Hubert Hub J. Schlafly Jr.

Obituary

Hubert J. (“Hub”) Schlafly, Jr., 91, of Stamford, Connecticut, died peacefully on April 20, 2011, at Stamford Hospital, after a brief illness. Born on August 14, 1919, in St. Louis, Missouri, he was the only child of Hubert, Sr. and Mary Rose Parker Schlafly. In addition to his parents, he was predeceased by his beloved wife of 59 years, Leona (“Lee”) Martin Schlafly, who died in 2003. He is survived by many nieces, nephews and cousins who knew and loved him as “Uncle Hub,” and by many beloved friends.

After graduation as an electrical engineer from the University of Notre Dame (Class of 1941), he spent several years working for General Electric and the MIT Radiation Laboratory. In 1947, he was invited to join Twentieth Century Fox in New York City as Director of Television Research.

A prolific inventor, Hub is best known for developing the teleprompter in collaboration with Irving Berlin Kahn and Fred Barton, Jr., and for co-founding the TelePrompTer Corporation, which he led first as its Executive Vice President and later as its President. The teleprompter is a transparent device enabling speakers to read their lines while looking directly into a television camera. The teleprompter made its debut in 1950 on a soap opera called, “The First Hundred Years,” and in 1952 Herbert Hoover became the first politician to use it when he gave the keynote address to the Republican National Convention. As Hoover digressed from his prepared remarks to speak extemporaneously, the teleprompter properly stopped scrolling to await the completion of Hoover’s ad-libbing. But then Hoover announced in front of the entire nation that the teleprompter needed to restart the scrolling so he could read what to say, and the secret was out. Before long everyone in television wanted to use this new technology.

In 1956, Hub was invited by the editors of a leading science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories (Ziff-Davis Publishing Company), to join over a dozen public figures such as Sid Caesar, Salvador Dali and John Cameron Swayze to predict what the world would be like in 2001. He said this: “Systematic information storage will be in a form instantly available for response to remote inquiry…Communications will be highly refined, without the encumbrance of any wires to or between terminal devices. In fact, this advanced state of communications may substantially reduce our need for transportation.” He described and predicted the advent of computers, the Internet and cell phones.

Hub was a visionary, pioneer and first-rate collaborator in the field of telecommunications. He helped shape the modern television industry. He held 16 patents. He is the first person featured in Hannah Storm’s book entitled, “Notre Dame Inspirations” (Doubleday 2006), which features the most prominent alumni of that university.

He also developed the first pay TV system that permitted subscribers to order special programs delivered by coaxial cable. By the early 1970s, TelePrompTer Corporation owned franchises in 140 markets and served approximately 1.4 million customers.

Working with Hal Rosen at Hughes Aircraft, which designed the first domestic satellite, and with Scientific Atlanta Company, in June 1973, Hub executed the first satellite transmission of a cable program from Washington, D.C., to a convention of 3,000 cable operators in Anaheim, California. It was the first time a satellite was used to transmit cable programming and allowed one to go up to satellites from anywhere and transmit everywhere. It transformed the industry.

In addition, he engineered the famous HBO satellite transmission of the “Thrilla in Manila” boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

Later in his career he was president of Transponder Corporation and Portel Services Network. He also served as the chairman of the FCC Cable Television Advisory Commission. He was a fellow in the Society of Motion Picture and TV Engineers.

Among his many awards, he received two Emmy Awards, one for the teleprompter and another for his outstanding engineering achievement for cable television technology. He was designated a “Cable Television Pioneer” by the National Cable Television Association. He received the prestigious Sarnoff Citation for his patent of the TelePrompTer and many contributions to cable television, the Vanguard Award for Science and Technology from the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, and in 2008, he was inducted into the Cable Television Hall of Fame. After his acceptance speech at the Cable Television Hall of Fame at age 88, Hub revealed to the audience that it was the first time he had ever used a teleprompter to make a speech.

Hub funded the “Hubert J. Schlafly Convergence Lab” at WNET, the premier public media provider of the New York City metropolitan area and parent company of public television stations THIRTEEN and WLIW21.

As a philanthropist, he quietly supported numerous charities, especially educational initiatives to help the poor. He and his wife endowed a scholarship program for minority students in engineering at Notre Dame, where he served on the Engineering Advisory Council for over 30 years. He and his wife also endowed the Schlafly Electronic Circuits Laboratory at Notre Dame. He received the Notre Dame College of Engineering Honor Award for his overall contributions to electronic technology in the television industry. In 1992, Hub was presented the “Notre Dame Man of the Year” award by the Notre Dame Club of Fairfield County, Connecticut. One of the students Hub helped made an emergency trip all the way from Ecuador to see him bedside just before he passed away.

At Sacred Heart University, in Fairfield, Connecticut, its Digital Media Lab was dedicated in his honor. In 2003, the university awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Most recently, as a tribute to his wife, Leona, he underwrote the costs of the Chapel of the Nativity, the daily worship space of The Chapel of the Holy Spirit at Sacred Heart University that includes original mosaics and stained glass by the world-famous Jesuit artist, Father Marko Rupnik.

He was the past President of Greenwich Rotary and a member of the Greenwich Retired Men’s Association, among other activities.

A lifelong Catholic, Hub was a member of the Order of Malta and was a Knight of Saint Gregory the Great. For over 30 years he was a parishioner of Saint Mary Parish in Greenwich, Connecticut. For the past four years, he was a resident at Edgehill Retirement and Continuing Care Community in Stamford, Connecticut, where he was quickly befriended by all.

Friends may call at the Hitchcock Room in the Parish Center at Saint Mary Parish, 178 Greenwich Avenue, Greenwich, Connecticut 06830, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Monday, April 25, 2011. A Mass of Christian burial will take place at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, April 26, 2011, at Saint Mary Parish, 178 Greenwich Avenue, Greenwich, Connecticut 06830.

A graveside service will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday morning, April 28, 2011, in Louisville, New York, where he will be laid to rest next to his beloved wife, Lee.