Dr. Isidore Kitsee, inventor and chemist, who is credited with more than 2,000 inventions in the last forty-five years, died at Philadelphia yesterday at the age of 87 after being ill a month.
Though not active in the Jewish community of Philadelphia, Dr. Kitsee claimed descent from the family of the great Spanish-Arabic Talmudic scholar, Moses Maimonedes, poularly known as the Rambam. He was born in Vienna, the son of a lumber merchant, and came to America 65 years ago.
Among Dr. Kitsee’s early inventions were the first trolley car to run in Philadelphia, the underground telegraph system, and the central battery in telephone offices, which latter invention he sold to the Bell Telephone Company, refusing a royalty agreement which would have brought him millions of dollars a year.
Dr. Kitsee was also the inventor of a phonograph disc, a refrigerator car, a new type of coal breaker, talking pictures and the use of natural colours in films and a process of extracting juice from Havana tobacco and spraying it on cheap tobacco used for cigarettes. He sold the refrigerator car patent to the Northern Pacific Railreod and the phonograph dise to Eldridge Johnson of the Victor Talking Machine Company.
The first patent issued in this country on a wireless set using a tube was issued to Dr. Kitsee in 1889; he sold his rights to this patent to Marconi.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
