Glen P. Robinson

Robinson was born on September 10, 1923, in Crescent City, Florida, an outskirt of Jacksonville, to Glen Parmelee and Laura Mae (Lewis) Robinson. His family moved to Valdosta, Georgia, in 1937. After attending high school at Marion Military Institute in Alabama, Robinson opened a small machine shop in Valdosta. He sold industrial products and metal tools to local industry. In 1942, with the encouragement of his father, Robinson enrolled as a student at the Georgia Institute of Technology to study chemical engineering. However, his education was interrupted by his enlistment into the Naval Signal Corps and service in the Pacific Theatre of World War II where he installed telephones on recaptured American possessions during the war.

Robinson returned from the conflict as a junior and in 1948 he changed his major to physics, as the School of Physics started its degree program that year. He received a Bachelor of Science in Physics in 1948, and a Master of Science in Physics (also from Georgia Tech) in 1950. Robinson was also a member of Georgia Tech's prestigious secret society, ANAK. Robinson had been a ham radio operator enthusiast since the age of 14, and started a radio repair service to provide additional income while he was a student at Georgia Tech.

One of Robinson's professors, James E. Boyd, convinced him to give up the radio repair business and work as a research assistant at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (then known as the Engineering Experiment Station, or EES). One of his ham radio friends was actually his boss's boss and EES director, Gerald Rosselot. Working after hours at EES, Robinson built a television set in the lab, which he and others claim was the first to be built in the state of Georgia. In 1950, Robinson went to Tennessee to work in nuclear engineering for Oak Ridge National Laboratory, servicing radiology-related equipment at local hospitals.

Robinson founded E-Tech in 1978, which developed heat pump technology and high-technology related to energy conservation, energy conversion, and solar energy. When interviewed about E-Tech's founding, Robinson said "I like to pioneer new fields, to start small businesses." E-Tech acquired Scientific Atlanta's Special Products Division, which included staff, research contracts, patented products in solar energy, and specialized equipment. Its first product was an electric heat pump water heater, the Efficiency II, that reduced water heating bills by 50% and provided an equipment payback of three years. E-Tech worked on a range of United States Department of Energy contracts in the field of solar energy. In 1986, E-Tech merged with Crispaire Corporation, which specialized in cooling equipment for telecommunications systems, school classrooms, and commercial/industrial structures. The merger resulted in Robinson taking over the new entity, which also operated under the trade name Marvair. Crispaire Corporation/Marvair later joined with RV Products to form a new company, Airxcel, Inc. Robinson retired from this venture in 1997.

In 1994, Robinson funded and co-founded LaserCraft, which focused on applications of LIDAR such as radar guns and traffic enforcement cameras, and in 2006 was the world's largest manufacturer of laser products for law enforcement. LaserCraft was acquired by Public Safety Equipment in June 2006, which was in turn acquired by Stirling Square Capital Partners and Diamond Castle Holdings in February 2007.

Robinson was an angel investor, particularly in the fields of digital communications and biotechnology. In 1999, he funded OmniMetrix and Mission Communications, two companies focused on AMPS cellular digital control channel and wireless SCADA communications. Omnimetrix was acquired by Acorn Energy in 2012. Mission is currently the leading provider of cellular SCADA for water and wastewater in North America. In 2000, he invested $1.5 million in Genomic Solutions Inc, which was acquired by Digilab, Inc. in 2007. Most recently, Robinson was an investor in and co-founder of the 2007 VentureLab startup, C2 Biofuels, which attracted additional funding from Chevron and aims to build several $100 million cellulosic ethanol plants throughout the United States.