Prolific Austin engineer, inventor John Melanson reaches 500-patent milestone

John Melanson, a senior technical fellow at Austin-based Cirrus Logic, has had a passion for tinkering and solving complex problems for as long as he can remember.

"I've always loved technology. I've always loved making things," he said. "When I was a little kid, my father was an engineering professor and my after-school babysitter was hanging out with his grad students and hanging out with his colleagues. So it was always around us and I was always trying to get cool parts, always trying to make something."

Despite his passion for tech, Melanson was originally drawn to music, not engineering. But he quickly realized by watching friends who were exceptional musicians that he couldn't compete.

"I could be a hack musician. But I was a pretty decent technologist, and technology and music and sound go together really well, so I started building synthesizers and recording equipment and public address systems — everything having to do with sound and audio," Melanson said. "It was a way to make my technical abilities play together with the fact that I really liked sound and really liked to use it."

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After several decades of inventing, Melanson is what most would consider more than just "decent" at technology.

Last month, he registered his 500th patent with the U.S. patent office, putting him among the most prolific inventors at not only Cirrus Logic, but the world at large. For comparison, Thomas Edison had about 1,000 patents in his lifetime, while Thomas Murray, inventor of electric power plants had about 462, and Polaroid co-founder Edwin Land has about 535. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has over 100.

"It's hard to imagine how that happened," Melanson said of his tally. "I really only remember the first handful, and somewhere along the way it just got out of control. I never planned to get a huge number or set a target for doing that or anything. It just worked out that way."

Cirrus Logic, which has about 800 local employees, makes low-power voice and audio chips for smartphones, tablets and headphones. Its top sources of revenue are chips for audio and voice technology and signal-processing applications used in smartphones and sound engineering equipment.

It acquired AudioLogic in 1999, an audio technology firm of which Melanson was a founding member.

The lifelong inventor received his first patent fresh out of engineering school in 1974 — for devising a new way for keyboards to register notes properly, which helped make modern electronic keyboards possible.

"It was a really important invention in terms of what it did. But it's probably the worst patent I've got" because the legal details are poorly written, Melanson said. "A lot of things that I invented were never patented because I was working with people that thought that that was a bad way to protect them, especially back in the late 70s."

Melanson first moved to Austin after Audiologic was acquired by Cirrus Logic. At Cirrus, he has been involved in a range of technological innovations, including advancements in personal computing and semiconductors and networking gear.

He has influenced a number of products most people use frequently. For example, his work with light-emitting diodes helped make LEDs dimmable. He also pioneered the first use of low-power digital signal processors (DSPs) for hearing aids, and helped create the first network distributed audio system still used for the audio wiring in theme parks, concert venues, and the U.S Senate.

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No matter the product or area of technology he's working on, Melanson follows a simple formula.

"Making things all comes down to being given a set of tools, given a set of skills, and a problem and coming up with a way to put them together that solves the problem," he said "It doesn't really matter what it is. It doesn't matter if it's an audio amplifier or something from a light bulb. It's all sort of the same and you learn the process of putting the pieces together."

He considers himself "bullheaded," and he said most of his work can be attributed to "force of will" and a willingness to disregard how things were done in the past.

"I'm really comfortable with not seeing things or doing things the way that they're supposed to be done," he said. "Inventing things requires, really by definition, just saying 'Wait, I'm going to throw out everything that I should do, and see if there's a different way to do it. That comes very naturally. It's almost my rebellion. If something is done in a certain way, that seems like a good enough reason not to do it."

Melanson has received numerous awards, including an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scientific and Engineering Award for significant contributions to the evolution of digital audio editing for motion picture post-production. He also was named Inventor of the Year by the State Bar of Texas Intellectual Property Section, and he received the Austin Intellectual Property Law Association's Outstanding Inventor award.

Still, he's quick to note that not all of his inventions were hits. Despite a career primarily creating audio technology, he said he's gone "almost (to) the other extreme" in his free time. He's more likely to play a nonelectric, Steinway B grand piano and non-mechanical instruments, and only uses a small sound system attached to the TV.

"There's a lot of things that I should probably spend my life doing penance for," he said, pointing to an early autotune system and an early sampling synthesizer people could use to edit, record and detail many tracks together. "Was the sample synthesizer a great boon to humanity or was that the complete death of a lot of music? It comes down to a matter of personal opinion."

Some of the technology Melanson helped create decades ago has led to modern inventions that are being used in new products. For example, amplifiers in cell phones are the "great-grandchildren" of early hearing aid technology. But even with his older inventions, Melanson said he's always looking for new ways to solve problems, especially as the world and technology changes.

"I think about how many problems there are left to be solved. You can sit around saying, 'I've done this and this and this.' That just locks you out from doing the next thing," Melanson said.

Day to day, Melanson is still "meddling" with technology while also collaborating and mentoring younger engineers and technologists.

"Definitely, my favorite thing is to sit down with some of the younger assistants. I really like working with really smart, fresh-out-of-school graduates trying to direct them to do things in a different way or look at things differently," Melanson said. "I'm really involved with our patenting process and trying to steer people to new ways of thinking about things, new ways of doing things."

After nearly 50 years, he hasn't slowed down. Melanson currently has more than five dozen patents pending, not counting the three he was granted since he surpassed 500 in late June, and he has no plans for retirement.

"Every day I get to work on something that's fun," Melanson said. "That's the best thing of all. Right now, I get up and I say, 'this is interesting. I stayed up all night thinking about this. I can't get this out of my head. And there's a different way to do this. And here's how I'd like to do it.'"

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin inventor for Cirrus Logic reaches 500-patent milestone