James Edward Maceo West (born February 10, 1931) is an American inventor and acoustician. Along with Gerhard Sessler, West developed the foil electret microphone in 1962 while developing instruments for human hearing research.Nearly 90 percent of more than two billion microphones produced annually are based on the principles of the foil-electret and are used in everyday items such as telephones, camcorders, and audio recording devices among others.He received Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering from The Franklin Institute's in 2010.