A search for a dissertation subject led Robert Willson to become the co-inventor of the plasma display.
Willson was working in the Coordinated Science Lab (CSL) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) under Dr. Donald Bitzer, helping to develop the PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) system, which presented computer graphics with overlaid slides on a television set viewed by the students. But Bitzer had a problem with CRT display devices and their endless flickering. What PLATO needed was a flicker-free screen and inherent memory in an era before microprocessors. So Willson chose the physics of trying to solve the PLATO display problem as his dissertation subject.
Willson presented one approach to Bitzer and senior research engineer Gene Slottow. One early summer evening in 1964 while waiting to be picked up by their wives, Bitzer and Slottow discussed Willson’s idea and discovered a way to solve the problems. The next morning, the trio got to work on a new model, with Willson handling most of the fabrication of the first experimental devices. By July, Willson, Bitzer and Slottow had solved most of the problems and had created the first plasma display.
While continuing his contributions to the plasma display, Willson finished his dissertation and earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1966. Along with Bitzer and Slottow, Willson was awarded a patent for the plasma display the following year.
Unlike his two plasma display development partners, Willson didn’t stay in academia and research at UIUC, instead after graduation, he moved into private industry. Willson worked at Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Baltimore (which became Northrop Grumman) from 1966 to 1997 and retired 1997. Then he worked part time for Analex Corporation as a consultant to Northrop Grumman. While at Westinghouse/Northrop Grumman he worked in Electro Optics researching low light level television systems and the human visual system. Later he did research in the Radar Systems Engineering department performing algorithm development, system research, and analysis for numerous radar systems.
Willson was ordained by the Baltimore Spiritual Science Center in 1983. Then seven years later he was ordained by the Light of Christ Community church and the International Council of Community Churches.He is an advisor in the preparatory and graduate programs of Sancta Sophia Seminary which is in Tahlequah, OK.
He retired to Sparrow Hawk Village in Tahlequah, Oklahoma in 2002. He teaches rainbow bridge meditation, inner child development, coherent heart procedures, emotional freedom technique (which is a healing procedure that taps on the meridian system of the body to release negative emotions), psychography (which is a non-hypnotic regression procedure) and the integration of science and spirituality. Willson was recently invited to serve as co-pastor of the Tahlequah Light of Christ Community Church in Sparrow Hawk Village. Willson is married, has two grown sons and six grandchildren.