Saturday, June 1, 2013

Deaths: 40 Patents

May 2, 2013, Chicago Tribune

STANLEY DASHEW, 96  (1916-2013)

Inventor and entrepreneur who helped revolutionize the credit card industry died April 25th.  Had 40 patents in fields as diverse as credit card processing, mining, mass transit, medical equipment and offshore oil transportation.  Also an avid sailor.

At age 15, he started a business bottling and selling root beer.  By age 35, he had sold enough Addressograph labelmakers (was he responsible for all those labels I have from charities?) to buy a 76-foot two-masted schooner and then went on a 15,000 mile voyage to Los Angeles, where he stayed and founded Dashew Business Machines which helped to automate the credit vard industry which at the time relied on paper charge cards that would tear, fray and become difficult to read.

I remember those old credit card tray things.

Quite a Life.

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