Daniel J. Shanefield

Who is Daniel J. Shanefield?

Daniel Jay Shanefield was a ceramic engineer.

Shanefield earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Rutgers University in 1956; he went on to graduate studies at the same university, receiving his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Rutgers in 1962. He worked from 1962 to 1967 at ITT Research Laboratories, and from 1967 to 1986 at Bell Laboratories. In 1986 he returned to Rutgers as a Professor II.

At Bell Laboratories, Shanefield was the co-inventor with Richard E. Mistler of the tape casting technique for forming thin ceramic films. He pioneered the development of a phase-change memory system based on an earlier patent of Stanford R. Ovshinsky; Shanefield's work in this area "represented the first proof of the phase change memory concept". Beginning in the mid-1970s, Shanefield was an early proponent of double-blind ABX testing of high-end audio electronics; in 1980 he reported in High Fidelity magazine that there were no audible differences between several different power amplifiers, setting off what became known in audiophile circles as "the great debate".