Stanley Dashew
| Stanley A. Dashew | |
|---|---|
| Born |
September 16, 1916 Harlem, New York |
| Died | April 25, 2013 (aged 96) Los Angeles |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Stan Dashew |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, inventor, industrialist, photojournalist |
| Known for | Inventor of the plastic credit card |
Stanley Aaron Dashew (September 16, 1916 – April 25, 2013) was an American inventor who developed many devices in diverse industries, but remains best known as one of the founders of the plastic credit card industry during the 1950s. Working alongside Joseph P. Williams, then Vice President of Bank of America, Dashew introduced the Databosser, which embossed numbers read from an IBM punch card onto a credit card, originally aluminum alloy, then plastic.
Dashew has been issued fourteen U.S. patents directly, and more than fifty 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 (SBM Offshore), the Dashaveyor mining cars and people transport, 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 on YouTube—the latter developed and marketed under his oversight, while in his nineties, from 2005 to 2010.
Dashew's mother and father emigrated from Russia and Lithuania, respectively, during the pogroms and poverty caused by the Cossack uprising that eventually led to the Bolshevik or Red Revolution.
Dashew was the middle child of the family, born in the Harlem district in New York City. He spent most of his childhood on a sixty-five-acre agricultural property his parents owned in Pomona, New York, with his two sisters. The Dashew family ran their homestead as a summer resort—first for family and friends, and later year-round for vacationers and residents. Dashew's first foray into business at age eight was a soda pop bottle redemption service, and his first endeavor at direct customer sales came at age twelve (door-to-door bushels of peaches). By age fifteen, he had also become a Hires Root Beer reseller and sold at a roadway stand with the family’s produce and fruit. During his teenage and high school years, at the height of The Great Depression, he also helped manage his family’s properties; he secured the first business bank loan for the family enterprise, by himself.
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