Jacob Rabinow

Jacob Rabinow

Jacob Rabinow (1910 - 1999) was an engineer who led a truly prolific career as an inventor. He earned a total of 230 U.S. patents on a variety of mechanical, optical and electrical devices.

Rabinow was born in Kharkov, Ukraine, in 1910. In 1919, his family moved to China, then in 1921 to the United States. He graduated from the City College of New York with a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering in 1933, and a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1934. His career as an inventor began when he was hired as a mechanical engineer in 1938 by the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST). He made many developments there, mainly in defense systems, and eventually became Chief of the Electro-Mechanical Ordnance Division at NBS before leaving in 1954 to form his own company.

During this time, Rabinow invented and patented a number of revolutionary devices. Among them are the first disc-shaped magnetic storage media for computers (1954), the magnetic particle clutch (1956), the first straight-line phonograph (1959), the first self-regulating clock (1960) and his famous "reading machine" (1960) which was the first to use the "best match" principle and was the basis for the reading, sorting and processing machines used today by banks and post offices.

In 1964, Rabinow's company joined Control Data Corporation (CDC), and until 1972 he was Vice President of CDC and head of the Rabinow Advanced Development Laboratory. In 1968 Rabinow formed the RABCO company to manufacture straight-line phonographs, and the company was later bought out by Harman-Kardon Corporation. In 1972 he returned to NBS where he was Chief Research Engineer until his retirement in 1989.

In addition to his patents, Jacob Rabinow was awarded many other merits for his scientific achievements. Among them are the President's Certificate of Merit (1948), the Industrial R&D Scientist of the Year Award (1960), the IEEE's Harry Diamond Award (1977), and the Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award (1998). He published his book, "Inventing for Fun and Profit", in 1989. He also delivered many speeches and lectures on inventions and technology, as a guest at many educational institutions and on several television and radio shows.

Rabinow was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005.

External links

* [http://museum.nist.gov/exhibits/rabinow/patents.html NIST: his 230 patents]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно решить контрольную?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Rabinow — is a surname, and may refer to:* Jacob Rabinow * Paul Rabinowee also* Rabin (disambiguation) * Rabinowitz (surname) …   Wikipedia

  • Paul Rabinow — Paul M. Rabinow est un anthropologue américain, né en 1944[1]. Il est professeur d anthropologie à l Université de Californie (Berkeley), directeur du Anthropology of the Contemporary Research Collaboratory (ARC) et directeur du Human Practices… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Headlamp — Headlight redirects here. For other uses, see Headlight (disambiguation). High Beams redirects here. For the urban legend also known by that name, see Killer in the backseat. A motor scooter s front with an impractical number and variety of… …   Wikipedia

  • Reynold Johnson — (né en 1906 dans le Minnesota mort le 15 septembre 1998 à Palo Alto) est un inventeur américain et un pionnier de l informatique. Ayant passé la majeure partie de sa carrière chez IBM, Johnson est considéré comme le « père » du disque… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • List of City College of New York people — Here follows a list of notable alumni and faculty of the City College of New York.Nobel laureates*Julius Axelrod 1933 1970 Nobel laureate in Medicine *Kenneth Arrow 1940 1972 Nobel laureate in Economics *Robert J. Aumann 1950 2005 Nobel laureate… …   Wikipedia

  • National Institute of Standards and Technology — NIST redirects here. For other uses, see NIST (disambiguation). National Institute of Standards and Technology Agency overview Headquarters Gaithersburg, Maryland …   Wikipedia

  • Optical character recognition — Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into… …   Wikipedia

  • Lemelson-MIT Prize — The $500,000 Lemelson MIT Prize, presented by the Lemelson MIT Program (endowed in 1994 by Jerome H. Lemelson, and administered through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is awarded yearly to inventors from the United States for… …   Wikipedia

  • James S. Albus — James S. Albus, ca. 2000. James Sacra Albus (May 4, 1935 April 17, 2011) was an American engineer, Senior NIST Fellow and founder and former chief of the Intelligent Systems Division of the Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory at the National… …   Wikipedia

  • National Institute of Standards and Technology — Logotype du NIST Le National Institute of Standards and Technology (qu on pourrait traduire par « Institut national des normes et de la technologie »), aussi connu sous le sigle NIST, est une agence du Département du Commerce des États… …   Wikipédia en Français

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”