Jerome Lemelson (1923-1997) was one of the most prolific American inventors of all time. He amassed more than 500 patents, including patents used in the VCR, camcorder, Walkman®, cordless phone, fax machine, data and word processing systems, and industrial robots. Lemelson made a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars through licensing deals.

Links:
Wikipedia Bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_H._Lemelson
Lemelson Foundation: http://www.lemelson.org

Interesting People.