A prolific inventor with a seemingly never-ending thirst for knowledge, his pioneering developments spanned from the Golden Age of Television into the High-Definition Era, earning him more than 180 U.S. patents. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published his most recent patent application, for advances in touch-screen technology, on Feb. 1.

Dr. Adler's six-decade career with Zenith Electronics Corporation began in 1941 when he joined Zenith's research division after receiving his Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Vienna in 1937. He was named associate director in 1952, vice president in 1959, and vice president and director of research in 1963. He retired as research vice president in 1979, and served Zenith as a technical consultant until 1999, when Zenith merged with LG Electronics.

"Bob Adler was an unparalleled technical contributor, leader, adviser and teacher," said Jerry K. Pearlman, retired Zenith chairman and CEO, who knew Dr. Adler for 35 years. "His gifts and passions were many, his mentoring matchless and his ego totally nonexistent."

In the consumer electronics field, Dr. Adler has been widely recognized as the co-inventor (with fellow Zenith engineer Eugene Polley) of the wireless TV remote. Dr. Adler's "Space Command" ultrasonic remote control for TV sets was introduced by Zenith in 1956. He received the 1958 Outstanding Technical Achievement Award of the Institute of Radio Engineers (now the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE) for his "original work on ultrasonic remote controls" for television.

Among Dr. Adler's earlier work was the gated-beam tube which, at the time of its introduction, represented an entirely new concept in the field of vacuum tubes. The use of this tube greatly simplified the sound system in television receivers, markedly improving reception by screening out certain types of sound interference while lowering the cost of the sound channel.