Kelly Christensen, StratosAudio CEO, tells RBR-TVBR that the company’s Engineering Liaison Tom Mock has passed at 76 while at his home in Sheffield, PA 1/20: “Tom was a true friend and colleague and we will miss him greatly. He was employed at Stratos until the day he passed, thus we will be reminded daily of our loss.”
Tom worked at the Consumer Electronics Association from 1981 until 2000 where as Director, Technology and Standards, his duties included staffing of technical committees in the areas of product safety and compliance, vehicular electronics, and liaison with other associations and consortia.
While with the CEA/EIA he was directly involved with the development of stereo broadcasting for TV for which the Association won an Emmy, initiation of the home automation program which became CEBus, introduction and standardization of the Radio Data System (RDS) in the US, standardization of the Closed Captioning and the eXtended Data System (XDS) for TV, development of the V-Chip parental control system and, coordination of CEA Intelligent Transportation System activities with ITSA and SAE.
He also served as US delegate on several IEC committees. Tom is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the National Radio Systems Committee (NRSC), and the RDS Forum. He is also a member of Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Standards Technical Panel (STP) for UL 6500 and UL 1678.
From 1956 until 1981 he served in various engineering capacities in the Government and private sectors related to the military and Department of Defense. After graduating from Carnegie Tech (Carnegie Mellon) with a degree in Electronics Engineering, Tom served as an officer in the U.S. Army. Upon completing his military service, he moved to Maryland where he lived until 2004. Returning to Pennsylvania, he moved to Sheffield and into the house where his parents had lived.
Mock lead the engineering and technical development efforts for StratosAudio in enabling interactive radio on mobile devices beginning in 2001. In 2004 Stratos won Best of Innovations at CES in the Mobile Devices category with Motorola and Hyundai Autonet demonstrating a fully operational interactive car radio. StratosAudio is media services company that enables real time interactive advertising, programming and behavioral data aggregation for the radio broadcast industry.
Tom was also an integral part of the global patent team at StratosAudio. To date Tom has contributed as a named inventor to patents filed and / or granted in over twenty countries worldwide for StratosAudio.
He was married to Carol Ellen (Williamson) Mock from 1964 to 2005. He is survived by his ex-wife Carol, their daughter Tracey L. Mock-Courtney, their son John Davis Mock, his sister Mary Lou Brunettin, and his granddaughter Margaret (Maggie) Courtney.
A memorial mass will be held on Wednesday, January 26th at St. Anthony‘s Catholic Church in Sheffield. Donations in his honor can be sent via St Anthony’s 7222 Route 6, Sheffield, Pa, 16347. Please be sure to mark the donations as being for the Sheffield Food Pantry.
