Luther George Simjian

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Luther George Simjian (born January 28, 1905 in the Ottoman Empire , † October 23, 1997 in Fort Lauderdale ) was the inventor of a large number of devices and holder of over 200 patents .

life and career

Luther George Simjian grew up as the son of Armenian parents in Aintab , but was separated from his family as a result of the Armenian genocide and fled first to Beirut and later to Marseille . In 1920 he emigrated to the USA , where he stayed with relatives in New Haven (Connecticut) . He worked there as a photographer. He gave up his plans to study medicine, but him the medical faculty of the University of Yale hired as a laboratory photographer. In 1928 he took over the management of the photography department. There he developed, among other things, a projector for images from microscopes and a color X-ray device.

Now known as an inventor, Simjian resigned from Yale in 1934 and moved to New York . There he developed, among other things, a portrait camera in which the photographer could see his own image in a mirror as it would be taken. To manufacture and market this camera, which was used in the photo departments of department stores, he founded the company Photoreflex , which he later renamed Reflectone after the sale of the invention and the naming rights , based on one of his inventions of the same name: a cosmetic chair, in which the user could view himself from all sides.

Major inventions

In 1939 Simjian had the idea for an ATM , probably his most famous invention. Conservative banks were very skeptical of this idea, but he filed over 20 patents and developed some principles that can still be found in today's ATMs, including the American name for such devices, "automated teller machine" (the original name was Bankmatic Automated Teller Machine ). Finally, he persuaded the City Bank of New York (now Citibank ) to run a trial, which was discontinued after six months not because of technological deficiencies, but because of low demand. Simjian himself wrote: "It appears that a few prostitutes and gamblers who did not want to have face to face with cashiers were the only users of the device." Thus, he was not only denied commercial success, but also the fame of the inventor of this device. Today , the inventor of the ATM is usually considered to be Donald Wetzel , who led the development of the first commercially successful ATM, which cost 5 million US dollars, in the late 1960s.

The commercial success, however, came with his " Optical Range Estimation Trainer" , a simple flight simulator made of mirrors, model airplanes and light sources, with which the pilots of the US armed forces were trained in the distance during the Second World War and estimate the speed of other aircraft. Simjian sold over 2000 of these devices. The successor to the Reflectone company, CAE ( Canadian Aviation Electronics ), which was created through mergers and acquisitions , continues to earn its living with flight simulation technology.

In the course of the following decades Simjian founded other companies, most recently a research laboratory in Fort Lauderdale , and developed a large number of partly very different devices, including a teleprompter , a medical ultrasound device , a remote-controlled franking machine , a golf simulator and a "meat tenderizer".

Simjian remained President and Chairman of Reflectone for 22 years and was a passionate inventor until his death in 1997. At the age of 92, he was granted a patent for a process to improve the resonance of wood for musical instruments.

Commemoration

In honor of Simjian, the building of the department of Reflectone UK Ltd. in Filton in Great Britain named after him " Simjian House ".

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Luther Simjian Is Dead at 92; Hero More Than 200 Patents . The New York Times . November 2, 1997. Retrieved February 9, 2014
  2. ↑ a b c Luther Simjian . NNDB . Retrieved February 9, 2014
  3. ↑ The ATM is celebrating its birthday . June 13, 2013. Retrieved February 7, 2014
  4. ↑ In the original: "It seems the only people using the machines were a small number of prostitutes and gamblers who didn't want to deal with tellers face to face." Quoted from a publication by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in August 2003. [1 ]
  5. ^ The ATM Machine of Don Wetzel . Retrieved February 9, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Simjian, Luther George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Simjian, Luther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American inventor of Armenian origin
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Aintab , Ottoman Empire
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 1997
Place of death Fort Lauderdale , Florida , United States