Stanley Dashew

Who was Stanley Dashew?

Stanley Aaron Dashew was an American entrepreneur, inventor, philanthropist, and sailor who developed many devices in diverse industries, but remains best known as one of the forefathers and founders of the plastic credit card industry during the 1950s. Working alongside Joseph P. Williams, then Vice President of Bank of America and who handled the financial banking systems side, he made revolutionary contributions to accessible credit with his innovations on the mechanical and hardware end, especially with the Databosser. Authorities and publications in automated data credit his new designs for the embossing machine as the first to integrate IBM punch cards with embossers that automatically generated variable alphanumeric data pressed into new materials. The concept of portable variable data soon ushered in the current credit card economy.

During the course of his manufacturing career, Dashew has been issued fourteen U.S. patents for his inventions and mechanisms, and has also been responsible for the creation of more than fifty other patents assigned to his many companies. He has created mechanical systems in the business data, banking, shipping, mining, transportation, marine recreation, water purification, and medical-health industries. These included the Databosser and Datawriter under Dashew Business Machines, the single point mooring buoy in Imodco, the Dashaveyor mining cars and people transport for the Dashaveyor Company, a ship bow thruster under the Omnithruster Company, liquid aeration and oxygenation treatments through Omniphaser, wastewater purification system for Biomixer, Inc., and personal spinal decompression mobility devices under the title Dashaway—the latter developed and marketed under his oversight, while in his nineties, from 2005 to 2010.