H. Joseph Gerber
Gerber Scientific
Inducted 2024
H. Joseph Gerber (1924 – 1996) was a prolific inventor, a successful entrepreneur, and a highly accomplished engineer. He was an inventor of industries. Gerber and his engineers’ innovative uses of plastics transformed apparel and furniture production, sign making, prescription eyeglass fabrication, commercial printing, and electronic product manufacturing. These advancements in film-based processes created significant new markets for plastic films and fostered a revolution in consumer and industrial products.
While in college, Gerber invented the Gerber Variable Scale, a graphical-numerical computing device. He founded the Gerber Scientific Instruments Company to manufacture his invention, known as “the greatest engineering tool since the slide rule.”
Over the next five decades, Gerber presided over the organization’s growth from a single-product company to a global supplier of intelligent manufacturing systems for nearly a dozen industries.
Gerber made exceptional contributions to the textile industry. His best-known innovation uses plastic bristles to enable a computer-controlled knife to cut large quantities of fabric and other flexible material rapidly and accurately. This innovation is considered the industry’s most important advancement of the 20th century.
Gerber contributed greatly to the growth of the plastics industry as he and his company devised new uses for plastics, often pioneering new industries. Through his company, he introduced the first systems to create graphics under digital control, and he became a leader in computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM). Gerber systems were instrumental in developing UPC bar codes, printed circuit boards (based on imaging new plastic-based films), and basic steps in commercial printing (based on cutting plastic films).
His company’s billboard manufacturing and sign-making advancements generated a large demand for plastic-based billboards, store signs, and vehicle graphics. Gerber systems became the most widely used worldwide for sign-making and related graphic arts applications. Gerber systems transformed the eyeglass industry by enabling quick local production of prescription plastic lenses instead of glass, and his innovations enabled mass customization for many other industries.
Joseph Gerber served as chief executive and principal inventor from the company’s 1947 founding until he died in 1996. Three of Gerber’s original engineering computation products and his cloth-cutting system are in the permanent collection of the National Museum of American History. He had 648 U.S. and foreign patents issued in his name.