Henry Earle Vaughan, better known as H. Earle Vaughan, (February 3, 1912 – March 9, 1978) was an American telephony engineer, responsible for system and software design for Bell Laboratories' Electronic Switching System No.
In 1928 Vaughan began work in Bell Laboratories, then attended Cooper Union College in New York City, where in 1933 he received a Bachelor of Science degree.
In 1952 Vaughan became a supervisor in Bell Labs' Switching Research Department, leading studies on transistor, ferroelectric, and magnetic core memories in logic systems.
In 1955 he was named Head of the Switching Research Department and began work on the Experimental Solid State Exchange (ESSEX), a pioneering solid-state system using pulse-code modulation and a central time-division switch.
[1] Vaughan is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, holds 27 patents, and was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1977 "for his vision, technical contributions and leadership in the development of the first high-capacity pulse-code-modulation time-division telephone switching system."