Cleveland, O.— A true trailblazer in numerical control and programmable controllers, Dr. Odo J. Struger, 67, died Dec. 8, 1998, following a five-year battle with thyroid cancer. Often called the father of Allen-Bradley's programmable logic controller (PLC) and credited with creating that acronym, Dr. Struger headed PLC development efforts 30 years ago at Allen-Bradley Co., now a brand of Rockwell Automation (Milwaukee, Wis.).

Dr. Struger was born in Austria in 1931, and moved to the U.S. in the 1950s. He became an engineer at Allen-Bradley in 1958, and worked for the company for almost 40 years. Dr. Struger retired in 1997 as Rockwell Automation's vp of technology. Holder of 50 patents and author of 40 published technical papers, Dr. Struger helped develop IEC 1131-3, a PLC programming language standard. He also worked on the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems consortia on Holonic Manufacturing Systems.

Rockwell Automation recently established the Odo J. Struger Automation Award to honor both his and future engineers' exceptional advancements in the control and automation fields. In addition, an automation lab at Dr. Struger's alma mater, the Technical University of Vienna (Austria) was recently named after him. In 1996, Dr. Struger received the Prometheus Award and was inducted into the Automation Hall of Fame at the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago, Ill.).