Ever wondered how news anchors, actors and politicians seem to deliver all of their lines without stumbling or forgetting? Hubert J. Schlafly Jr., an electrical engineer, made that possible. He invented the teleprompter, a display device that prompts a speaker with an electronic visual text of a script, out of sight of the audience. While using this device, public speakers or performers appear to be speaking from memory.

Schlafly’s teleprompter was made of a motorized scroll of paper inside half a suitcase.

A Broadway actor, Fred Barton in the 1940s who wanted a way to remember his lines, inspired the idea.

He approached Irving Berlin Kahn, vice-president of radio and television at 20th Century Fox. Kahn went to Schlafly, then the director of television research at the same company.

Schlafly called it “a piece of cake.” Fox declined to invest in their device. Schlafly, Barton and Kahn then started their own company, TelePrompTer Corporation.

The device was first used on the CBS soap opera The First Hundred Years in 1950.

The major breakthrough for TelePrompTer Corporation came in 1952, when Herbert Hoover delivered the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention, using the device. Hoover became the first politician to use the teleprompter.

Ironically, Schlafly rarely used his own invention. At his induction to the Cable Television Hall of Fame, in 2008, he admitted that it was the first time he had ever used his device to help deliver a speech.

He died in Connecticut April 20 2011. He was 91.