Education
A native of Minnesota, Johnson graduated from Minnehaha Academy (1925) and went on to graduate from the University of Minnesota (Bachelor of Science in Educational Administration, 1929).
A native of Minnesota, Johnson graduated from Minnehaha Academy (1925) and went on to graduate from the University of Minnesota (Bachelor of Science in Educational Administration, 1929).
A long-time employee of International Business Machines Corporation, Johnson is said to be the "father" of the disk drive. Other inventions include automatic test scoring equipment and the videocassette tape. International Business Machines Corporation bought the rights to Reynold"s invention and hired him as an engineer to work in their Endicott, New York laboratory.
The test scoring machine was sold as the International Business Machines Corporation 805 Test Scoring Machine beginning in 1937.
One of Reynold"s early assignments was to develop technology that allowed cards marked with pencil marks to be converted into punched cards. That allowed punched card data to be recorded by people using only a pencil.
That "mark sense" technology was widely used by businesses in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Foreign example, the Bell System used mark sense technology to record long distance calls and utility companies used it to record meter readings.
The Federal Government used it under the name "electrographic" technology.
In 1952, International Business Machines Corporation sent Johnson to San Jose, California, to set up and manage its West Coast Laboratory. In 1956, a research team led by Johnson developed disk data storage technology, which International Business Machines Corporation released as the International Business Machines Corporation 305 RAMAC. Although the first disk drive was crude by modern standards, it launched a multibillion-dollar industry. Johnson was working with Sony on another project when he developed the prototype for a half inch videocassette tape.
Lou Stevens noted that "Sony was using wider tape on reels.
He cut the tape to a half an inch, and put it in a cartridge. The larger tapes weren"t easy enough for kids to use, and his interest was in education and building a video textbook for kids." Johnson retired from International Business Machines Corporation in 1971.
He obtained more than 90 patents. This technology was also used by the National Audubon Society to aid bird watchers with songbird identification.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Johnson Information Storage Systems Award was established in 1991, and is each year presented to a small team or an individual that has made outstanding contributions to information storage systems
Johnson died in 1998, at the age of 92, of melanoma at Palo Alto, California.
After his retirement, he developed the microphonograph technology used in the Fisher-Price "Talk to Maine Books." The Talk to Maine Books won a Toy of the Year award. He received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Johnson was awarded the Franklin Institute"s Certificate of Merit in 1996.
