Joseph Gerber Inventions Information

H. (Heinz) Joseph Gerber (April 17, 1924 – August 8, 1996) was an American inventor and businessman. An Austrian-born Jewish Holocaust survivor who immigrated in 1940, he pioneered computer-automated manufacturing systems for an array of industries. Described as the "Thomas Edison" of manufacturing, he was one of the first to recognize and develop the productivity-enhancing potential for computer automation in skill-intensive industrial sectors.

His work in this field grew from his early developments of graphical-numerical computing devices, data-reduction tools, and plotters.

He was awarded America's National Medal of Technology, the country's highest recognition in technology and innovation, in 1994, for his "technical leadership in the invention, development and commercialization of manufacturing automation systems for a wide variety of industries." These industries ranged from automotive, aerospace, shipbuilding, clothing, and consumer electronics, to printing, sign making, cobbling, cartography, and lens crafting, among others.

Gerber was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria and showed an early fascination with technology. By age eight, he had built radios and developed magnetic circuit breakers to preserve his batteries. Following Germany's 1938 Anschluss, he was imprisoned in a Nazi labor camp, eventually to be released. In 1940, he fled with his mother, immigrating as a destitute to New York City and soon thereafter Hartford, Conn. to work in the tobacco fields. His father would not survive the Holocaust in Europe.

In Hartford, Gerber completed high school in just two years while learning English and holding down full-time and part-time jobs. He entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, NY on scholarship, and graduated two and one-half years later with a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering. In his junior year, he invented the Gerber Variable Scale, a graphical-numerical computing device that he conceived from the elastic waistband of his pajamas.

Receiving a $3,000 investment, Gerber patented his Variable Scale and founded the Gerber Scientific Instrument Company in Hartford, Conn. to produce and market the device. Before the widespread use of digital computers, performing computations based on graphically recorded data and curves was extremely time-consuming and complex. The Gerber Variable Scale—which used a triangular calibrated spring as a computing element to eliminate all scaling and conversions between numerics and graphics—provided means for quick, efficient calculations, and became known as the greatest engineering tool since the slide rule.

Gerber's early life and accomplishments in America were the subject of the 1950 Broadway play Young Man in a Hurry, written by Morton Wishengrad and starring Cornel Wilde. In 1953, J. Robert Oppenheimer and other judges selected Gerber as one of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's "Ten Most Outstanding Young Men in America." Reflecting on his immigrant experience, Gerber would observe that he

Through the 1950s, as the Gerber Variable Scale became "the standard tool" that engineers worldwide used for myriad applications, such as stress-strain analysis and architectural design, Gerber invented additional computation devices. These devices include: the Gerber GraphAnalogue, which directly performs computations on graphical data based on almost any linear or nonlinear function; the Gerber Derivimeter, which gives the derivative of a curve; and the Gerber Equameter, which provides the equation of a curve based on mathematical series such as Fourier Series and polynomial expansions rapidly and without requiring knowledge of mathematics except for addition.

Gerber also introduced a line of data reduction products for scanning and digitizing, including the Gerber Analogue Data Reduction System and the Gerber Digital Data Reduction System to read x,y coordinate positions and convert the information into machine-readable punched tape. Gerber also introduced the first digital plotter, initially used for precisely plotting enemy battleship positions on maps, the first digital motion-controlled machine to create graphics. NASA's Johnson Space Center later relied on Gerber's plotters for communications analysis and graphical data display for the first lunar landing, in 1969.

During the 1960s and '70s, Gerber pioneered developments in computer-assisted design and tooling manufacture both for complex mechanical products, such as airplanes, cars, and ships, and for the fabrication of circuit boards for consumer, industrial, and military electronics products.

