Benzion Landa

Benzion “Benny” Landa was born in 1946 in Poland. His family immigrated to Canada, where he grew up. He worked with his father on a number of inventions that resembled today’s photo booth. His father created a process that produced passport images in minutes, and Landa was there helping and providing ideas the whole time. He studied physics and engineering at Technion in Israel, psychology and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but he only graduated from the London Film School.

In 1969, he began his professional career at CAPS, a micrographics research company and was instrumental in developing an innovative micrographic product that won the company a major contract with Rolls-Royce Aero Engine Division – and soon saw him appointed head of R&D.

In 1971, he and a colleague founded Imtec, a company that would later become Europe's largest micrographics company. Benny invented the company’s core imaging technology and, while researching liquid toners, worked on a method of high-speed image development that would later lead to his groundbreaking invention of ElectroInk®.

At age 30, he moved to Israel and founded Indigo in 1977. The processes developed there rivaled Xerox, Kodak, and others, and in 1993 Landa released the Indigo E-Print 1000. This was the first digital offset color printing press and a major development in the printing industry. Today, Indigo is a division of Hewlett-Packard Company. He founded the Landa Corporation, which is involved in the fields of nanotechnology, imaging and alternative energy. In addition, he set up Landa Ventures, which invests in promising Israeli technology startup companies. He created Landa Digital Printing as well, which launched a new digital printing process based on nanography.

Over the years, Benny Landa, Israel’s most prolific inventor, has been awarded over 700 patents throughout world. In 2002, Benny Landa and his wife Patsy set up the “Landa Fund for Equal Opportunity Through Education.” The aim of the Fund is to enable bright Israeli youth of “privileged minds and underprivileged means” to achieve higher education. He received OSA’s Edwin H. Land Medal in 2002.