Gross was born in
Toronto,
Ontario, Canada in 1918, the son of
Romanian-
Jewish immigrants, he grew up in
Cleveland,
Ohio, in the United States. His lifelong enthusiasm for radio was sparked at age nine, when traveling on
Lake Erie by a steamboat. While sneaking around the boat he ended up in the radio transmissions room. The ship's operator let him listen in on transmissions. Later, Gross turned the basement of his house into a radio station, built from scavenged junkyard parts. At sixteen he earned his
amateur radio license, and he used his
call sign (W8PAL) his whole life.
The walkie-talkie His interest and knowledge in radio technology had grown considerably by the time he in 1936 entered the
BSEE program at Cleveland's Case of Applied Sciences (now a part of
Case Western Reserve University). He was determined to investigate the unexplored frequency region above
100 MHz. Between 1938 and 1941, soon after the invention of the "
walkie-talkie" in 1937 by
Donald Hings, he created and patented his own version of it.
World War II During
World War II, Gross had some limited involvement in building a two-way VHF air-to-ground communications system for the U.S.
Office of Strategic Services for use in military operations, known as the
Joan-Eleanor system. It comprised a hand-held SSTC-502
transceiver ("Joan") and a much larger aircraft-based SSTR-6 transceiver ("Eleanor"). Gross' actual contribution to the project is unclear (he was not an OSS member), but the main developers on the project were Dewitt R. Goddard and Lt. Cmdr. Stephen H. Simpson (Goddard's wife's name was Eleanor, and reportedly Joan was an acquaintance of Simpson). The system operated at frequencies above 250 MHz, which was at a much higher frequency than the enemy had thought conceivable. This allowed operatives using "Joan" to communicate with high altitude bombers carrying "Eleanor" for times of 10 to 15 minutes without the use of code words, eliminating the need for decryption. It was developed beginning in late 1942, was highly successful and very difficult to detect behind enemy lines at the time. It was marked
Top Secret by the U.S. military until it was declassified and made public in 1976.
Telephone pager Another breakthrough came in 1949 when he adapted his two-way radios to one-way for cordless remote telephonic signaling. He had effectively invented the first
telephone pager system. His intention for this system was to be used by medical doctors, but was met with skepticism by doctors who were afraid the system would upset patients. This same technology is used in one-way radio signaling devices such as garage door openers.
Later years In 1950 he tried in vain to interest telephone companies in mobile telephony. == Recognition ==