Automated drafting and digitizing

In the early 1960s, Gerber introduced the first automated machines for drafting. By allowing engineers and designers to interact with the design process graphically, automated drafting represented a seminal application of computers to enhance creativity. Gerber's automated drafting technologies enabled the design of complex design products, such as the first "jumbo" military and commercial aircraft, the U.S. Air Force C-5 Transport by Lockheed Martin and the Boeing 747. This technology was credited with integrating the engineering design function with the numerically controlled machine tools in the aircraft, automotive, and shipbuilding industries, dramatically improving cost and manufacture time. Gerber's automated systems would capture three quarters of the automated drafting system market during the following two decades. Gerber also introduced the Automatic Line Follower, the first automated digitizer for vector graphics.

Electronics fabrication: photoplotting systems

Gerber also invented and introduced a novel form of plotter that used a controlled beam of light instead of an ink-pen, to draw digital graphics directly on photographic film. The world's most accurate printing technology, the "photoplotter" reduced the cost and time of fabricating circuit boards and enabled production of more sophisticated, miniaturized, and multi-layered printed circuit boards and integrated circuits. The photoplotter "revolutionized the production of printed circuit board artwork." Ultimately, the company would provide a suite of numerically controlled and computer-based tools for design through inspection of circuit boards. Gerber's computerized manufacturing process played a leading role in the consumer electronics revolution, from pocket radios to computers. The photoplotter was also used to manufacture over 75% of the CRT color television screens and the masters for the original Universal Product Code (UPC) barcodes.

Computer-aided design functionality and workstations

Gerber's early automated drafting and photoplotting systems evolved to include the seminal design functionality to digitize, interactively edit, and generate mechanical design data and electronic circuit-board artwork. With the growing power of digital computers during the late 1970s and '80s, Gerber introduced the Interactive Design System IDS in 1974 and was a top tier supplier of software-and-hardware computer graphics workstations for Computer-Aided Design (CAD). Using Gerber workstations, Boeing designed the first "paperless aircraft," the Boeing 767, and General Motors reduced its time to bring new cars to market by more than half. Gerber introduced turnkey systems for electronics manufacture, including the PC-800 circuit design system in 1982. The industry's communications protocol remains the "Gerber Language." The Gerber companies also introduced CAD systems for the apparel, shoe, furniture, and sign and related display industries.

In the late 1960s, American apparel manufacturing was labor-intensive, completely without automation, and rapidly leaving the country for cheap foreign labor. Gerber developed a numerically controlled machine (the GERBERcutter S-70) for cutting large quantities of tall stacks of cloth accurately—3,500 pieces for 50 men's suits in less than three minutes. The GERBERcutter itself, which Gerber introduced in 1969, has been widely cited as the most important technological advance of the century, because it offered apparel factories significant savings in wasted cloth, which was the greatest cost factor in producing a garment, and because it enabled a computer-automated manufacturing system. Total sales of machines for cutting cloth based on Gerber's patented inventions are in the multiple billions of dollars.

Within two years, Gerber introduced the first numerically controlled machines for sewing (the GSM-70) and producing pattern layouts, known as "markers" (the MP-26). Ultimately, his company would develop computer-controlled systems for the designing, digitizing, grading, and prototyping of apparel patterns, and an integrated system that included fabric spreaders, parts-moving systems, concept design, and product data management. As this system slowed the departure of the U.S. apparel manufacturing industry by more than a generation, leaders in the industry from manufacturing, labor, and other quarters hailed Gerber as its "father of apparel automation" and "the savior of the [American apparel] industry."

Gerber's automated cutting, layout, and sewing technologies were used as well in shoemaking to cut and embroider material for shoes. Gerber's impact included the development of the first 3D computer aided design workstations for making shoes. The Gerber ShoeMaker, introduced in 1989, reduced the time from twenty-eight days to two days to make shoes.

Based on Gerber apparel-making technologies, the company went on to develop a line of computer integrated manufacturing systems to automate the production of furniture. In addition, among the company's introductions in the textile industry was the first direct-to-screen screen-setter, the first system to make screens for screen-printing directly from digital design data.

Complete article available at this page.