A Lebanese Inventor of Genius

Have you heard of Tom Safadi, the most famous Lebanese inventor after the late Mohammad Hasan Kamel al-Sabbah? Tom Safadi, who has not yet passed his twenty-seventh year and who was born in the American city of Detroit to Lebanese parents, has managed, in the course of the past five years, to register seventy-five inventions of his own at the patent registration office in Washington, and he still presses on with scientific research, benefiting the world with another large collection of useful inventions. Another five years may not pass before his mighty, brilliant brain has produced more than seventy-five inventions besides. He is, moreover, counted today among the magnates of industry in the United States and one of the great industrial producers who contributed a mighty share of American war production.

Today he owns four huge plants in the industrial city of Detroit. Worthy of mention is his good treatment of his workers and employees, who adore him for the great care he takes for their comfort and for that of their families: he has built them modern, healthful houses furnished with every means of comfort; he has established nurseries and schools for their children, organized and administered in the best possible fashion; and he has provided them with the necessary medical services, building a large hospital equipped with the latest achievements of the art and staffed with the most skillful doctors and nurses. He has likewise put up a large cinema house, playgrounds, and other things besides, paying for all of it out of his own pocket so that the workers may enjoy them. As for the wages he pays, they are, without a doubt, higher than the wages workers draw in the other plants.

It is worth recalling that five years ago Tom Safadi was a simple worker in a repair shop, drawing a meager wage that scarcely covered his household expenses with his bride. One day he resolved to strike out on his own, in satisfaction of his inborn independent bent. He got what he wanted, although he met with no success at first, for his total net income during the first three months came to eighteen dollars and no more. He was forced to leave the house in which he had formerly lived with his bride and to lodge in a wretched wooden shack. But the first year had scarcely run its course before his star began to shine in the world of industry and invention, until he reached his present station: his net income for this year is expected to reach six million American dollars. The American magazine Time wrote of him in one of its issues two years ago: "Tom Safadi, of Lebanese origin, sometimes invents out of need, but at other times he invents for sheer pleasure, and often he invents for amusement." His is a mighty brain, such that he can invent whenever he wishes, or whenever it is asked of him.

Yes, this is Tom Safadi, the young Lebanese genius, who received only a modest share of schooling, for he completed no more than his secondary studies; and yet he now stands in the front rank of the world's inventors and among the masters of the physical and mechanical sciences. How fine it would have been had those in authority in this country taken an interest in him and induced him to come to the mother country, that the sons of his nation might profit by his gifts and take pride in him before the world.