Preston Fleet, 60, who founded Fotomat photo-developing and invented Omnimax film projection, died of cancer Tuesday at a hospital near his central California home. His entrepreneurship began 27 years ago when he pioneered Fotomat, the picture-developing company with the trademark kiosks. In 1973, he helped found the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Space Museum in San Diego, where he lived until about 10 years ago. He outfitted it with Omnimax, a system of projection that surrounds the audience with sound and pictures. The projectors, which bounce images off giant, tilted-domed screens, have been installed in more than 100 theaters around the world by their Canadian manufacturer, Imax. He also was an aviator, an expert on theater organs and the author of "Hue and Cry, Unraveling the Shakespeare Myth," contending that Shakespeare did not write the works attributed to him.
Michael Cesar, 52, the self-proclaimed "Pope of Pot," died Tuesday of liver cancer in New York. He once operated a marijuana-delivery service from a site near the Manhattan Criminal Court building, using phone salespeople and bicycle messengers.
Thomas Debevoise, 65, a former dean of Vermont Law School DTC who was Vermont attorney general from 1960 to 1962, died Wednesday in Woodstock, Vt.
Homer Kripke, 83, who helped develop the Uniform Commercial Code, died Sunday of kidney failure and complications of diverticulitis in Toledo. He was assistant solicitor of the Securities and Exchange Commission during the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and helped organize the effort to draw together regulations on commercial transactions, known as the Uniform Commercial Code.
John W. Oswald, 77, president of Penn State University from 1970 to 1983, died of a heart attack Wednesday. He is credited with guiding Penn State through a period of student unrest and financial uncertainty and being an early proponent of Penn State's entrance into the Big Ten.
George Robert Stibitz, 90, the father of the modern digital computer, died Tuesday in Hanover, N.H. He was a research mathematician in the 1930s at AT&T; Bell Laboratories, where he developed several powerful computers used to direct anti-aircraft artillery in World War II.
Jeffrey P. Beck, 48, a buyout specialist who played a major role in two of the country's largest leveraged buyouts, died Saturday of a heart attack in New York. He worked on the acquisition of the Beatrice Companies and RJR Nabisco Inc. by Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co. He also had been a technical adviser to Oliver Stone's film, "Wall Street," in which he had a cameo role.