Lillian Hoddeson and Peter Garrett
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780262037532
- eISBN:
- 9780262345033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262037532.003.0013
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Though overwhelmed by Iris’s death, at 84 Ovshinsky was not yet done with life and invention, nor was he ready to stop working towards solving urgent social problems like climate change. He found a ...
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Though overwhelmed by Iris’s death, at 84 Ovshinsky was not yet done with life and invention, nor was he ready to stop working towards solving urgent social problems like climate change. He found a new love in the physicist Rosa Young, who had been a colleague for over twenty years. In 2007 they married and began a new life together. Ovshinsky also wanted to resume the research efforts that had been terminated with his ouster from ECD. With Rosa’s encouragement, he devoted his own savings to starting a new company, Ovshinsky Innovation, where he pursued his characteristically ambitious ideas for building a gigawatt machine, a solar panel production plant whose vastly increased capacity would, he believed, at last make solar power “cheaper than coal.”Less
Though overwhelmed by Iris’s death, at 84 Ovshinsky was not yet done with life and invention, nor was he ready to stop working towards solving urgent social problems like climate change. He found a new love in the physicist Rosa Young, who had been a colleague for over twenty years. In 2007 they married and began a new life together. Ovshinsky also wanted to resume the research efforts that had been terminated with his ouster from ECD. With Rosa’s encouragement, he devoted his own savings to starting a new company, Ovshinsky Innovation, where he pursued his characteristically ambitious ideas for building a gigawatt machine, a solar panel production plant whose vastly increased capacity would, he believed, at last make solar power “cheaper than coal.”
Lillian Hoddeson and Peter Garrett
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780262037532
- eISBN:
- 9780262345033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262037532.003.0019
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Reckless financing for expansion by its new management led ECD to file for bankruptcy in February 2012. That failure also ended Ovshinsky’s solar power effort. Work on his nickel metal hydride ...
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Reckless financing for expansion by its new management led ECD to file for bankruptcy in February 2012. That failure also ended Ovshinsky’s solar power effort. Work on his nickel metal hydride batteries, however, was continued by BASF, which purchased the Ovonic Battery Company. The batteries continue to be used widely, including in hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius. Ovonyx was sold to Micron, and phase-change memory has now been developed by an Intel-Micron collaboration resulting in the recent memory device called 3D Xpoint, poised to become an important addition to information technology. Ovshinsky Innovation ended its work soon after Ovshinsky’s death, but a small new company has revived the name of Ovshinsky Innovation and is continuing some of Ovshinsky’s work.Less
Reckless financing for expansion by its new management led ECD to file for bankruptcy in February 2012. That failure also ended Ovshinsky’s solar power effort. Work on his nickel metal hydride batteries, however, was continued by BASF, which purchased the Ovonic Battery Company. The batteries continue to be used widely, including in hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius. Ovonyx was sold to Micron, and phase-change memory has now been developed by an Intel-Micron collaboration resulting in the recent memory device called 3D Xpoint, poised to become an important addition to information technology. Ovshinsky Innovation ended its work soon after Ovshinsky’s death, but a small new company has revived the name of Ovshinsky Innovation and is continuing some of Ovshinsky’s work.
