2000 National Medal of Technology Recipients

Updated June 26, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

Douglas C. Engelbart, Director, Bootstrap Institute, for developing the technology behind personal computing, including continuous, real-time interaction based on cathode-ray tube displays and the mouse, hypertext linking, text editing, online journals, shared-screen teleconferencing, and remote collaborative work.

Dean Kamen, Medical Entrepreneur at the DEKA Research and Development Corporation, for leadership in founding three medical device companies and for inventions related to medical devices that have advanced medical care worldwide, and for innovative and imaginative guidance in awakening America to the excitement of science and technology. He has earned more than 100 patents, both U.S. and foreign, as well as directed a national youth organization and a robotics competition for young people.

The Corning Team of Corning, Inc.: Donald B. Keck, Division Vice President and Technology Director, Optical Physics Technology Group; Robert D. Maurer, Corning Research Fellow (Retired); Peter C. Schultz, President, Heraeus Amerisil, Inc. This group assembled in 1970 at the Corning Glass Corporation and invented the low-loss fiber-optic cable. Their invention has galvanized the telecommunications revolution, rapidly transformed our society, the way we work, learn, and live—and our expectations for the future. It is the basis for one of the largest, most dynamic industries in the world today.

The IBM Corporation. IBM holds more than 2,000 U.S. patents and has contributed its innovations in the technology of hard disk drives and information storage products for the past 40 years. The corporation is a top innovator of component technologies, such as flying magnetic heads (thin film heads and magnetoresistive heads), film disks, head accessing systems, digital signal processing and coding, as well as innovative hard disk drive systems. Some specific IBM inventions are used in every modern hard drive today: thin film inductive heads, MR and GMR heads, rotary actuators, sector servos, and advanced disk designs. These advances outran foreign hard disk technology and enabled the U.S. industry to maintain the lead it holds today.