A Laboratory of Landmark Innovations

A Distinguished Research History

Display of early gyroscope

Gyroscope components developed at CSL.

When NASA created CSL during the Korean War era, it was a defense laboratory. Television was in its infancy, computers were as large as apartments, and long-distance telephony was a novelty.

By the 1960s, CSL’s work had become unclassified. CSL's research has since affected every inch of the information technology highway.

A Roadmap of Innovations

Some landmarks along the way...

  • An Emmy Award for inventing the flat-panel, plasma display monitor
  • PLATO, the first computer-assisted instructional program in the world
  • The electric vacuum gyroscope, making it possible for nuclear submarines to navigate the world while submerged for months
  • Innovative universal receivers for CDMA communications
  • The Secret Sharing System to protect information from inadvertent damage and covert tampering
  • The first multiprocessor using microprocessors
  • The first binaural hearing aid
  • The linear approach to estimating the 3-D motion of objects from a sequence of 2-D images
  • Massively increased efficiency of image reconstruction from medical scanners by a factor of 20 to 1000
  • First to create a technique for the building and testing of reliable circuits
  • First to apply signal processing to optical fiber communication systems

Cybermuseum returning soon...

 

 

 

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