Joe May: It’s About Patents and Politics

Joe May: It’s About Patents and Politics

By Joe Motheral

At 84, Joe May’s career is replete with achievements and honors of epic proportions. According to the Academy of Engineering Excellence, Joe always had a knack for electrical engineering and science. During his three years in the army he spent a year in electronics school, then later enrolled at Virginia Tech and earned a degree in electrical engineering in 1962.

Joe May and his wife, Bobby

Photo by Joe Motheral

Asked to name what he thought was the crowning achievement of his life, he said,

“Surviving and contributing for 46 years.”

In 1977 he founded a Leesburg based electronics company named EIT and still is very much involved as president of the company. He said he’d like to stay on for another five years before even thinking about retirement. In addition to developing 28 patents, he also served 20 years in the Virginia House of Delegates. Oh yes, he still flies his own helicopter.

Several hundred admirers attended his 80 th birthday party at Belmont Country Club—family, friends and many past colleagues. They were treated to a power-point presentation of his life, and several times he made reference to “the guys I worked with” rather than the “guys that worked for me.” It was typical of his humble demeanor.

EIT now has 200 employees and its latest project was very much Covid-related.

“We’re adapting ultraviolet radiation sanitizer to disinfect for things like hospital rooms, clinics, just about anything to kill Covid,” he said.

One of his most visible patents has added immeasurably to the enjoyment of football on television. That would be the electronic first down line. It came about when Candlestick Park in San Francisco wanted to replace local advertising on a television screen. Princeton Video Imaging retained EIT, which developed the technology.

“They asked if we had some way of marking the first down line,” he said. “We did the design work, we tested it and repaired it for quite a few years.”

May’s motive for running for public office was related to his concern about computer laws.

“Getting computer laws on some sort of reasonable track,” he said. “Computer privacy was just a morass. They were able to steal anything about you they wanted to.” His efforts contributed to what became the Computer Trespass laws.

Joe and his wife, Bobby, have been married for over 50 years. He claims she’s the true politician in the house. “I married my girlfriend’s roommate,” he said. “She’s a natural politician. I don’t claim to be any of the above. She’s courteous to people, she’s a good listener.”

Prior to founding EIT, he spent several years as a self-employed consultant. One client was the DuPont company and he designed two instruments for them.

“They encouraged me to start EIT,” he said, “and offered to help.”

Some of his latest accomplishments include developing an instrument to determine the distance from a helicopter in flight to the ground.

“We based it on a Mercedes radar device that measures the distance to the car in front,” he said.

One of his more interesting assignments came when International Paper became an EIT client. He said they asked, “can you tell us how to determine how much ink is on a bread wrap?” Joe wondered who would care. “It turns out that the people who make the wrappers care because of the cost of the ink,” he said of an extremely profitable project. “They needed that information so they could bid on a printing job.”

Joe has earned a number of prestigious awards and most recently was inducted into the Virginia Tech Academy of Engineering Excellence. In 2000, he was honored with the Governor’s Award for Technology.

Asked to name what he thought was the crowning achievement of his life, he said, “Surviving and contributing for 46 years.”