Alfred J. Gross
| Alfred J. Gross | |
|---|---|
Photographed by Leo Sorel
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| Born |
February 22, 1918 Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Died | December 21, 2000 (aged 82) Sun City, Arizona, U.S. |
| Occupation | Inventor, engineer |
Alfred J. Gross (February 22, 1918 – December 21, 2000), a.k.a. Irving J. Gross was a pioneer in mobile wireless communication. He created and patented many communications devices, specifically in relation to an early version of the walkie-talkie,Citizens' Band radio[1], the telephone pager[2] and the cordless telephone.
Gross was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1918, the son of Romanian immigrants, he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States.
His lifelong enthusiasm for radio was sparked at age nine, when traveling on Lake Erie by a steamboat. While sneaking around the boat he ended up in the radio transmissions room. The ship's operator let him listen in on transmissions. Later, Gross turned the basement of his house into a radio station, built from scavenged junkyard parts.
At sixteen he earned his amateur radio license, and he used his call sign (W8PAL) his whole life.
His interest and knowledge in radio technology had grown considerably by the time he in 1936 entered the BSEE program at Cleveland's Case of Applied Sciences (now a part of Case Western Reserve University). He was determined to investigate the unexplored frequency region above 100 MHz. Between 1938 and 1941, soon after the invention of the walkie talkie in 1937 by Donald Hings, he created and patented his own version of the "walkie-talkie".
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