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Filipino
Inventions
Everyday
Life Inventions
That
Are Filipino
By Marcia Wendorf
Inventions by Filipino inventors include the graphics
accelerator chip, wearable camera, and the lunar rover.
The next time you watch a video on your PC or play a video game,
consider thanking Filipino inventor Diosdado Banatao who
invented the graphics accelerator chip for personal computers.
Banatao was born to a poor rice farmer in 1946, and walked
barefoot on a dirt road to elementary school.
Following high school, Banatao graduated from the Mapúa
Institute of Technology with a degree in electrical engineering.
He then went to work for Philippine Airlines as a pilot, but was
soon working in the U.S. at the Boeing Corporation.
Banatao attended prestigious Stanford University, where he
graduated in 1972 with a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science.
Working at Commodore International,
Banatao designed the first single chip, 16-bit microprocessor-based calculator,
which endeared him to high school students everywhere.
Banatao was then credited with creating the first system logic
chip set for IBM's PC-XT and the PC-AT, the local bus concept, and
the first Windows graphics accelerator chip for personal computers.
This latter discovery allowed computers to work much faster, and
allowed users to interact with computers graphically rather than just through
the command line.
Banatao went on to receive a Ph.D. from Stanford University in
mixed-signal CMOS IC design, and he has received numerous awards, co-authored
13 papers, and holds six U.S. patents.
The
Lipstick Camera
Just before the turn of the 21st Century, Filipino Marc
Loinaz invented the one chip video camera.
Working with a team at Lucent Technologies in
the U.S., they were tasked with creating a camera that was so cheap and used so
little electrical power, that it could be integrated into things, such as
watches and appliances.
Loinax and his team got the analog circuits to occupy the same
chip as the digital signal processing circuits by teaching them to ignore one
another.
Loinax
described the process as: "We scheduled operations on the chip so
that during all the sensitive analog operations, we shut down the digital circuits."
Today, these so-called "lipstick cameras" show up on
daredevil's bodies, Formula 1 racing cars, and the table rail of poker tables
during tournaments, where they "spy" on players' cards.
A Passion for
Children
In
1933, Filipino woman Fe Del Mundo completed
her medical education at the University of the Phillippines.
Then Philippine president Manuel Quezon, provided her a
scholarship to continue her medial education anywhere she wanted, and she chose
to study pediatrics at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts.
In
1941, Del Mundo returned to the Philippines just before that country was
invaded by Japan.
Del Mundo worked with internees during that tumultuous time, and
following the war, she went on to establish her own pediatric hospital.
Joy Riding on the
Moon
In
1971, the Apollo 12 mission to the moon used the first "Moon Buggy"
to explore the moon's surface.
Created by a team at NASA that included Filipino mechanical
engineer Eduardo San Juan, the Lunar Rover was
also used during last three Apollo lunar missions, 15, 16 and 17, which took
place during 1971 and 1972.
Weighing 460 pounds, the rover was designed to hold a payload of 1,080 pounds.
It was 10 feet long, with a wheelbase of 7.5 feet, and was 3.6 feet tall.
The rover had a three-part chassis that was hinged in the middle
so that it could be folded up and hung in the Lunar Module Quadrant 1 bay.
Today, three abandoned lunar rovers remain on the moon.
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