 |
Inventor
of the Walkie-Talkie and Pager Passes |
Personal Communications Pioneer Al Gross, W8PAL, SK
NEWINGTON,
CT, Dec 28, 2000--The man who brought the world such indispensable
wireless communications concepts and devices as the walkie-talkie, pager
and cordless telephone has died. Al Gross, W8PAL, of Sun City, Arizona,
passed away on December 21. He was 82.
Gross' lifelong interest in radio communications began when he was just nine years old. Born in Toronto while traveling aboard a steamboat on Lake Erie, the ship's radio operator allowed Gross to listen to the wireless. Gross prevailed upon his father to buy him a crystal radio set, and the boy tuned in to the transmissions of local amateurs. By age 12, Gross had converted his family's Cleveland basement into an Amateur Radio station, using equipment he'd salvaged and patched together from junkyards.
In 1934 at the age of 16, Gross obtained his Amateur Radio license. 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 100 MHz. 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 promptly recruited Gross, and this led to the invention of a two-way air-to-ground communications system used by the military behind enemy lines during the World War II. The system allowed OSS agents to communicate with high-flying aircraft.
In 1945, FCC Commissioner E. K. "Jack" Jett--his imagination fired by meetings with Gross and demonstrations of his hand-held transceivers--became the first FCC official to propose extending the use of short- range two-way radio to private citizens. Jett outlined his ideas of personal two-way communications in an article on UHF personal radio communications "Phone Me By Air" in the July 28, 1945, The Saturday Evening Post.
After the war 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. In 1948 Gross Electronics was contracted by the US Coast Guard to design and build a hand-held transceiver operating at 401 MHz. In 1948 the FCC announced type approval of the first personal wireless transceiver for the public.
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.
In 1950 Gross demonstrated before the FCC the possible use of a hand-held transceiver as a "cordless remote telephone." This became the first paging system of its kind, although restrictions in place at the time prevented the application of this technology for the public. Gross introduced his first personal pager at a medical convention, but it was rejected for fear the beeping device would upset patients and interrupt golf games.
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 hand-held transceivers for use on the new Class D 27-MHz Citizens Band.
Gross' pioneering work with two-way personal radio paved the way for cordless and cellular phones as well as pocket pagers, items that have become ubiquitous in today's society. "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 technologies hadn't run out in 1971, he'd have been a millionaire several times over.
Over the years, Gross worked as a communications specialist in the research divisions of several large companies, including Sperry, GTE Communications Systems, Westinghouse Electric and AG Communications. Since 1990, he had worked as a senior engineer for Orbital Sciences Corporation and was still on the payroll there when he died.
Gross received numerous awards and honours during his distinguished career, including the 1992 Fred B. Link Award from the Radio Club of America (of which he was a Fellow); 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 (of which he was a Life Fellow). 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 Achievement 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."
Al Gross is survived by his wife, Ethel. A burial mass was held December 27 in Sun City.
--thanks to The W5YI Report/Fred Maia, W5YI and the IEEE