Theodore George “Ted” Paraskevakos (born March 25, 1937 in Athens, Greece) is a Greek inventor and businessman and a naturalized citizen of the United States. Paraskevakos graduated from The Superior College of Electronics in Greece and served for 28 months as communications and electronics instructor in the Hellenic Air Force. He attended a variety of courses for digital engineering in Alabama and in Florida.
Paraskevakos’ most notable inventions relate to the transmission of electronic data through telephone lines which formed the original basis for what is now known as Caller ID. Paraskevakos began his work in this field in 1968 while working as a communications engineer with SITA and has since been issued over 20 patents worldwide based on this technology. His transmitter[1] and receiver[2] were reduced to practice in 1971 in a Boeing facility in Huntsville, Alabama, representing the world’s first prototypes of caller identification devices. They were installed at Peoples’ Telephone Company in Leesburg, Alabama and in Athens, Greece where they were demonstrated to several telephone companies with great success.
Paraskevakos holds over 60 patents worldwide including, but not limited to, the first digital alarm communication system,[3]automatic meter reading and load management,[4] digital vending machine communications,[5] indoor archery,[6] vertical parking, and intelligent currency validation network.[7] He founded, among other companies, Metretek, Inc.[1], DataVend, Inc. and Intelligent Currency Validation Network, Inc.[2].