Jacob Rabinow

Who was Jacob Rabinow?

Jacob Rabinow was an engineer and inventor. He earned a total of 229 U.S. patents on a variety of mechanical, optical and electrical devices.

Rabinow was born in Kharkiv, 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. 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, the magnetic particle clutch, the first straight-line phonograph, the first self-regulating clock and his famous "reading machine" 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.