about the different trials and tribula­tions that the students might come up against, and how they should be able to handle it and make good choices, for their futures,” said Wright.
West is the seventh inductee to be chosen for the Martin Luther King Jr. Cultural Club’s Hall of Fame. Previ­ous honorees have included Carla Peterman, a Rhodes Scholar from the district; musicians Wycliff Jean and Lauren Hill; entrepreneur A.J. Call­away; renowned anthropologist Yusef Jawayeyi; filmmaker Peter Chapman; and human rights’ advocate and for­mer Vice- President of Malawi Chakufwa Chihana.
“It’s exciting,” said Wright. “When we had Mr. Chihana come to us, he had just gotten out of prison the night before, for his political beliefs. He had been there for 20 years and, the next day, he was in our school.”

The Martin Luther King Jr. Cultur­al Club consists of 130 students the meet every other week. The club rais­es money for their Global Reach Pro­gram, which is associated with both Malawi and Haiti.
According to Wright, the club “buys drugs from India and Brazil, where we can treat aids patients for about $ 100 per year per patient, instead of from much more expensive countries with unaffordable drugs. And we send books, clothing, uni­forms for sports and even soccer balls if they need it.”
The event will include a question­and- answer period. Later that same evening, West will be speaking at Seton Hall University.

The speech is scheduled for 7 p.m. at in the Science and Technology Building, and is open to the public.
 

		Copyright (c)2008 Worrall Community Newspapers, Inc, Edition 01/10/2008