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. The innovative uses of plastics by Gerber and his engineers transformed apparel and furniture production, sign making, prescription eyeglass fabrication, commercial printing, and electronic products manufacturing. These advancements in film-based processes not only created significant new markets for plastic films but 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 growth of the organization 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 single 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 manufacture (CAD/CAM). Gerber systems were instrumental in the development of UPC bar codes and printed circuit boards (based on imaging new plastic-based films) and basic steps in the processes of commercial printing (based on cutting plastic films).
His company’s advancements in billboard manufacture and sign making generated a large demand for plastic-based billboards, store signs, and vehicle graphics. Gerber systems became the most widely used in the world 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 his death 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.