H. Joseph Gerber was the founder of the Gerber Scientific Instrument Company

Gerber Scientific

Gerber Scientific Inc. , located in Tolland, Connecticut, is the parent of companies which provide end-to-end customer solutions to the world's sign making and specialty graphics, ophthalmic lens processing, and apparel and flexible materials industries. They also supply purpose-built software to...

.

Born in Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 in 1924, H. Joseph Gerber showed an early fascination with technology. By the age of eight, he was building radios and circuit breakers. Seven years later, along with many others affected by the Nazi occupation, he was imprisoned in a labor camp, and in 1940, he and his mother fled war-torn Austria, immigrating to the United States. After completing high school in just two years, he entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Stephen Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on November 5, 1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the school's...

 (RPI) on scholarship, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering in 1946.

In his junior year at RPI, Gerber's life took a major turn with his invention of the Gerber Variable Scale. With the Variable Scale as his first manufactured product and a $3,000 investment, The Gerber Scientific Instrument Company was born.

In the early days of the company, Gerber invented a variety of manual graphical numerical data reduction systems as well as devised, patented, and co-patented the first digital drafting machine, computer-aided photoplotting system for printed circuit boards, and various robotic cutting and computer-controlled sewing systems.

In the next 50 years, Gerber presided over the expansion of Gerber Scientific, Inc., which was renamed to reflect the company's growth. Gerber is credited with 677 U.S. and foreign patents for his inventions. Several of his inventions are on display at the Smithsonian Institution. He is a recipient of the National Medal of Technology

National Medal of Technology

The National Medal of Technology and Innovation is an honor granted by the President of the United States to American inventors and innovators who have made significant contributions to the development of new and important technology...

in 1994 ^{http://www.technology.gov/Medal/p_Recipients.htm} among other awards.

H. Joseph Gerber died in August 1996. He was inducted into RPI's alumni hall of fame in 1998.

Early life

H. Joseph Gerber - (1919–1996). Born in Austria, To a Jewish family Gerber was a tinkerer even as a small boy. When he was 15, he was imprisoned in a Nazi labor camp. But he managed to escape and Gerber and his mother came to the United States in 1940. The following full biography calls him the "greatest inventor whose name is unknown to the general public". He was a college junior when he invented, "what has been called the most revolutionary engineering tool since the slide rule: the Gerber Variable Scale. This device looks like a slide rule, but uses a triangular calibrated spring as a computing element which eliminates all conversions and scaling from numerics to graphics and curves. He launched a highly successful company to market this invention and other scientific devices. In the '50s, Gerber invented the world's first truly digital drafting machine, or 'photoplotter." This same device is used for over 75% of the television circuit boards manufactured today. In the late '60s, concerned that the U.S. was losing its clothing industry to foreign manual labor, Gerber invented the GERBERcutter S-70, a fully automated cloth-cutting system. Then, Gerber was hailed as 'the savior of the industry' and 'the father of apparel automation.' Today, over $500 million worth of GERBERcutters are used in factories in about 40 countries. In the '80s, Gerber helped perfect the computer-assisted equipment that allows opticians to produce eyeglasses in about an hour."

External links

• Gerber's page at the RPI alumni hall of fame