New York — A host of industry luminaries turned out last night to honor the 2014 inductees into the Consumer Electronics Association’s CE Hall of Fame, the 15th such class since the Hall was founded.
This year’s class included:
* The late George Antheil and the late Hollywood starlet Hedy Lamarr, co-inventors of frequency-hopping technology that led to the development of spread spectrum;
* Dr. Levy Gerzberg, co-founder of Zoran Corp., the pioneer and leading supplier of system-on-chip (SoC) devices for digital cameras, digital sound processors, HDTVs and other technologies;
* The late retailing icon James C. “Cowboy” Maloney, founder of the Cowboy Maloney’s Electric City Super Stores chain;
* Pandora Internet Radio founder Tim Westergren;
* The late C.W. Conn, president and chairman of the board of the Conn’s retail chain;
* Loyd Ivey, founder of MiTek Electronics and Communications Corp., one of the U.S.’s largest manufacturers of car and home audio electronics;
* Silcon Image founder Dr. David Lee, the engineer behind the HDMI and DVI PC interfaces;
* Former Zenith Sales Co. president Jerry McCarthy, a leading industry statesmen and long-time member of the Board of Governors of the Electronic Industries Association and member of the Board of Directors of the EIA Consumer Electronics Group, now CEA; and current professor of marketing and management at Dominican University, and;
* Victor and Janie Tsao, the husband and wife team who co-founded Linksys out of their Southern California garage with no outside funding and developed what is considered the first affordable retail router, the Linksys 4-port Ethernet Cable/DSL router, soon after the release of Windows 95.
Gerzberg, Westergren, Ivey, Lee and McCarthy were present to accept their awards, as was Janie Tsao, who accepted on behalf of husband Victor, who was traveling in Asia. Con Maloney accepted the award for his father and C.W. Conn’s daughters, Carolyn and Elizabeth, accepted on behalf of the Conn family. Antheil was represented by his estate executor and Lamarr was represented by a Hollywood film producer who is currently adapting her story for a feature film.
CEA president Gary Shapiro emceed the evening.
Photos from the evening can be seen here.
