Science & invention / Business & brands
Stanford R. Ovshinsky
1922–2012 · inventor, physicist, entrepreneur
Self-taught inventor of the nickel-metal hydride battery and thin-film solar panels, who built his company Energy Conversion Devices in Detroit and Troy over half a century.
- Born
Akron, Ohio- Died
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
aged 89- Birth name
- Stanford Robert Ovshinsky
- Also known as
- Stan Ovshinsky
- Detroit years
- 1951–2012
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Ovshinsky, a machinist from Akron with no college degree, moved to Detroit in 1951 to become research director at the Hupp Motor Company, where he invented an electric power steering system. With his brother Herb he then opened a small company, General Automation, in a storefront on West McNichols Road, and in 1955 he took part in brain research at Wayne State's medical school. On January 1, 1960, he and his wife, the biochemist Iris Ovshinsky, founded the Energy Conversion Laboratory in Detroit to use science against social problems such as energy shortages. Renamed Energy Conversion Devices, it moved to Troy in 1965 and later to Rochester Hills. Out of his work on amorphous and disordered materials came the nickel-metal hydride battery used in laptops and early hybrid and electric cars, flexible thin-film solar panels, rewritable optical discs and phase-change memory. ECD went bankrupt in 2012, the year he died in Bloomfield Hills.
Highlights
- More than 400 patents in energy and information technology
- Invented the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery
- Pioneer of amorphous semiconductors and thin-film solar panels
- Founded the Energy Conversion Laboratory in Detroit, 1960
- Named a 'Hero for the Planet' by Time magazine, 1999
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Founded · 1965–2000s
Energy Conversion Devices headquarters (former)
Closed · 1965–2012
Longtime home of the company he and Iris Ovshinsky founded in Detroit in 1960; ECD later moved to Rochester Hills and went bankrupt in 2012.