CEDIA 2010

CEDIA is giving Joel Spira, founder of lighting control manufacturer Lutron Electronics Co., Inc., the organization’s 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award. The award “recognizes an individual who has exhibited outstanding, creative, innovative, and visionary leadership in the growth and advancement of the residential electronic systems industry”. What has Mr. Spira done to deserve such an honor? For starters, he invented the world’s first dimming device back in 1959, which launched Lutron as a company, as well as helped revolutionize the lighting control industry. In the years since, Lutron estimates they have made it possible for owners of the company’s lighting control devices billions of dollars in energy costs – not to mention all the personal benefits of convenience and enhanced lighting ambiance.

Not one to rest on his laurels, over the past 50 years Spira is credited with more than 500 U.S. design and utility patents.