But his wristwatch-sized walkie-talkie did not take off with the public, although it inspired a similar gadget used by Dick Tracy, a cartoon character.Mr Gross believed that his pager, a device to alert the wearer with a message, would be seen as a boon by doctors who happened to be away from their surgeries.
Today some 300m are in use, but by the time the pager was in demand as a useful tool Mr Gross's patents had expired.
Patients arriving at RediClinic branches are given a pager, so that they can shop nearby until the clinic can see them.
For service technicians it might be nothing more than a display on a pager that tells them where to drive next.
The wearer's guardians define a perimeter beyond which they feel their charge should not wander, and receive alerts via mobile phone or pager when he has gone beyond these boundaries.The digital angel can also issue an alert when its wearer has fallen down, or when there has been an unexpected change in local temperature of the sort that might be caused, say, by someone falling into a pond.
But he did make a justifiable claim to be ahead in personalised communications: not just the walkie-talkie, but the pager and the cordless telephone.
OF THE ingenious people who have had a hand in developing the pager, the cordless phone and other urgent instruments of modern life, Al Gross could take much of the credit, or, if you like, the blame.
The courts have also ruled that telephone conversations intercepted by foreign countries and private pager messages sent from abroad can be used in criminal prosecutions.
Witness the success of the BlackBerry e-mail pager, made by Research in Motion, a Canadian firm.
At one point, said the Observer, he reeled off from his pager the names of high-ups such as Mr Balls who had left him messages.
He foresees a time, not very far off, when it will be possible to take a pager and slip it into a cradle, so that your car can automatically handle any messages.
