Education
Columbia University; Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science.
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Leon Davidson
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Leon was a graduate of Columbia College (Bachelor of Science) and Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science (Master of Arts, Doctor of Philosophy), majoring in Chemical Engineering, a career he selected at the age of 13 while a student at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. While a graduate student at the Columbia School of Engineering, he was personally selected by the Dean, John R. Dunning, to join the Manhattan Project, the United States atomic bomb development program After an assignment at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, he moved his family to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he eventually became an engineering design supervisor for one of the atomic weapons then under development.
He then accepted assignments at the Atomic Energy Commission (Atomic Energy Commission) and The Pentagon in Washington before moving into the private sector.
In the mid-1950s, he joined the Nuclear Development Corporation of America in White Plains, New York, entering the emerging field of computer technology and development. Following stints in management at several large technology companies including Union Carbide, Teleregister, Western Union, General Precision Laboratories, and International Business Machines Corporation where he was Manager of Advanced Applications Development, he became an independent consultant, working for both government clients including Oak Ridge National Laboratories and commercial clients including Mini-Computer Systems of Elmsford, New New York On the side, he formed his own technology consulting and design company (Metroprocessing Corporation of America) to explore and exploit the emerging technology of touch-tone dialing (now used for push-button telephones).
His goal was to make Metroprocessing the single source of information on the application of the twelve button touch tone telephone to private companies and public agencies.
