While Americans born in or with ancestral ties to Arab countries have made countless significant scientific, medical, and technical contributions, most have never entered the record books. From cryptography to an artificial heart to the iPod, here are just a few examples of some of the major advances by Arab Americans.
1. TV transmission and LCD screens
Born in Nabatieh, Lebanon in 1895, Hassan Kamel Al-Sabbah studied then taught mathematics at the American University of Beirut before immigrating to the United States in 1921. After a brief stint at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Al – Sabbah earned a master’s degree in engineering science from the University of Illinois, says Lujine Nasralla, a communications specialist at the National Arab American Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
“In 1923, General Electric (GE) hired him to work in its engineering lab under a contract that gave him one dollar for each of his patents,” Nasralla explains, noting that between 1927 and 1935 , he applied for patents for 52 of his inventions while working at GE. Some of the patents Al-Sabbah obtained during his time at GE include three for innovations in television transmission technology (granted between 1928 and 1930) and two for cathode ray tubes (1935).
Although Al-Sabbah died in a car accident in 1935, GE engineers continued to build on the technology he invented, including developing the liquid crystal display (LCD) based on the one of his patents. Al-Sabbah made many other significant contributions to science, technology and engineering, particularly in the field of solar energy.
2. Emotion Recognition Technology
Rana El Kaliouby, co-founder and CEO of Affectiva, speaking at the New Work Summit, California, 2019.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
As Rana El Kaliouby completed her doctoral research at Cambridge University in England in the early 2000s, she never felt like she could truly connect with her loved ones back home. “Away from his family and friends in Egypt, El Kaliouby wanted his computer to better convey his emotional state,” Nasralla says. It was then that she decided to find a way to create more emotionally intelligent technology.
After obtaining his doctorate, El Kaliouby held a position as a research scientist in the Affective Computing group at the MIT Media Lab. There, she was part of a team that developed an “emotional hearing aid,” as well as a pair of glasses that could read emotions, as well as social cues. Officially known as an “emotional-social intelligence prosthesis,” El Kaliouby and a colleague created the wearable technology in 2006 for people with autism who have difficulty identifying and processing the emotions of others when communicating.
In 2009, El Kaliouby and the same MIT colleague co-founded a company called Affectiva, which used deep learning, computer vision, speech science, and large amounts of real-world data to develop technology of emotion recognition. “Its pioneering technology accurately reads minute changes in facial expressions that convey emotion,” Nasralla says, adding that El Kaliouby is a member of the Women in Engineering Hall of Fame.
3. iPod and iPhone
Tony Fadell, who oversaw the design of the iPod and iPhone, photographed in Singapore, 2019.
Wei Leng Tay/Bloomberg via Getty Images
There was a time not so long ago when listening to music outside the home meant bringing the physical album with you on a record, audio tape or compact disc. And although portable MP3 players existed before 2001, none were popular enough to make the device the standard way to listen to music on the go. That is, until Apple CEO Steve Jobs hired Arab-American inventor Anthony “Tony” Fadell and tasked him with a new group of special projects within the company. tasked with doing just that.
The result was the iPod, which was launched in 2001. Fadell, who is now known as “the father of the iPod”, went on to oversee the first 18 iterations of the device before Jobs entrusted him with his next mission: to create a mobile phone. with many of the same features as the iPod.
Scroll to continue
This time the end product was the iPhone, which basically allowed people to carry around a very compact computer with internet capability at all times and in doing so, change the way people access information. Fadell participated in the development of the first three generations of iPhone.
4. Developments in surgery
Cardiologist Dr. Michael DeBakey, c. 1994.
F. Carter Smith/Sygma/Getty Images
Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 1908 to Lebanese immigrants, Michael DeBakey (the anglicized form of Debaghilisten) grew up spending time in his father’s pharmacy and enjoyed sewing, gardening, and learning how engines and other machines worked. He received his medical degree in 1932 and served in the Surgical Consultants Division of the Office of the Army Surgeon General from 1942 to 1946.
It was during this time that DeBakey and his colleagues developed special units dedicated to providing surgical care to wounded soldiers near the front lines. They were first deployed in 1943, although they are best known for their work during the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts, when they were known as Mobile Auxiliary Surgical Hospital (MASH) units.
DeBakey’s surgical contributions continued for decades to come and included the first successful removal of a carotid artery blockage (1953), development of the concept behind coronary bypass surgery (1963), pioneering the field of telemedicine with the first demonstration of cardiac surgery transmitted abroad by satellite (1965), and being the first to use a partial artificial heart (1966).
5. Internet Security
While internet security is now a priority, that was not the case when Egyptian-born cryptographer Taher Elgamal began his pioneering work in the field in the 1980s. “Elgamal published an article in 1984, ” A Public Key Cryptosystem and a Signature Scheme based on Discrete Logarithms,” which became the basis for the Elgamal Digital Signature algorithm,” explains Richard Gardner, software developer and CEO of Modulus. This work was later used in the development of the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA).
Elgamal’s work became even more influential after the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) adopted it as the Digital Signature Standard (DSS). “As the name suggests, it has become the standard for electronic signatures,” says Gardner.
And according to Abdulrahman Henedy, an Arab-American entrepreneur and founder of Financeive, Elgamal’s invention of the discrete logarithm was also a milestone in cryptography. “His work inspired other encryption variants and paved the way for the creation of more advanced algorithms, such as the Advanced Encryption Standard,” he explains.
Additionally, Elgamal was the driving force behind Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), a protocol that secures online communications such as email and instant messaging. Due to this major technological evolution, it is known as the “Father of SSL”.
6. The waffle cone
While it may not be the most high-tech invention on the list, the waffle cone stands out not just because it’s delicious, but because not one, but four Arabo- Various Americans claim to have invented it. And perhaps even more bizarre is that in an origin story with so many inconsistencies, the four men claim that their ice cream innovation originated at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, better known as the Saint Louis World’s Fair.
According to Nasralla, Ernest Hamwi, Nick Kabbaz, Abe Doumar and Leon B. Holwey each had their own story of how they invented the waffle cone in 1904. “We recognize all four of them, but we don’t recognize any of the stories is more plausible than the others,” she explains. “It remains a mystery to this day!”
But that mystery extends beyond which Arab-American vendors (if any) deserve credit for the waffle cone. This is because in addition to these four stories, there are several other origin stories, some of which took place before 1904. And while we may never know who first crafted a container of edible ice cream, it’s safe to say that the 1904 World’s Fair and its Arab-American dessert vendors helped popularize what we now call the waffle cone.
