The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) announced the new class of inductees into the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame during the Entertainment Technology Policy Summit here. The 12 industry luminaries will be inducted at the annual CE Hall of Fame awards dinner at CEA’s Industry Forum to be held in San Francisco Oct. 16-18.
The new members are as follows:
Jack Doyle: He was the founding president of Pioneer America who also masterminded the company’s entry into the car audio business. He later became the first president of what is now Pioneer Electronics USA, which combined the car audio and home electronics divisions of the company.
Robert Galvin: He took the reins of Motorola in 1959 from his father, Paul, and grew sales of $290 million to $10.8 billion annually by the time he retired as chairman in 1990.
Dr. George Heilmeier: Dr. Heilmeier led the team at RCA’s David Sarnoff Research Center Labs in the mid-1960s that created the first commercial LCDs.
Nick Holonyak Jr.: Holonyak invented the first LED in 1962 while at General Electric and was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 2002 by President Bush.
Howard Ladd: He was founder and president of Concord Electronics during the 1960s and developed and marketed the first consumer reel-to-reel and stereo cassette audio tape recorders. He may be best known for introducing the Sanyo brand in the United States in the 1970s, and was chairman and president of Fisher from 1976-1987.
Alfred J. (A.J.) Richard: He inherited a 10-store hardware chain from his father and, during his 77-year tenure, transformed it into the 49-store electronics and appliance giant P.C. Richard & Son that is based in the New York metro area and produces $1 billion in annual sales.
John Roach: Led Tandy Corp. to prominence in the emerging microcomputer business and, when appointed CEO in 1981, built RadioShack into the nation’s preeminent and ubiquitous electronics retailer.
Dr. Donald Blitzer, Dr. Robert H. Willson and Dr. H. Gene Slottow: This is the team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign engineering department, who invented the plasma display in 1960, the precursor to today’s high-definition plasma televisions.
Andrew Grove and Gordon Moore: Along with Robert Noyce, founded Intel, the world’s most dominant computer chip maker, in 1968. Both Grove and Moore served as president, CEO and chairman.
