Otis Boyken

Otis Boyken, a black inventor

Otis F. Boyken was a black inventor born on August 29, 1920 in Dallas, Texas to parents of modest means.  His father was a carpenter and his mother was a homemaker.  He worked on improving electrical resistors which made possible the steady workings of a number of now-ubiquitious electronic devices.  Variations of his resistor models are used around the world in televisions, computers, and radios.  Most notably his work enabled control functions for the first successful, implantable pacemaker.  He graduated from Fisk University in 1941 and got a job as a laboratory assistant testing automatic aircraft controls.

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