Hubert Schlafly

Hubert Joseph Schlafly Jr. was an American electrical engineer, born in St. Louis in 1919 and trained at the University of Notre Dame, who is remembered as a co-inventor of the teleprompter. He unveiled the device in 1950 on the set of the CBS soap opera The First Hundred Years, where it scrolled text for on-camera talent. With Irving B. Kahn he co-founded the TelePrompTer Corporation, which by 1973 had grown into the largest cable television provider in the United States before being sold to Westinghouse. Schlafly also helped promote carrying television signals by satellite: with Sidney Topol he built a portable satellite receiver and in 1973 demonstrated it at a cable convention in Anaheim. He was inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame in 2008 and honored with two Emmy Awards for cable technology. He died in Stamford, Connecticut, in 2011.