CE Hall of Fame Names 2010 Class

By Editors of TWICE -- TWICE, 5/17/2010

ARLINGTON, VA. — The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) named 13 individuals who will be inducted into the CE Hall Of Fame later this year.

Retailing
• Joe and Rachelle Friedman, founders of J&R Music and Computer World, who started the New York City institution in 1971 with a 500 squarefoot location have been voted in.
• David and Eugene Mondry will be inducted for building Highland Superstores, founded by their father, into a major CE retail powerhouse.
• Al Sotoloff, a top executive with Silo Appliance City, one of the first bigbox format CE/appliance dealers and a former NATM member.

Sales/Marketing, Corporate Executives
• Richard Kraft was the first U.S. president of Panasonic Corp. of North America.
• Frank McCann led PR efforts at RCA and then Thomson to help launch the VCR, DVD player, DirecTV and HDTV.
• Frederik Philips was president of Philips during World War II. He helped save the lives of 382 Jews when he told Nazi officials that they were indispensable workers for a Philips factory, according to his CEA bio. In addition, Philips led his company when it developed the compact audio cassette medium.

Founders/Inventors
• Dr. Lauren Christopher, who managed the team of engineers that created the digital satellite system for DirecTV.
• Dr. Larry Weber, a pioneer in developing plasma display panels, will be inducted along with Dr. Ivan Getting and Dr. Bradford Parkinson for inventing GPS.

Miscellaneous
• Cynthia Upson, past VP at CEA, who was a communications and public relations guru that promoted industry issues including the International CES, home theater, digital TV and HDTV, CEA said.

The newcomers will be officially inducted into the Hall during the CEA’s Fall Forum, to be held in San Francisco from Oct. 17-20.