Henry Thomas Sampson Jr. was a Black American engineer, inventor and film historian who created the gamma-electric cell in 1971 – a device with the main goal of generating auxiliary power from the shielding of a nuclear reactor.

Henry Thomas Sampson Jr. was born on April 22, 1934, in Jackson, Mississippi, to parents Henry T. Sampson Sr. and Esther B. (Ellis) Sampson. He graduated from Jackson’s Lanier High School in 1951. He then attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, before transferring to Purdue University in Indiana. He received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Purdue University in 1956. He graduated with a MS degree in engineering from UCLA, in 1961. Sampson also received an MS in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1965, and his PhD in 1967. He was the first Black American to earn a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering in the United States.

He was a member of the United States Navy from 1962 until 1964. Sampson was employed at the Naval Air Weapons Station in China Lake, California, in the area of high energy solid propellants and case bonding materials for solid rocket motors. Sampson also served as the director of mission development or operations of the space test program at the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California. During his time with the Aerospace Corporation, Sampson led an engineering staff in the development and operation of several space satellites.

His patents included a binder system for propellants and explosives and a case bonding system for cast composite propellants. Both inventions are related to solid rocket motors. On July 6, 1963, he was awarded a patent, with George H. Miley, for a variation of the gamma-electrical cell, a device that produces a high voltage from radiation sources, primarily gamma, with proposed goals of generating auxiliary power from the shielding of a nuclear reactor. Additionally, the patent cites the cell’s function as a detector with self-power and construction cost advantages over previous detectors.

It is widely circulating that he invented the cell phone, but Mr. Sampson did not invent the cell phone, he was a pioneer in the technology now used in cell phones.

As I researched Mr. Sampson’s information, my own son’s work in the Nuclear Industry parallels Sampson’s work. My son, Ron Jr., served in the Navy as a Naval Nuclear Reactor Operator aboard the USS Nimitz. He attended a HBCU, Tuskegee University before transferring, and received his BS and MS in Engineering and he has worked on Nuclear design Modifications, and currently serving as Lead for Nuclear Projects for Westinghouse. Additionally, my son has used various forms of the detector cell that Sampson invented for detection of radiation and monitoring of low-level nuclear power.

Mr. Henry Sampson was also a noted film historian. He wrote the book “Blacks in Black and White: A Source Book on Black Films,” which examines often overlooked African American film makers from the first half of the 20th century. In addition, he authored “The Ghost Walks: A Chronological History of Blacks in Show Business, 1865-1910.” Sampson produced documentary films on African American film makers. In 2005, he published “Singin’ on the Ether Waves: a Chronological History of African Americans in Radio and Television Programming, 1925–1955.”

Henry Sampson died June 4, 2015, at the age of 81 in Stockton, California.