A childhood filled with assembling contraptions out of milk bottles, lights and electric motors led to a career in engineering, and the discovery of an arcane World War II technology that led Dr. Irwin Jacobs to create CDMA, the dominant cell phone technology in the U.S., and found Qualcomm, the largest cell phone chip maker in the world.
Born in New Bedford, MA, on October 18, 1933, and a tinkerer since the age of eight, Jacobs' interest in science was further stoked by a high school chemistry and math teacher. A photography buff, Jacobs also earned money by developing film in a makeshift darkroom at his family's home.
He received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1956 from Cornell University, then a master's of science in 1957 and doctor of science degrees in electrical engineering from MIT in 1959. After graduation, Jacobs was hired as an assistant/associate professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he co-authored a basic textbook on digital communications, "Principles of Communication Engineering," which remains in use today. From 1966 to 1972 he taught computer science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego.
In Los Angeles in 1968, while still teaching, Jacobs, along with Andrew Viterbi and Leonard Kleinrock, formed Linkabit, a communications technology consulting company. Linkabit worked primarily on defense communications for the government. Linkabit started as a once-a-week consulting company, but after a few months it was clear the company required more attention introducing the first of Ku-band Very Small Aperture Earth Terminals (VSATs), commercial TDMA wireless phones, and the VideoCipher satellite-to-home TV system.
When Linkabit grew from a few part-timers to more than 1,000 employees, Jacobs quit his teaching job for full time corporate life. He spent the next decade-plus running and growing Linkabit. In August 1980, Linkabit was sold to M/A-COM for $25 million, and Jacobs served on the merged company's board of directors. In April 1985, Jacobs retired.
His retirement was short-lived. On July 1, 1985, 20 months after the first cell phone networks went live, Jacobs convened a meeting with six former Linkabit employees -- Linkabit co-founder Viterbi, Franklin Antonio, Adelia Coffman, Andrew Cohen, Klein Gilhousen and Harvey White -- at his San Diego home. The group decided to build a "QUALity COMMunications" company. Jacobs became chairman and CEO of the new Qualcomm.
The company started out providing contract research and development services, with limited product manufacturing, for the wireless telecommunications market. One of the company's goals was to develop a commercial product, which eventually resulted in OmniTRACS tracking system for trucks in1988. OmniTRACS has since grown into the largest satellite-based commercial mobile system for the transportation industry.
Heading home from a consulting job in 1985, it dawned on Jacobs that a World War II technology developed by movie star Hedy Lamarr and music composer George Antheil based on Nikola Tesla's frequency hopping concept that postulated that multiple frequencies could be used to send a single radio transmission could be used for communications. Initially developed by Lamarr and Antheil as a method to make radio-guided torpedoes more difficult to jam, Jacobs believed this secure radio communications technology could be used for cell phones. He asked Qualcomm co-founder Klein Gilhousen, to explore the idea.
In 1989, the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) endorsed a digital technology called time division multiple access (TDMA). Three months later, Qualcomm introduced the result of Jacobs' brainstorm, code division multiple access (CDMA), which Jacobs believed was superior. Initially, CDMA was dismissed as inferior to TDMA and, for a few years, CDMA-based carriers battled with TDMA carriers. But CDMA phones proved to provide better clarity and higher security.
Under Jacob's leadership, Qualcomm has become the top chipset supplier in the wireless industry with more than 15,000 employees worldwide at 144 locations generating $3 billion. As of April 24, 2009, there were more than 780 million 3G CDMA subscribers worldwide, which include 40 percent of cell phone subscribers in the U.S. Qualcomm also has developed 3G versions of CDMA, CDMA2000 and W-CDMA, which could increase the number of CDMA-based cell phones.
Jacobs served as chief executive officer of the Qualcomm until July 2005 when he was succeeded by his son, Paul, and was chairman of the company's board of directors until March 2009.