OVSHINSKY: THE NEW EDISON?

The Edison of our age? Stanford Ovshinsky may not be a household name, but his inventions have the power to change the world
December 6, 2006 (Financial Express of India via AutoblogGreen)
- “The ages of mankind have been classified by the materials they use—the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Age of Silicon. We are at the dawn of the Hydrogen Age.” So proclaims Stanford Ovshinsky, co-founder of Energy Conversion Devices (ECD)…

- [S]cepticism is certainly in order…President George Bush and the big carmakers have been trumpeting hydrogen fuel cells—electrochemical devices that turn hydrogen into electricity and water vapour—as the replacement for the internal-combustion engine. But the date of commercialisation seems forever slipping just beyond the horizon.
That has prompted a backlash from advocates of rival technologies (such as ethanol-based engines and novel batteries) and from greens, who argue that hydrogen is just a cynical long-term diversion used by Mr Bush and Detroit to avoid short-term action on fuel-economy standards, plug-in hybrids and other here-and-now options…
- Three things set Mr Ovshinsky apart from the hydrogen hypesters. First of all, he is no newcomer. He first outlined his vision for what he calls a “hydrogen loop” some five decades ago…second…Mr Ovshinsky’s green credentials are impeccable. He and his wife Iris, who died recently, founded ECD in 1960…[predicting]…the world’s addiction to oil would have unacceptable side effects, from resource wars to climate change…

- But what lifts Mr Ovshinsky into the league of genius inventors is something rather less common: success. He is the inventor of the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery, which is used to power everything from portable electronics to hybrid cars; around 1 billion such batteries are sold every year. He has also made advances in information technology (he calls information “encoded energy”) and holds critical patents relating to thin-film solar cells, rewriteable optical discs, a new form of non-volatile memory and flat-panel displays. These technologies are being commercialised through deals with Intel, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, General Electric, Chevron, United Solar Ovonic, and others.
- What all these apparently disparate inventions have in common is that they rely on Mr Ovshinsky’s path-breaking discoveries in the field of disordered or “amorphous” materials, since named “ovonics” in his honour. Such materials can be used for energy generation (in fuel cells and solar cells), for energy storage (in batteries), for computing (to store data on discs or in chips) and to create custom materials with novel properties…
- ECD has even “hacked” a Toyota Prius hybrid car so that it runs on pure hydrogen rather than petrol, which he says proves that “we don’t have to wait for fuel cells to move into the hydrogen economy.”

- All this makes it tempting to compare ECD’s co-founder with Thomas Edison, the great inventor from another age who founded General Electric. Both established themselves early on…Both arose from humble roots…Edison, like Mr Ovshinsky, straddled the fields of energy and information technology…both thought of their inventions as entire systems…
- Mr Ovshinsky’s vision for a hydrogen loop was just a blackboard exercise five decades ago. But since then he has produced the inventions needed to make it work…
- The best evidence of Mr Ovshinsky’s systems approach at work is his shiny new solar factory in Michigan…for producing miles of thin-film solar material…So does he see ECD as the GE of the 21st century? “Oh, ECD will be much more than that…”

- Inspired by the family’s links to the peace and civil-rights movements, the Ovshinsky motto is “with the oppressed, against the oppressor”, and ECD retains the feel of a family firm with those values. What is more, ECD is visibly committed to clean energy—and Mr Ovshinsky is clearly not motivated by money…
- The loss of his wife, collaborator and co-founder has clearly devastated Mr Ovshinsky, but do not expect to see him retire anytime soon. He may be 84, but he evidently has plenty of unfinished business to attend to…He has worked out how his next generation of solar films will be produced not at 2.5 feet per minute, he says, but 100 times faster. He is convinced he can radically improve the efficiency of fuel-cell electrodes. He thinks he will be able to scale up his firm’s hydrogen-storage system to megawatt scale, thus enabling grid storage of renewable power. And so on…