Richard Francis Lyon

Richard Francis Lyon (born 1952), is an American inventor, scientist, and engineer, noted for having invented the optical mouse. He has worked in many aspects of signal processing and was a co-founder of Foveon Inc., a digital camera and image sensor company.

Life
Lyon grew up in El Paso, Texas, one of nine children. He received a B.S. from Caltech in 1974 and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1975.

Lyon has worked at a number of Silicon Valley companies, including Stanford Telecommunications, Xerox, Schlumberger, Apple, Foveon, and Google.

Inventions and research
In 1981, Lyon built the first optical mouse, at Xerox, for which he was awarded two U.S. patents, now expired.

He also did pioneering work in the following areas:
 * GPS: Lyon designed early Global Positioning System test transmitters.
 * Ethernet hardware: Lyon invented the first single-chip Ethernet device.
 * Digital memory: Lyon did early work on static CMOS memory and designed the most efficient large CMOS address decoder.
 * Auditory processing: Lyon invented a cochlear model that is used as the basis of much auditory research today.
 * Digital color photography: Lyon invented optical and integrated-circuit techniques that allow digital cameras to be denser and more accurate.

Miscellaneous

 * Lyon was elected to be an IEEE Fellow in 2003 "for contributions to VLSI signal processing, models of hearing, handwriting recognition, and electronic color photography."
 * In 2005, Lyon was awarded the Progress Medal of the Royal Photographic Society, along with Carver Mead and Richard B. Merrill of Foveon, for the development of the Foveon X3 sensor.
 * In 2010 he was named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery "for contributions to machine perception and for the invention of the optical mouse."
 * Lyon is one of the persons featured in George Gilder's book, The Silicon Eye.
 * Lyon is married to Margaret Asprey; they have two children.