Gene Slottow’s wife was late picking him up after work. As a result, the electrical engineering professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) helped invent the plasma display.

It was early summer, 1964. Fellow professor Dr. Donald Bitzer had been working on a display devise that could be used for the first computer-based instructional system, PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) that he had devised. But Bitzer was stuck. He and Slottow found themselves outside the university’s Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) discussing how to proceed. While they waited for their spouses discussing an approach suggested by graduate student Robert Willson, the pair discovered a solution.

Slottow had received a degree in physics from the University of Chicago, a master’s in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins and his Ph.D.  in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, where he was hired in 1954. Ten years later, Slottow, now a senior research engineer, and Bitzer figured out how to emit light by energizing neon gas sealed between two sheets of glass coated with phosphor to produce color. The morning after their revelation, Bitzer, Slottow and Willson started on a new model that used three layers of glass, the center layer with rows of tiny holes filled with a mixture of gas, and the outer layers lined with transparent metallic lines to carry the necessary electrical current to excite the gas in the tiny holes. The trio completed the first plasma panel, a monochrome display that glowed orange, in July 1964.

Slottow remained actively involved in perfecting the plasma panel throughout his tenure at UIUC. In 1968, Slottow was promoted to associate professor in the university's electrical engineering department while maintaining his position in the CSL, which morphed into the Computer-Based Education Research Laboratory, where his work earned him several patents in electronic instrumentation and electronic displays.

Widely published, Slottow received numerous awards including the Frances Rice Darne Memorial Award from the Society for Information Display for technical achievement in 1973. After 32 years at UCIC, Slottow retired in 1986 and died three years later. In 2002, his wife accepted the Emmy awarded her husband, Bitzer and Willson for their work in inventing the plasma display.

Slottow also was an outstanding jazz piano musician and played at numerous faculty gatherings and with local jazz bands. He once told his brother Dick, if he had it all to do over, he would study music.