James West attended Temple University before working for Bell Labs. Along with Gerhard M. Sessler, he developed the foil electret microphone, an inexpensive, compact device that is now used in 90 percent of all contemporary microphones. A prolific writer as well, West has more than 250 patents and became a professor at Johns Hopkins University.
West was born on February 10, 1931, in Prince Edward County, Virginia. As a child, he was intrigued by how things worked and enjoyed taking apart appliances. "If I had a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, anything that could be opened was in danger," West would later recollect. "I had this need to know what was inside."
After an accident with a radio he had tinkered with, West became enthralled with the concept of electricity. He knew he wanted to pursue his interest in science academically, though his parents were concerned about future job prospects for an African American scientist, due to the racism and Jim Crow laws of the South. They preferred for him to become a physician.