While I don't personally care for 'spam' messages, I thought the group would find this interesting . . . a brief history lesson about pagers, walkie-talkies and cordless phones (as well as a lesson to be learned - don't let your patents expire!) It is actually an obituary about the inventor that was written by the Los Angeles Times and noted in the Long Island Newsday yesterday.
*************************************************************************** Al Gross' ideas took decades to catch on. And by the time they gained wide-spread popularity, he had suffered the fate of a legion of inspired inventor: his patents had expired. But what a difference Gross' gizmos made. Gross, who died Dec. 21 in Sun City, Arizona at 82, invented the walkie-talkie, the wireless pager, and the cordless telephone. He also pioneered Citizen's Band radio. His patents led to technological developments that have become icons of the late 20th century, such as the cellular phone. Gross also inspired the wristwatch radio, tha twas indespensable to a 1950's cartoon-strip detective named Dick Tracy. Half a century ago, however, when Gross tried to market his pager at a medical convention, doctors smirked at the device. It would, they complained, ruin afternoons at the golf course. By the end of the 20th Century, 300 million pocket pagers wre in use around the world. "I was born 35 years too soon," he once told The Arizona Republic. "If I still had the patents on my inventions, Bill Gates would have to stand aside for me." Gross was born in Toronto. By 1937 he had built a hand-held radio that could transmit messages across town. He called it a 'walkie-talkie.' In 1949, he devised the first wireless pager, and in 1951 the wireless telephone. in 1958 he came up with the first battery-operated calculatory, developed for the military. Gross held about a dozen patents, all of which had expired around 1971. Last year Gross was honored with a $500,000 Lemelson-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lifetime Acheivement Award for Invention. Along the way, he earned a degree in electrical engineering from what is now Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He also studied under Albert Einstein at Princeton. GRoss is survived by his wife Ethel Stanka Gross of Sun City. **************************************************************************** ** That man could've been very wealthy . . . don't let your patents expire! John Juhasz Fiber Options Bohemia, NY
