Innovative Lives

On May 1, meet Doug DeAngelis, the runner, inventor, and entrepreneur behind the Lynx photo-finish camera and several other sports officiating technologies. DeAngelis is one of the many athletes and inventors featured in Change Your Game / Cambia tu juego, the Lemelson Center’s new bilingual, interactive, family-friendly exhibition that explores the intersection of invention, technology, and sports.
 
As a competitive runner, DeAngelis saw an opportunity to improve upon the unreliable film-based photo finish cameras that were popular during the 1980s. In 1990, at age 24, DeAngelis sketched out a two-page concept in which a high-speed camera took digital images of the finish line, added timestamps, and reassembled the images on a computer. This digital solution enabled race officials to provide near-instant results for any contest with a finish line. In 1992, while still in graduate school, DeAngelis founded Lynx System Developers, which today provides photo-finish cameras and timing solutions for the US Olympic Trials, the Kentucky Derby, NASCAR, the Tour de France, and thousands of high school events across the United States. DeAngelis and his teammates also developed the IsoLynx technology, which can precisely locate athletes in the field of play; it was the first system of its kind to track every player in an NFL game. Between Lynx and IsoLynx, Doug is a named inventor on over 200 patents worldwide.