Meet the 2018 CT Hall of Fame Inductees
October 15, 2018
- Author: Jeremy Snow
September/October 2018
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CTA is honoring pioneers of audio, smart homes and the internet
The Consumer Technology Hall of Fame – made up of world-class inventors, technologists, businessmen and retailers – is growing larger. Each November, the CT Hall of Fame honors the storied history of our industry, saluting tech powerhouses like Steve Wozniak, Alexander Graham Bell and Philo T. Farnsworth. For the Hall of Fame, the story of great technology includes more than the inventor. It’s also the retailer who merchandizes tech products and patiently talks customers through each item; the energetic business executive who travels the country showcasing the latest device; and the journalists that explain the latest technology to consumers.
This year’s inductees include tech revolutionaries who introduced the masses to life-changing tech, including smart homes, CDs and better internet. These five inductees are legacies in their industry and have had their hands on the steering wheel for years, cruising the tech world into a direction benefiting us all.
Register today for the Hall of Fame Dinner on November 7 at Capitale in New York City. Come celebrate the great work of these revolutionary inventors and businessmen. To learn more about the 2018 inductees, go to CTA.tech.
John Briesch
In 1983 – one year after the CD’s invention – John Briesch, made a daring bet in the New York Times about a new technology called a “digital compact disk audio system.” The article questioned whether “CDs,” which required $800 to $900 players, would ever replace vinyl and cassettes. Briesch, the vice president of marketing for Sony at the time, was sure.
“Within eight to ten years, we see everyone being converted to the compact disk-type design,” he said.
It was a bold prediction, but a correct one – CDs dominated the music marketplace until the recent rise of streaming, becoming a cultural touchstone of the 90s and an essential part to any road trip.
Originally sold to audiophiles, Briesch worked to bring CDs to the mainstream consumer, hinging its success on lower price points and easy availability. To spread its popularity, he and his team visited almost every music company, artist and audio engineer in America to introduce not only CD technology, but also explain the business model and potential for future format expansions like CD-ROM and video. He signed licenses with a variety of labels to produce and sell limited titles in the U.S., which lead to Sony building the first U.S. CD manufacturing plant in Indiana.
Briesch’s success with CDs is largely thanks to his ability to make them appealing and interesting to all types of music listeners. Case in point: he helped create the “My First Sony” line of products, which included toy Walkmen and boomboxes designed for children.
Peter Lesser
Smart home technology may feel modern thanks to devices like Google Home and the Roomba, but Peter Lesser was selling home automation kits way back in the 70s. His voyage into the house of tomorrow began in 1975, when he helped Pico Electronics create the Accutrac, a remote-controllable turntable. Even though it failed on the market, Lesser saw its potential and wanted to apply the same technology to other home devices.
Pico and Lesser started selling the X-10 in 1978, which included a 16-channel command console to remotely control lights, wall switches and other 70s household items. The team continued to improve the technology and introduced the Homeminder in 1984, which made your 80s-era CRT act like a smart TV.
X-10’s devices were visionary, pushing the early marketplace slowly toward the smart home that Lesser imagined. X-10 was a hit with early tech adopters and engineers. Modern consumer’s embrace of connected homes showed he had the right idea all along.
Edgar Villchur
In a colleague’s obituary for him, Villchur is quoted as saying, “The real satisfactions for me have come from analyzing a practical problem with the aid of the physical sciences, working out a solution and finding out that you are right.”
Villchur’s own words may explain why he sold his top-tier speaker company, Acoustic Research, in 1967 to start the Foundation for Hearing Aid Research. Today, his 40 years of research in hearing aids can be found in nearly all models on the shelf.
Villchur’s work culminated into the multichannel compression hearing aid, which better amplified quieter sounds without overamplifying loud ones. Staying true to his selfless nature, Villchur did not patent this invention, making sure as many people could use the technology as possible. Thanks to this decision, multichannel compression became the industry standard.
John Cioffi
Cioffi’s work made digital subscriber line technology, or DSL, universally practical, leading the way to easy internet access in homes and offices throughout the 90s. Even though DSL depended on a phone line to connect to the internet, it was much faster and reliable than the dial-up internet. Plus, it let users make calls while online.
While working at Bell Labs, AT&T and Stanford, Cioffi made so many essential advances in the security, reliability and speed of DSL, he is nicknamed the “father of DSL.” As time went on, Cioffi’s DSL advancements increased when he proposed discrete multi-tone modulation (DMT) with PhD candidate Peter Chow. With DMT, data finally reached a speed high enough for video.
Today DSL technology faces other competitors such as Wi-Fi and fiber optics, but is still widely used across the country. Cioffi’s advances in DSL showed the world just how far internet advancements could be pushed – a question still being challenged today.
Richard Doherty
The Hall of Fame dinner will celebrate Doherty’s long history with consumer technology – ranging from his reporting at the EE Times, the Envisioneering Group he started, and his engineering work at Data General and Lourdes Industries. Doherty is also known for driving fast – really fast – thanks to his involvement in the cult-status cross-country race that inspired multiple Hollywood movies.
Doherty participated in one of the most epic races in the history of America: The Cannonball Run. Now canonized into the automobile history books, the two races in 1975 and 1979 saw speedsters race from New York City to a Californian beach. Doherty planned, designed, engineered and built his own dream car for the race, decking it out with everything an electro-physicist could devise to drive faster, safer and longer without stopping.
His love of the race led to him to organize his own version in 1981 called the U.S. Express. Doherty won that race alongside his co-driver Will Wright, the video game designer of The Sims and SimCity series.
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