As a young man, Roger Melen enjoyed
ham radio, operating an amateur radio station from his home in
Chico, California under the call sign WB6JXU. He attended Chico State College where he received the BSEE degree in 1968. His first published invention, an audio filter he called the "Beatnote Basher", appeared in the amateur radio publication
73 Magazine in 1969. Melen attended graduate school at Stanford University, and there he continued to design projects for the electronic hobbyist, collaborating with a fellow graduate student,
Harry Garland, on a series of inventions published as construction projects in
Popular Electronics magazine. He received the MSEE degree from Stanford in 1969, and the Ph.D. degree in 1973. Melen was invited to join the research staff of the Stanford Integrated Circuits Laboratory in 1972, and was named Associate Director of the laboratory in 1974. Recognizing that
charge-coupled device (CCD) technology had greater potential than MOS technology in delivering "full video quality imaging" for solid-state image sensors he worked on the development of CCD image sensors for application to the
Optacon reading machine for the blind. He also applied CCD technology to medical ultrasonic imaging systems, and worked on the development of an implantable cochlear device for the profoundly deaf. He also continued to write for
Popular Electronics magazine, which resulted in a meeting in
Albuquerque, New Mexico that would change the course of his career. In 1974, he submitted a design for a digital camera, called the "Cyclops", to
Popular Electronics. While visiting the editorial office of
Popular Electronics in New York to discuss the Cyclops, Melen saw a prototype of the
MITS Altair Computer that was also being readied for publication. Recognizing the potential of interfacing the Cyclops digital camera to the Altair, Melen changed his return flight to California to go through Albuquerque to visit
Ed Roberts, president of
MITS. Roberts was anxious to develop third-party support for the Altair, and encouraged Melen to interface the Cyclops digital camera to the Altair computer. Roberts agreed to ship an Altair computer to Melen so that he could get to work on the interface. ==Cromemco==