EDISON OF OUR TIME

ARDY FRIEDBERG

Luther Simjian didn’t wear a watch because he had an internal clock that kept perfect time. He had no formal engineering training but was a natural with optical systems and mechanics. Notebooks and tape recorders were superfluous because the complex ideas he conceived lived whole in his head.

And what ideas: The auto-focus camera, fast-developing film, color X-rays, the flight simulator, the automatic teller machine, a training device for pilots and aerial gunners, the TelePrompTer, and a golf ball with wheels designed to improve putting _ more than 200 patents over 70 years.

Mr. Simjian, an Armenian who emigrated to the U.S. in 1921, died in Fort Lauderdale on Oct. 23 at the age of 92, but because he was so private few people would recognize his name.

“Luther Simjian was one of the most prolific inventors of this century,” said his patent agent, Ervin Steinberg, who worked on more than scores of patent projects with Mr. Simjian during their 46-year relationship. “He had an unusual way of looking at things. He conceived things whole. He had a very fertile mind.”

Richard Snyder, president and CEO of Reflectone Inc., a Tampa-based flight simulator manufacturer that Mr. Simjian founded in 1939, said, “When you look at what he’s done, he had a creative skill that was far out of the ordinary.”

Said Snyder: “His mind was always at work. He was always looking at things and trying to figure out a better way to do it. ‘See that,’ he’d say. “Have you thought about doing it like this?’ “

Gladys Simjian, the inventor’s wife of 61 years, said in an interview at her Fort Lauderdale condominium that at any given moment her husband would get a “glazed look” in his eyes and she knew he was inventing in his head.

“One time, many years ago in New York City, we were playing tennis. I was about to serve when I saw Luther was staring up at a passing airplane,” she said. “I think he was pondering the idea for his range estimation device, though he never told me what it was.”

Mr. Simjian (pronounced Sim-gin) was reluctant to tell anyone about his work. And he shunned publicity.

“He had a fierce desire to remain private,” said his daughter, Maryjo Garre. “A lot of that was security for the family. During World War II he had a top security clearance but he didn’t tell us about it.”

Yet, because of the scope and importance of his work, Mr. Simjian couldn’t avoid the limelight altogether.

A Time magazine story in July 1934 described his “perfection of a device which produces colored X-ray images of internal organs . . . [and) allows the colored images to be sent by wire to any place the examining doctor may be.”

Several of his patents were mentioned in The New York Times and there were articles about his work in other newspapers and magazines over the years, and though some compared him to Thomas Edison, he never became a public figure.

But if he could be private, sometimes distant and reflective, Mr. Simjian also was a practical joker who enjoyed a good gag.

“He knew this man who used to wear a homburg hat to work and hang it on a hatrack,” said Gladys Simjian, the former Gladys Cannon of Fort Lauderdale.

“Luther got several hats just like it of different sizes and kept changing them. The poor man couldn’t figure out why his head kept shrinking and expanding.”

Mr. Simjian also enjoyed golf, backgammon, the works of Mark Twain, collecting porcelains and cooking Middle Eastern food, his daughter said.

Garre said, “His cooking was very creative. He never used a recipe. He was well-rounded for someone who was so geeky intelligent.”

Somewhere in his restless mind, he also had an internal clock, Gladys Simjian said. “I once gave him a watch from Tiffany’s and he never wore it. He always knew the time.”

Mr. Simjian, who spoke Arabic, French and English, and never lost his thick accent, was a bona fide American success story.

After his stepmother and three sisters were killed during the Turkish government’s attempted annihilation of the Armenians in 1918, he made his way to France. He came alone to America in 1923, at age 18.

After graduating from Booth Preparatory School in New Haven, Conn., in 1930, Mr. Simjian attended Yale Medical School where he became fascinated with photography and convinced school officials that photography was an important element of medical study. They set him up in a nine-room suite where he produced photos used in teaching, research and publications.

While at Yale, he patented the auto-focus camera in 1932 and the color X-ray machine in 1934.

Gladys Simjian said she and her husband met “like two needles in a haystack.”

“I came to New York from the plains of Illinois and had stage aspirations. He had crossed the ocean,” she said. “It was in 1935 and we met at a party in Greenwich Village.

“Though we liked each other, we decided not to even bring up the subject of marriage for five years. I was a speech and drama graduate from Northwestern and was busy knocking on doors and trying to get acting jobs. He had a photo laboratory at Yale. We were both very busy.”

Despite their plans to wait, the couple married the following year and Maryjo was born a year later.

Before Mr. Simjian founded Reflectone in 1939, he patented a multiple-pose photographic technique called Photoreflex that was used in photo studios in department stores around the country. He also developed a chair with a moving seat and attached mirror that allowed a person to view themselves from all angles.

Mr. Simjian also developed a computerized indoor golf driving range, exercise and massage equipment, a meat tenderizing process, a tie rack, a valet stand and many more items that have been marketed in various forms.

One of Mr. Simjian’s most important inventions was the Optical Range Estimation Trainer, the first simulator that taught pilots and gunners how to determine the range of an airplane in flight. The simulator was widely used in World War II and earned the gratitude of the Navy, which called it “the best of its kind in the world.”

In the years between 1956 and 1963, his most prolific period, Mr. Simjian received 75 patents, 16 in 1954 alone.

In 1960, Reflectone was merged with Universal Match Company, and earlier this year, the company was sold to British Aerospace Company, which continues to make flight simulators for commerical and military planes.

Mr. Simjian obviously profited from his inventions but made very little on some, like the bank teller machine.

“He was too early with the machine,” Steinberg said. “There wasn’t the acceptance of a machine to handle money. It was his concept that was then produced by someone else using microprocessors.”

Mr. Simjian once told his daughter: “The father of something doesn’t always reap the benefits.”

“His mind was always going, always thinking of gadgets. He didn’t think of products, but of mechanics,” Steinberg said. Even at age 92, and almost blind, Mr. Simjian’s inventive gifts remained intact.

Earlier this year, Steinberg filed a patent application on a process to treat the wood used in musical instruments to give them more resonance.

That was typical of her father, Garre said. He never thought of stopping.

“Years ago, when he went to get his first driver’s license, he was told to back up and park,” she said. “He had never done that. He had never thought of backing up.”

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1997-11-10-9711090203-story.html