Josef Kates
Canadian engineer
Josef Kates, born Josef Katz, (May 5, 1921 – June 16, 2018) was a Canadian engineer whose achievements include designing the first digital game-playing machine, and the world's first automated traffic signalling system.
Early life and education
Born the fifth of six children in an Austrian-Jewish family, Josef Kates was the son of Baruch (Bernard) and Anna Katz (née Entenberg). His parents ran a grocery store and an import-export business in Vienna. Kates fled to Italy to escape the Nazis after the Anschluss in 1938 and then, in 1939, joined the rest of his family which had fled to England. Kates enlisted in the British Army but, before he could see service, he and other Germans and Austrians resident in Britain were interned as enemy aliens. Kates was deported to Canada where he remained interned for almost two years until he and most of his fellow Jewish internees were recognised by the government as "victims of Nazi aggression" and released. At the camps in New Brunswick and Quebec, Kates fished, worked as a lumberjack, knitted socks and studied for his high school diploma through McGill University's high school matriculation program, placing first in Quebec's province-wide exams. After his release in 1942, he moved to Toronto where he met Lillian Kroch, marrying her in 1944. They had four children: Louis, Naomi, Celina and Philip A.
He was educated at Goethe-Realschule (Vienna: 1931–1938); McGill University (Montreal: 1941, junior and senior matriculation); University of Toronto (Toronto: 1944–1948, Honours in Mathematics and Physics; 1948-1949: M.A. in Applied Math; 1949-1951: Ph.D. in physics).
Career
Kates started his career working for the Imperial Optical Company of Toronto in 1942, and was in charge of precision optics for Royal Canadian Navy equipment until he left in 1944.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6279925. VIAF identifies the subject as 123077478. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921, 2018, 1938 and 1939.
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