Congratulations to Erna Hoover and Amos Joel, Jr -Inventors from Maplewood! archived
Jun 19, 2008 at 12:52am
Erna graduated from Columbia High School and was inducted into CHS' hall of fame last year. I'm fortunate to attend Summit Unitarian with her -- she's a powerhouse.
Barbara
Barbara
It's funny, but I thought I recognized her name, but couldn't place it. It must have been from hearing about her in regards to CHS. Thanks!
Congratulations to Mr. Joel, a long time South Orange (N. Wyoming) resident before moving to Maplewood a few years ago.
Mr. Joel passed away earlier this week.
The rest is at NYTimes.com.
October 28, 2008
Amos E. Joel Jr., Cellphone Pioneer, Dies at 90
By ANDREW MARTIN
Amos E. Joel Jr., an inventor whose switching device opened the way for the cellular phone business, died Oct. 25 at his home in Maplewood, N.J. He was 90.
The death was confirmed by his daughter Stephanie Joel.
Mr. Joel received more than 70 patents, but he was perhaps best known for No. 3,663,762, a 1972 patent that allows a cellphone user to make an uninterrupted call while moving from one cell region to another. Without his invention, there wouldnt be all these people walking around with cellphones, said Frank Vigilante, who was one of Mr. Joels supervisor at Bell Labs. He really allowed that business to form and to be a business.
A native of Philadelphia who grew up partly in New York City, Mr. Joel liked to tinker with electronics from an early age. As a boy, he wired a communication system for his friends, using old phone equipment that was left behind in vacant apartments and building a crude switchboard with knife switches, only to be caught by a repairman, his daughter said.
In an interview with The Star-Ledger in New Jersey this year, Mr. Joel traced his career back to childhood fascinations: the switches on his electric train and his familys first dial telephone. I wanted to know: How does this thing work?" he said.
He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and went on to earn a bachelors and masters degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he collected and posted patents in his dorm room. While in college, he met his wife, the former Rhoda Fenton, on a blind date and invited her up to his room to look at his patents.
She thought patents was a code name for something else, Stephanie Joel said. What she didnt realize is that our father always had a lifelong fascination with patents.
Miss Fenton came away from the date thinking that Mr. Joel was crazy, but he eventually won her over. They were married for 58 years.
The rest is at NYTimes.com.
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excerpt:
Their names are not well-known and their accomplishments little chronicled, but their inventions changed the world, helping to usher in the era of electronic communication.
Without Erna Hoover's computer program for handling telephone traffic, our lives would be filled with busy signals and dropped calls; without Amos Joel's switching invention, there would be no mobile telephone.
"He gave us the 'cell' in 'cell phone,'" said Fred Allen, editor of Invention & Technology magazine. In placing a call, "half of what makes it possible -- the switching of cells -- is so fundamental but so difficult."
Last month, the two retired Bell Labs scientists finally got their due. The 90-year-old Joel, who lives in Maplewood, and 82-year-old Hoover, from Summit, were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.