The R&D 100 Awards were founded by the renowned American R&D magazine in 1963. Every year, a hundred most innovative and commercialized technologies will be selected by eminent experts and scholars in different background from over a thousand innovative technologies across the world in terms of technology breakthrough, unique innovation and practical applications. The units which won the awards in 2009 include Intel, the US Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and US NASA, etc.

For 47 years, the R&D magazine each year identified 100 revolutionary technologies newly introduced to the market. The Awards are the reputed the Oscars of Invention according to The Chicago Tribune. This year, 20 elites from the academic and technology circles from across the United States have acted as judges to elect the top 100 new influential technologies. In the past, awards have been presented to the automated teller machine (1973), facsimile (1975), LCD display (1980), printer (1986), Kodak Photo CD (1991) and the currently hottest high resolution TV (1998). The awarded technologies have become the essential influences of future lifestyles