He was the nephew of his namesake, popular composer Irving Berlin, and graduated from the University of Alabama, where he was a drum major.
After serving as a lieutenant in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II, he returned to his job and by 1950 was the vice president in charge of Fox's new radio and television subsidiary, TCF Television Productions, Inc.[1] With colleagues from Fox Radio, Fred Barton, Jr., a Broadway theatre actor, and Hubert Schlafly, an electrical engineer,[2] he founded TelePrompTer Corporation which, in the 1950s, invented the teleprompter, which scrolls text to on-camera talent, in order to help a soap opera actor who could not remember his lines.
[1] He was convicted in 1971 and federally imprisoned for 20 months for trying to bribe members of the Johnstown, Pennsylvania city council to award his company a local cable franchise.
[1] In 1974, Kahn was involved in a case that went before the Supreme Court of the United States, regarding the application of search and seizure laws on wiretaps.
He was survived by his wife of 45 years, Elizabeth Heslin Kahn, his two daughters, Ruth (a painter and director of an arts center in Queens, NY) and Jean, of New York, and his sister, Mildred, of West Palm Beach, Florida.