Irving "Al" Gross (; February 22, 1918 – December 21, 2000) was a pioneer in mobile wireless communication. He created and

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

ed many communications devices, specifically in relation to an early version of the

walkie-talkie A walkie-talkie, more formally known as a handheld transceiver, HT, or handheld radio, is a hand-held, portable, two-way radio transceiver. Its development during the Second World War has been variously credited to Donald Hings, radio engineer A ...

Citizens' Band radio Citizens band radio (CB radio) is a land mobile radio system, a system allowing short-distance one-to-many bidirectional voice communication among individuals, using two-way radios operating near 27 MHz (or the 11-m wavelength) in the high f ...

, the telephone pager and the

cordless telephone A cordless telephone or portable telephone has a portable telephone handset that connects by radio to a base station connected to the public telephone network. The operational range is limited, usually to the same building or within some short ...

Biography

Gross was born in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

, Canada in 1918, the son of Romanian-

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

immigrants, he grew up in

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

, in the United States. His lifelong enthusiasm for radio was sparked at age nine, when traveling on

Lake Erie Lake Erie ( ) is the fourth-largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and also has the shortest avera ...

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 Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency radio spectrum, spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emer ...

license, and he used his

call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally as ...

(W8PAL) his whole life.

The walkie-talkie

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 Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a Private university, private research university in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It was established in 1967 by a merger between Western Reserve University and the Case Institute of Technology. Case ...

). He was determined to investigate the unexplored frequency region above 100 MHz. Between 1938 and 1941, soon after the invention of the "

" in 1937 by

Donald Hings Donald Lewes Hings, (November 6, 1907 – February 25, 2004) was a British-Canadian inventor, born in Leicester, England. In 1937 he created a portable radio signaling system for his employer CM&S, which he called a "packset", but which lat ...

, he created and patented his own version of it.

World War II

During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Gross had some limited involvement in building a two-way VHF air-to-ground communications system for the U.S.

Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the first intelligence agency of the United States, formed during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines ...

for use in military operations, known as the Joan-Eleanor system. It comprised a hand-held SSTC-502

transceiver In radio communication, a transceiver is an electronic device which is a combination of a radio ''trans''mitter and a re''ceiver'', hence the name. It can both transmit and receive radio waves using an antenna, for communication purposes. The ...

("Joan") and a much larger aircraft-based SSTR-6 transceiver ("Eleanor"). Gross' actual contribution to the project is unclear (he was not an OSS member), but the main developers on the project were Dewitt R. Goddard and Lt. Cmdr. Stephen H. Simpson (Goddard's wife's name was Eleanor, and reportedly Joan was an acquaintance of Simpson). The system operated at frequencies above 250 MHz, which was at a much higher frequency than the enemy had thought conceivable. This allowed operatives using "Joan" to communicate with high altitude bombers carrying "Eleanor" for times of 10 to 15 minutes without the use of code words, eliminating the need for decryption. It was developed beginning in late 1942, was highly successful and very difficult to detect behind enemy lines at the time. It was marked

Top Secret Classified information is confidential material that a government deems to be sensitive information which must be protected from unauthorized disclosure that requires special handling and dissemination controls. Access is restricted by law or ...

by the U.S. military until it was declassified and made public in 1976.

Citizens' Band (CB)

After the war the FCC allocated the first frequencies for

personal radio service A personal radio service is any system that allows individuals to operate radio transmitters and receivers for personal purposes with minimal or no special license or individual authorization. Personal radio services exist around the world and typi ...

s; the Citizens' Radio Service Frequency Band (1946). Gross formed Gross Electronics Co. to produce two-way communications system to utilize these frequencies, and his company was the first to receive FCC approval in 1948. He sold more than 100 thousand units of his system, mostly to farmers and the U.S. Coast Guard.

Two-way radios

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.

Telephone pager

Another breakthrough came in 1949 when he adapted his two-way radios to one-way for cordless remote telephonic signaling. He had effectively invented the first telephone pager system. His intention for this system was to be used by medical doctors, but was met with skepticism by doctors who were afraid the system would upset patients. This same technology is used in one-way radio signaling devices such as garage door openers.

Later years

In 1950 he tried in vain to interest telephone companies in mobile telephony. Bell Telephone was uninterested, and other companies were afraid of Bell's monopoly on transmission lines. Gross continued inventing, and began working as a specialist in microwave and other communications systems for companies such as

Sperry Corporation Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the 20th century. Sperry ceased to exist in 1986 following a prolonged hostile takeover bid engineered by Burroughs ...

and

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

. He continued working until his death at age 82.

Recognition

Gross has received much recognition for his work, including, but not limited to:

Awards

* 1984: IEEE Centennial Medal from the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

, for his work in VHF and

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter ...

mobile radio. * 1992: Fred M. Link Award from the Radio Club of America * 1997: Marconi Memorial Gold Medal of Achievement from the Veteran Wireless Operators Association * 1998: Eta Kappa Nu's Vladimir Karapetoff Eminent Members' Award * 1999: Edwin Howard Armstrong Achievement Award from the

IEEE Communications Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office i ...

* 2000:

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

Millennium Medal

Honors

* 2000: Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award for Invention and Innovation

References

External links

In Memoriam, from IEEE
(requires login)
Al Gross Papers, Ms2001-011
at the Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives
Digital images from the Al Gross Papers, Ms2001-011, and exhibits from Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives

— Article on Al Gross from MIT

— Short article on Al Gross from a

PMR446 PMR446 ( Private Mobile Radio, 446 MHz) is a licence-exempt service or UHF CB in the UHF radio frequency band, as personal radio service or citizens band radio, and is available for business and personal use in most countries throughout th ...

website.
Interview with Al Gross from 1999

Hamgallery.com tribute

Patents filed to ''Irving A. Gross'' from Google patents

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gross, Al 1918 births 2000 deaths 20th-century American inventors Canadian inventors Case Western Reserve University alumni Amateur radio people Lemelson–MIT Prize Canadian people of Romanian-Jewish descent Canadian emigrants to the United States Engineers from Cleveland Engineers from Toronto IEEE Centennial Medal laureates American people of Romanian-Jewish descent Canadian Jews Dick Tracy