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Biography · Inventions

Henry T. Sampson

1934–2015

United States

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Biography

Henry Thomas Sampson Jr. (April 22, 1934 – June 4, 2015) was an 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. He wrote books Blacks in Black and White: A Source Book on Black Films, The Ghost Walks: A Chronological History of Blacks in Show Business, 1865-1910, and the two volume Singin' on the Ether Waves: a Chronological History of African Americans in Radio and Television Programming, 1925–1955.

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Biography text · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source checked 2026-10-13

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