Mar. 13--James T. Russell invented the digital compact disc to listen to music, but his CDs revolutionized technology.

Born in Bremerton, Wash., in 1931, Mr. Russell went to Reed College in Portland, Ore., and graduated with a degree in physics in 1953. He then joined General Electric labs in Richland, Wash.

Mr. Russell said that if the recording industry is able to organize a proper future for selling music online, the audio disc will go extinct. He invented the digital compact disc in the late 1960s after joining the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory of Battelle Memorial Institute in Richland.

The compact audio discs that have revolutionized high fidelity music recording will soon do the same for information storage. The new generation compacts discs will be able to hold up to 250,000 pages of text and thousands of full-color images.

Compact audio disc players, which use a laser beam, deliver sound with immense dynamic range and a startling purity.

Russell was born in Bremerton, Washington in 1931. At age six, he invented a remote-control battleship, with a storage chamber for his lunch. Russell went on to earn a BA in Physics from Reed College in Portland in 1953.

By 1985, Russell had earned 26 patents for CD-ROM technology. He then founded his own consulting firm, where he has continued to create and patent improvements in optical storage systems, along with bar code scanners, liquid crystal shutters, and other industrial optical instruments. His most revolutionary recent invention is a high-speed optical data recorder / player that has no moving parts. Russell earned another 11 patents for this "Optical Random Access Memory" device, which is currently being refined for the market.

1931 in Bremerton, Washington, USA

He was among the first to use a color TV screen and keyboard as the sole interface between computer and operator; and he designed and built the first electron beam welder.

The Puget Sound Engineering Council selected Russell as the 2005 Industry Engineer of the Year. And despite all of his accomplishments, it wasn't until Joe Decuir of Seattle's chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., (IEEE) saw a story about Russell in the local newspaper that he suggested Russell's name to the committee last fall.

In the mid 1950s, he was frustrated with the sound quality of LPs, which started wearing out after only a dozen plays. He even tried using a cactus needle to play records because the jewel needle wore out the vinyl faster and didn't sound as clear. Russell wanted a way to capture the complexity and nuances of classical music without damaging the recording. And the idea that sparked a multi-billion dollar industry was about to take shape in Russell's mind.

In fifth grade, he started building radios out of parts he scrounged from the neighbors. In high school, he took a job setting up a commercial radio station, even though he didn't know how to hook up most of the equipment. "But I learned– rapidly,” he laughs.