ODC's Richard Wilkinson: the history of the future.

Richard Wilkinson had his eyes on the future fir over three decades. He holds 20 patents and was instrumental in, among other things, the creation of the laserdisc, father of all optical formats, in the early 1970s. "Clearly the DVD is actually a confirmation that the laserdisc idea was a good one," he explains. "All the things having to do with making stampers and making masters and molding plastics discs, that was all developed for the laserdisc."

With a father in the aerospace industry, engineering seemed a natural for Wilkinson. At UCLA, unwilling yet to specialize,