Immigrants are coming under fire these days as Donald Trump and his followers demonize them as freeloaders who are sapping our economy, or worse, posing a threat to our national security.

A recently published biography The Inventor’s Dilemma: The Remarkable Life of H. Joseph Gerber could stand as a strong counter argument. Written by Joseph Gerber’s son, David J. Gerber, the book tells the story of a young Jewish immigrant from Vienna who fled the Nazis, settled in America and became one of the greatest inventors and businessmen of the 20th century. Through his company, Gerber Scientific, he and his colleagues developed processes and products that revolutionized a number of industries, including optical.

Some of Gerber’s most notable inventions include:

  • The first digitally controlled plotter to draw graphics.
  • The first automated drafting machines and related technologies (known today as CAD/Computer-Aided Design).
  • The Gerber Photoplotter, which began to computer-automate the world production of electronic circuit boards.
  • The GERBERcutter S-70: the first computer-automated machine for cutting cloth in production, regarded as the most significant apparel industry invention of the 20th century.
  • The computer-assisted equipment that allows opticians to produce eyeglasses in an hour.

In the late 1980s, a Gerber division, Gerber Optical, developed a series of machines that introduced new methods of processing eyeglass lenses. These included a computerized pattern generator, a frame tracer; a patternless edger, which edged a lens directly without a pattern blank and a computerized surface generator, which ground a correct curve without errors. The latter, because of its small footprint, was a favorite of many optical superstores.

Robert Shanbaum, president of Ocuco and a former Gerber Optical employee, recalls, “So long as Mr. Gerber lived (and everyone called him Mr. Gerber), his company reflected his passion and his almost-unique talent for creativity and innovation. I didn’t get to work closely with him, but I got the impression that working closely with Mr. Gerber on any engineering project would be like drinking from a firehose—just keeping up with the stream of ideas would be an enormous challenge.”

Joseph Gerber’s life story is a powerful reminder of the tremendous contributions immigrants can make to a society that embraces, rather than rejects them. To learn more about him, read The Inventor’s Dilemma: The Remarkable Life of H. Joseph Gerber published by Yale University Press.

Andrew Karp
Group Editor, Lenses and Technology
[email protected]























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