Pivotal Players: CEA Hall of Fame Inductees Share Passion for Innovation

As the premier trade association promoting growth in the $195 billion U.S. consumer electronics industry, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) is known for showcasing the most innovative minds in the industry.

As such, we are excited to be highlighting the CE 2012 Hall of Fame Inductees.  As true leaders who have shaped and advanced innovation, the inductees this year include company founders and inventors, those who fervently promote technology, gifted marketers, and the retailers that educate and deliver products to consumers.

Here are the pivotal players:

• Willard Boyle and George Smith – inventors of the charge-coupled device (CCD) at Bell Labs
• Robert Briskman – inventor of satellite radio
• Richard Citta – creator of the VSB digital TV transmission standard
• Bjorn Dybdahl – founder of consumer electronics retailer Bjorn’s
• Douglas Engelbart – inventor of the computer mouse and HTML
• Charlie Ergen – founder of satellite companies Echostar and Dish Network
• Larry Finley – founder of the International Tape Association (now the International Recording Media Association)
• Fansy and Henry Harold Gregg – founders of consumer electronics retailer HH Gregg
• In Hwoi Koo – founder of LG Corp.
• Byung-Chull Lee – founder of Samsung Electronics

All of these pivotal players will be inducted into CE Hall of Fame on during CEA’s Industry Forum to be held in San Francisco on October 14-17, 2012.

While the advancement of consumer technologies is laudable, we would like point out that many of these innovators have a heritage in government.  For example, Robert Briskman, the inventor of satellite radio, was the Chief of Program Support for the Office of Tracking and Data Acquisition at NASA in 1959.  He also directed the development of the mobile terminals used on land, sea, and airborne vehicles when he was with Geostar Corporation in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Douglas Engelbart, the inventor of HTML and the computer mouse, paved the way for military and government efficiencies with his work with ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, in 1969.  Today’s most innovative web and mobile applications for the military have a direct lineage back to Engelbart’s pioneering work.

We would like to congratulate all of the CE 2012 Hall of Fame inductees.  Without your pioneering pivotal plays, we would not have the technological advances that continue to propel and evolve business and government every day.