The Blogs: If anyone can design a pager that explodes…

We Jews invented the pager. The rest is history.

In Memory of Alfred J. Gross (February 22, 1918 – December 21, 2000).

According to Maj. (ret) John W. Spencer, the Israel Defense Force implemented more effective measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other country in military history.

When Maj. Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and Co-Director of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project made these comments, he was referring to Israel’s controlled response to the demonic attack by Hamas on October 7. Following the Slaughter on the Seventh, hundreds of Israeli soldiers died while attempting to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza.

As opposed to Israel’s controlled response, the intension of the savage Hamas leadership was to maim, murder, rape, behead and kidnap as many civilians as possible. These Palestinian terrorists also engaged in, “Strategic Civilian Sacrifice”. Knowing that Israel’s response to the worst carnage against Jews in modern history (since the Holocaust) would be intense and devastating, Hamas did not construct a single bomb shelter for civilians. Equally heinous, unprotected women and children were denied entrance into the hundreds of miles of terrorist tunnels.

These techniques were designed to guarantee civilian casualties and fatalities. The suffering and death of women and children were photographed and released to the media to promote antisemitic propaganda. Along with the graphic photographs, casualty numbers were grossly exaggerated, terrorists were listed as civilians, dead men were listed as women, and adults were listed as children. These evil ploys were designed to garnish sympathy and pity for the Palestinians and condemnation of Israel.

Today, Hamas’ leadership is extinct and Hamas is no longer an organized military force in the Gaza Strip.

Almost a year later, in response to months of missiles being launched at Israel from Lebanon, Hezbollah was fooled into purchasing thousands of handheld exploding pagers.

(This work is ineligible for copyright and therefore in the public domain. It consists of information produced by an automated system, without human input; it is common property and contains no original authorship under the laws of its country of origin. Wikipedia)

When Maj. Spencer had commended the IDF’s low civilian casualty rate, this event had not yet transpired. In this astonishingly clever onslaught, the overwhelming majority of casualties were Hezbollah terrorists. Tragically, 2 children were among the deaths.

Considering that almost 3,000 terrorists were injured and dozens killed, this is an amazingly low civilian casualty accomplishment. This pager offensive undoubtedly resulted in the lowest ratio of civilian to combatant injuries and deaths in the history of urban warfare. Nothing short of genius.

and speaking of pagers and genius…

FLASHBACK ! The first pager system was patented in 1949 by Alfred J. Gross.

Al Gross, 1999
Author: Kb7uxe
“I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain”.
(Wikipedia)

Gross, the son of Romanian-Jewish immigrants, earned his amateur radio license at the age of 16.

Amateur radio FCC license of Al Gross, November 26, 1935. This image is a work of the Federal Communications As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain in the United States.

While still in high school he invented a portable hand-held radio transmitter-receiver system and named it the “walkie-talkie.” After studying under Albert Einstein at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, he perfected his two-way radio, at the age of 20.

During World War II, Gross participated in building a two-way air-to-ground communications system for the U.S Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to today’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It was classified as Top Secret by the US military until it was declassified and made public in 1976.

After WWII, the FCC allocated the first use of radio frequencies for personal civilian use. In 1948, Gross’s company, Gross Electronics Co. was the first to receive FCC approval. In 1950 Gross demonstrated the use of a hand-held transceiver as a “cordless remote telephone”, which became the first paging system of its kind.

Cartoonist Chester Gould used Gross’ concept as the inspiration for Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist radio which become the strip’s most recognizable icon.

In 1958 Gross Electronics Co. received FCC approval for mobile and hand-held transceivers. He sold more than 100,000 units of his system.

Gross received numerous awards and honors during his distinguished career, including the 1992 Fred B. Link Award from the Radio Club of America, the 1997 Marconi Memorial Gold Medal of Achievement from the Veteran Wireless Operators Association, the 1999 Edwin Howard Armstrong Achievement Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the 1998 Eta Kappa Nu’s (the international honor society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Vladimir Karapetoff Eminent Members’ Award, and the Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award.

Gross continued working and inventing for companies including Sperry Corporation and General Electric. In 1990 he became a senior engineer for Orbital Sciences Corporation specializing in the design and manufacture of space vehicles, satellites, launch vehicles, spacecraft that delivered satellites into orbit, missile defense systems and human-rated space systems. He was still on the payroll when he died at the age 82.

Dr. Martin Cooper, Forum in Taipei International Convention Center.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

And speaking of wireless communications, Martin Cooper, the son of Jewish immigrants who fled pogroms in their native Ukraine, is credited with inventing the cell phone in 1973.

Photo of Don Adams as Maxwell Smart. This work is in the public domain in the United States. It was published in the United States between 1929 and 1977, without copyright notice.(Wikipedia)

Or, “would you believe” Mel Brooks and Buck Henry (born Henry Zuckerman) invented it for Maxwell Smart’s “shoe phone” in 1968?

And speaking of Jewish longevity, Martin Cooper is 95, Buck Henry is 89 and Mel Brooks is 98!