The power broker

Abstract

It's the late 1970s, the U.S. economy is reeling from years of skyhigh oil prices, and President Jimmy Carter desperately wants to reverse the downward spiral in the nation's prosperity and morale. Seeking wisdom from the crowd, he brings ordinary citizens to Camp David, who, as he later recounts in his famous "malaise" speech, tell him: "Be bold, Mr. President. We may make mistakes, but we are ready to experiment." One person ready to experiment-in the literal sense-was B. Jayant Baliga, the recipient of this year's IEEE Medal of Honor. At the time, he was developing semiconductor power devices for General Electric, which used countless electric motors in its many products-countless motors that drew countless watts. Most were induction motors, whose speeds were governed by the power-line frequency. So when a machine required less oomph, there was no good way to slow it down. The usual work-around was to insert a physical barrier into the stream of air or water that was being pumped around. No wonder electric appliances of that generation were atrociously inefficient.