Well, we have had a lot of responses from people nominating their AV “Heroes”… and many of them were surprising. Some, I am afraid to say, were important names that I had just put away in the back of my mind somewhere. And a few were people that I hadn’t even heard of.

Several people nominated Edwin Land, the father of instant photography and founder of Polaroid. For those of you who weren’t around, like Kodak, Polaroid had a big presence in the AV industry in the 80s and early 90s, with video and dye-sublimation printers, and a number of clever ways of using instant photography in the commercial AV world. I can well remember shooting Polaroid instant slide film for drop-ins in multi-image shows, and selling Polaroid video printers to clients for use with products like VideoShow and TVL.

Fritz Sennheiser came in for a number of nominations from the audio people among us, to which I would like to add Herr Doktor Bose.

Another great nomination was Nikola Tesla, the electrical pioneer who gave us the principles of alternating current as well as a wealth of new uses for electricity. (On that note, I suppose we should also nominate Ben Franklin).

Bill Mathy nominated Guglieimo Marconi, the father of radio, whose work, along with others, gave us the wireless EVERYTHING that we now enjoy.

And a REALLY interesting one came from Bob Snyder, who nominated Nam June Paik, a Korean-American considered to be the first video artist, whose work, Bob points out, helped push video into the mainstream of commercial work. I was fascinated by reading up on him, as it was the only name submitted I was completely unfamiliar with. His work really did push the envelope for the time, both technologically and artistically, and more info can be found here:
Nam June Paik – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We do indeed stand on the shoulders of giants.

JRR