Robert H. Hose,
FIDSA (1915-1977)
President of the Industrial Designers Society of America
(IDSA), 1967-1968
U.S. industrial designer born in Sleepy Eye, MN, graduated University of Minnesota 1937 and completed Masters in architecture at MIT in 1940. He started at Bell Labs 1939, in a small industrial design lab working under consultant Henry Dreyfuss. He joined the Dreyfuss organization as an associate in 1946, and later became a partner. While with Dreyfuss, he was an unsung contributor to the design of a number of Dreyfuss telephones, including the 500 (1949), the wall mounted phone (1956), the first push-button phone (1958), the Princess phone (1959), as well as Hoover products including the Constellation (1955). He was president of the Society of Industrial Design (SID), a predecessor of IDSA, in 1953, later becoming an SID Fellow.
Hose left Dreyfuss to open his own consulting firm in 1961, consulting with Warner & Swasey and the Hoover Company, among others. He was instrumental in working with other design organizations, including Joseph Parriott of the Industrial Designer's Institute (IDI) and Arthur Pulos of the Industrial Designer's Education Association (IDEA) in planning the merger that formed IDSA in 1965. Bob became President of the new organization from 1967 to 1968.