Inductee Profile
Anwar Chitayat
Anwar was born in Bagdad Iraq from a poor family. At 16, he obtained the highest grades in all Iraqi high schools, allowing him to obtain a scholarship to come to the United States to study engineering. He obtained simultaneous degrees in Electrical and Mechanical engineering from the University of Denver, and a Masters in EE from the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. When Anwar’s family went to Israel, he decided to stay in the US as a displaced person, was drafted in the US Army in 1952, and was sent to Alaska servicing Radar Due Line.
In 1958, he worked for Kolsman Instruments, developing a novel navigation system, tracking the stars, in daylight, to determine aircraft position. In 1962, he worked for Optomechanisms as a VP of engineering. At Optomechanisms, he started working in the field of nanotechnology, at its very infancy. He obtained several basic patents using laser interferometers to measure and control positioning to nanometer resolution, (long before the needs for such a resolution was recognized). Today, interferometers are indispensable tools used in the manufacture of integrated circuits, for computer and memory chips.
Anwar founded the Anorad Corporation in 1972 in a 1,000 sq ft basement in Plainview with a staff of three. He borrowed $2,000 from relatives and set up shop. Anorad is an acronym “Anwar’s own research and development”. From these humble beginnings, Anorad grew into 4 buildings in Hauppauge with 150,000 sq ft and 500 employees.
Through his role as the founder of the Anorad Corporation, he realized the need for lowering the cost of assembly & manufacturing of electronic products, especially for the manufacturing of computers. At that time very few anticipated the revolutionary growth of personal computers, which needed new ideas to lower staggering costs. A need existed for a faster and more accurate method of moving parts to replace slow ball screws and gears. New technology had to be developed in order to reduce the cost of computers so that the average person can afford it. Anwar invented different versions of linear motors, which can move at extremely high speed, since there is no contact with the moving members. Anwar is recognized worldwide as the originator of the brushless linear motor technology. Anwar obtained over 30 patents in this field, which were supplemented with other patents in air bearing slides, resulting in the high accuracy and speed needed in this new market. Today most of the machines used in manufacturing semiconductors and computers use linear motors as the driving mechanism. Linear motors have reached maturity, approaching 1 billion dollars in sales worldwide, still growing at 10-12% annually. They are used extensively in about all manufacturing, including food industry, machine tools, and packaging.
Today, there are more than twenty companies manufacturing linear motors, essentially using the same, or similar concepts, to what Anwar has originally envisioned.
Mr. Christian Bunker, an IBM manager stated ”His development in the brushless linear servo motors and air bearing positioning systems has been in no small way responsible for many of the related technological jumps in the semiconductor and packaging fields in the computer field.”