Former Ewing resident and Trenton native son Glenn A. Reitmeier, a researcher and manager at Sarnoff Corporation, Princeton since 1977, has been an important inventor and a critical advocate for the creation of high definition television (HDTV). His 1992 patent, "An HDTV Compression System," described the key system architecture for a packetized transport layer that makes digital television a flexible delivery system for all types of digital data.

The layer has become a crucial part of the United States standard for digital high definition television and the MPEG-2 standard, established by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). MPEG (pronounced M-peg) is the name of the family of standards used for coding audio-visual information (e.g., movies, video, music) in a digital, compressed format.

Reitmeier has contributed to digital television developments like object coding and wavelet image compression in MPEG-4, advanced MPEG-2, compressed bitstream processing, improved integrated circuits for digital television receivers, and the integration of video in computers. He holds 45 patents in digital television technology, with other patents pending.

Starting in 1989, Reitmeier led the development of the Advanced Digital HDTV system, one of four competing digital HDTV systems vying to become the next standard for television in the U.S. After successful testing of the system, he became a key member of the Digital HDTV Grand Alliance, a group of representatives formed in 1993, with representatives from seven prominent U.S. organizations that had developed competing digital HDTV systems. The Grand Alliance, which received the encouragement of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, created a best-of-the-best of competing systems to create a U.S. standard for HDTV.

Later, Reitmeier took a leading role in the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), the industry-wide organization which formalized the alliance's work to gain FCC approval in 1996. To date, Canada, Mexico, Korea and Taiwan have also adopted the ATSC standards.

Reitmeier received his bachelor's degree in engineering from Villanova University, Villanova, PA, and his master's degree in systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania Moore School of Electrical Engineering, Philadelphia. He was an adjunct faculty member in the department of electrical engineering at Villanova University from 1980 to 1989. Since 1995, he has lived in Yardley, PA with his wife Elaine and their two children.