Thanks to Mark, N4TPY for bringing this to my attention.
Andre' N4ICK
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Friday December 29 01:15 PM EST
Passing of a wireless pioneer
By David Coursey, ZDNet News
Remembering a forgotten wireless pioneer.
"The man who brought the world such indispensable
wireless communications concepts and devices as the
walkie-talkie, pager, and cordless telephone has died."
That's the lead sentence of an email I just received from a
ham radio news service I subscribe to.
The story is so interesting and the accomplishment so
great that I'd like to share it with you. First, though,
I'll need to shut off the cordless phone, put the pager in
silent mode, and turn down the volume on the walkie-talkie I
use in my volunteer work. It is startling to realize how
much I owe to the inventions of a guy I didn't even know
about. And now he's dead.
His name was Al Gross. His ham radio call sign was W8PAL,
and he died four days before Christmas at his home in Sun
City, Ariz.
Here's the rest of the email:
"Gross obtained his amateur radio license in 1934 at the age
of 16. His early interest
in amateur radio helped set his career choice while he was
still a teenager.
"Gross pioneered the development of devices that operated in
the relatively
unexplored VHF and UHF spectrum above 100MHz. His first
invention was a
portable hand-held radio transmitter-receiver.
"Developed in 1938 while he was still in high school in
Cleveland, he christened it the 'walkie-talkie.' The device
caught the attention of the US Office of Strategic Services
-- the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency. The
OSS recruited Gross, and this led to the invention of a
two-way air-to-ground communications syste m used by the
military behind enemy lines during the World War II. The
system allowed OSS agents to communicate with high-flying
aircraft.
"After World War II, Gross set up Gross Electronics
Inc to design and build various communications products,
some of them under government contracts. He also launched
Citizens Radio Corporation to design, develop and
manufacture personal wireless transceivers.
"Cartoonist Chester Gould asked if he could use Gross'
concept of a miniaturized two-way radio in his Dick Tracy
comic strip. The result was the Dick Tracy two-way wrist
radio.
"During the 1950s and 1960s, Gross secured several
patents for various portable and cordless telephone
devices. In September 1958, Gross Electronics received FCC
type approval for mobile and handheld
transceivers for use on the new Class D 27-MHz Citizens
Band.
"'If you have a cordless telephone or a cellular
telephone or a walkie talkie or beeper, you've got one of my
patents,'Gross once said. He added! ! that if his patents on
those te chnologies hadn't run out in 1971, he'd have been a
millionaire several times over.
"Over the years, Gross worked as a communications
specialist for several large companies. Since 1990, he had
worked as a senior engineer for Orbital Sciences Corporation
(NYSE:ORB - news) and was still on the payroll there when he
died.
"Gross received numerous awards and honors during his
distinguished career, including the 1992 Fred B. Link Award
from the Radio Club of America, the 1997 Marconi Memorial
Gold Medal of Achievement from the Veteran Wireless
Operators Association, and the 1999 Edwin Howard Armstrong
Achievement Award from the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers. In 1998, he received Eta Kappa Nu's
Vladimir Karapetoff Eminent Members' Award in recognition of
his pioneering contributions to the engineering of personal
wireless communications.
"Earlier this year, he won the Lemelson-MIT Lifetime
Achie vement Award for invention and innovation and for
playing a major role in the wireless personal communications
field."
As his IEEE biography put it: "It is clear that Mr.
Gross was a true pioneer and helped lead the way to today's
wireless personal communications revolution."
Gross was, of course, only one of many communications
pioneers. Yet his accomplishments are all around us. Someday
our children will be startled to learn of the deaths of some
Internet pioneer or maybe someone from Xerox PARC--an Al
Gross of our age.
(Thanks to the ARRL, the W5YI Report and the IEEE, all
of whom contributed to the email quoted in this
column.)
ZDNet News commentator David Coursey is based in
Silicon Valley and has covered personal computers, software,
and the Internet for more than 20 years. He is an industry
analyst and creator of several industry conference events.
His Web site is www.coursey.com.
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