Charles Walton covers the history of RFID, his part in
it, and ideas for the near future. He will cover the
earliest successful operating principle and practice
and move to later implementations.
He will demonstrate a functioning RFID unit from when
it was first introduced in the 1970's. The unit reads
a credit card type ID for personal access control.
Speaker: Charles Walton, Inventor and entrepreneur
Walton Electronics
Charles Walton is the inventor of and holds the first
patent for RFID technology. He holds 10 RFID patents
in a portfolio of approximately 50 patents.
He has his own electronics laboratory and is prepared
to do some types of added development.
Charles is a Cornell EE graduate. His holds an MSEE
and an MS in Economics of Engineering from Stevens
Institute of Technology.
He served in the Army Signal Corps as an instructor
in long distance telephone. He joined IBM in Research
and Development and spent 20 years there on automatic
control and disc drives.
He left for free enterprise work and founded Proximity
Devices; the first company in RFID to go into
production and the first to make a profit. Based on
Charles' patents, the main product was RFID proximity
devices for access control. Proximity Devices joined
with Schlage Lock to develop the product.
He then started two other companies in the RFID field.
His second RFID venture used more advanced patents and
was sold to Checkpoint. Next, he provided the key
patent for the Hughes Identification Company; later
called HID.
In recent years, Charles has turned part of his
attention to creative problem solving in the political
and social fields. He continues to make use of his own
electronics lab..
