Saving pins saves money and makes the device smaller.
Prior to this he was Vice President, Research. With W.T. Marshall and G.G. Riddle, he invented the Universal Receiver Protocol. Before joining Bell Laboratories, Sandy was the Assistant Director of Research at Cambridge University, where he wrote the first time-sharing file system in England, for the Atlas 2 computer. He also developed file back-up and privacy mechanisms for that system. Sandy has a B.Sc. degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Bristol University and a Ph.D. degree in Computing Science from Cambridge.