Bill Evans was among the first engineers to join SRI in 1949. As a television engineer with hands-on broadcast experience, he formed a new TV lab and rapidly built up a first-class television systems laboratory, attracting experienced engineers from several organizations. In the early 1950s, Bill investigated a new concept for a color picture tube based on a patent RCA had acquired, and the TV Lab, working with Phil Rice's Tube Lab, demonstrated versions of this new color tube and system, forerunner of the shadow-mask tube. SRI's TV Lab also developed the necessary electronics to allow Ampex's new videotape recorder to handle the more demanding requirements of color signals.
With dozens of patents, Bill was noted for his creativity and inventiveness. In the mid-1950s, his lab developed a very high-speed printing technique, the Videograph system. Using an electrostatic approach, they demonstrated the fastest printing system known at that time—capable of printing up to 20,000 characters per second. A joint program with A.B. Dick was set up to design and build a label printer for Time-Life, Inc. Printers were built that could print the labels for Life magazine, with a circulation of 10 million—printing 250,000 mailing labels per hour to get the job done in one week. These printers became the standard in the industry and provided all the high-circulation magazines with labels for many years.
Bill Evans shared the Vladimir Zworykin Television Prize with Philip Rice for their contributions to the advancement of television. In one of the most famous of SRI projects, Evans led the effort sponsored by Technicolor, Inc., to automate the film processing equipment to develop Technicolor film. The Negative Timer designed and delivered to Technicolor won the Technical Achievement Award—the Oscar—in 1959.
Bill's TV Lab continued to thrive, eventually becoming the Video Systems Lab, which took on broader and more diverse projects in television recording systems and satellite applications. Several laboratories and programs active today can trace their roots back to Bill Evans's TV Lab of the 1950s. Bill always was a strong leader and mentor to his staff. Those who had the privilege of working for him will always remember his friendly leadership and encouragement.