‘Hub’ Schlafly, TV engineer who helped invent teleprompter, dies at 91

Mr. Schlafly, then TelePromp­Ter’s vice president, helped overcome many of the burgeoning industry’s technological hurdles. He did fundamental work with Hughes Aircraft on a now-prevalent method of broadcasting across rivers, mountains or city streets without physically laying cable.

In 1973, Mr. Schlafly demonstrated the future of television when he helped secure use of a Canadian satellite to broadcast images from Washington — including footage of House Speaker Carl Albert — to the National Cable Television Association’s convention in Anaheim, Calif.

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It was the first coast-to-coast satellite transmission of television images, and trade journals heralded it as a significant moment in TV history.

But for all the promise of satellite distribution, logistical problems prevented it from catching on immediately. And TelePrompTer — mired in legal and financial trouble and after Kahn, the chief executive, was convicted in 1971 of bribing government officials while bidding on a cable franchise — decided not to pursue it.

Mr. Schlafly left the company and continued to push for the development of satellite transmission as an independent consultant. In 1975, he helped engineer HBO’s satellite transmission of the “Thrilla in Manila” boxing match between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali — a landmark broadcast that succeeded in demonstrating satellite TV’s vast economic potential.

Hubert Joseph Schlafly Jr. was born in St. Louis on Aug. 14, 1919, and moved frequently as a boy as his wildcatter father chased oil. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in electrical engineering in 1941.

Mr. Schlafly was an engineer for General Electric and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked on radar technology for the war effort before joining Fox in 1947.

In his later career, he was president of Transponder Corp., a telecommunications company, and of Portel Services Network, a communications patent-licensing concern. He retired in 1998.

His wife of 59 years, Leona Martin Schlafly, died in 2003. He had no immediate survivors.

Mr. Schlafly received two Emmy Awards for his technical achievements — one in 1992 for his work developing cable systems and another in 1999 for his part in developing the original teleprompter.

In 2008, he was inducted into the Cable Television Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Denver. He delivered his acceptance speech with the help of a teleprompter — his first occasion to use the device, he told the audience.