Bernard L Feldman
Bernard L. Feldman | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | February 17, 1921 |
| Died | September 1, 2009 (aged 88) |
| Residence | Watsonville, CA, United States |
| Nationality | USA |
| Known for | Aether, Black Holes |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Electrical Engineer, Inventor |
Bernard L. Feldman (February 17, 1921 – 2009), known to friends as Bernie, was an American electrical engineer and inventor. Over a career spanning several decades he was awarded numerous patents, including early work on electrical resistors and, later, methods for etching the metal-oxide films used in liquid-crystal displays. Late in life he developed an interest in theoretical physics and cosmology, formulating critiques of the theory of black holes and a discontinuous model of the aether, which he presented through the Natural Philosophy Alliance.
Biography
Feldman was born on February 17, 1921, in Pennsylvania, the fourth of five children of Russian Jewish immigrants; his father worked as a window washer after the family settled in the United States. When Feldman was about a year old the family moved to Chicago, where he grew up, and he was the only one of his siblings to graduate from college. During World War II he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces and served in England as a radar specialist, reaching the rank of second lieutenant. An encounter with a French civilian who asked why the Allies were bombing his country was later cited as an influence on his pacifism.
Feldman attended the University of Chicago, where he earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a master's degree in chemistry. In later life he lived in Watsonville, California, and married late in life. He died in 2009.
Work
Early in his career Feldman worked with Nathan Pritikin — later widely known as a diet and nutrition advocate — as part of a team developing electrical resistors, a technology later superseded by the semiconductor. Patents associated with this early resistor work include:
- U.S. Patent 2,617,741 – Electroconductive article and production thereof
- U.S. Patent 2,927,048 – Method of making electrical resistors
- U.S. Patent 2,934,736 – Electrical resistor
Feldman subsequently developed glass refrigeration display technology for an employer and, beginning in his fifties, increasingly earned his living from his own inventions, describing himself as an engineer and inventor. His later patents, assigned to his Feldman Technology Corporation, covered methods for etching metal-oxide films—including tin-oxide films—used in the manufacture of liquid-crystal displays, as well as a method and system for compensating for the response characteristics of a display using field-sequential addressing and pre-processing. He also held a provisional patent for a congestion-pricing scheme intended to charge road-use fees based on factors such as time of day without requiring special equipment aboard vehicles.
Scientific contributions
Although not trained as a physicist or astronomer, Feldman became interested in cosmology in his later years and sought to refute the mainstream theory of black holes. He also proposed a discontinuous model of the aether and wrote on the philosophy of science. His ideas fell outside mainstream physics; he presented his papers through the Natural Philosophy Alliance, including at the organization's 2009 conference held in Storrs, Connecticut.
Abstracts
- 2009 - "On the Philosophy of Science: Some Razors" (Read in full)
- 2002 - "The Doctrine of Original Spin" (Read in full)
- 2000 - "Discontinuous Ether Model" (Read in full)
External links
- Patents by Bernard L. Feldman (Google Patents)