Armenian Community In Edmonton

Varazdat Kazanjian - father and pioneer of plastic surgery. During the First World War Dr. Varazdat Kazanjian used his skills as a prosthetic dentist to reconstruct the faces of thousands of soldiers disfigured during combat. He went on to transform the emerging field of plastic surgery into a highly respected surging speciality.

Luther George Simjian (January 28, 1905 in Ottoman Empire – October 23, 1997) was an Armenian-American inventor of numerous devices and owner of over 200 patents. He invented a self-posing portrait camera, with which the photographed person could see and optimize their own image in a mirror before the photo was actually taken. In 1939 Simjian had the idea to build the Bankmatic Automated Teller Machine, probably his most famous invention. Despite the scepticism of the banks, he registered 20 patents for it and developed a number of features and principles that can still be found in today's ATMs, including their name. Simijian  invented a number of very different devices and technologies, e. g. a teleprompter, medical ultrasound devices, a remote-controlled postage meter, a golf simulator and a meat tenderizer. He never ceased inventing in his laboratories in Fort Lauderdale. At the age of 92, he got his last patent on a process for improving the sound of wood for musical instruments, seven months before his death in 1997.

Roger Edward Collingwood Altounyan (1922–1987) -invented pressured inhaler and cromolyn sodium therapy used for asthma, allergies, nasal sprays, eye drops. Roger Altounyan was an Armenian physician and pharmacologist who pioneered the use of sodium cromoglycate as a remedy for asthma. His family relocated to the United Kingdom where he studied medicine and started his pioneering research.

Raymond Vahan Damadian (born March 16, 1936, NY USA) is an Armenian-American medical practitioner and inventor of the first MR (Magnetic Resonance) Scanning Machine. His research into sodium and potassium in living cells led him to his first experiments with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) which caused him to first propose the MR body scanner in 1969. Damadian discovered that tumors and normal tissue can be distinguished in vivo by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) because of their relaxation times. Damadian was the first to perform a full body scan of a human being in 1977 to diagnose cancer. Damadian invented an apparatus and method to use NMR safely and accurately to scan the human body, a method now well known as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

Ed Iskenderian invented the first hydraulic racing camshaft. The name Ed Iskenderian is a legend among racers worldwide. Ed's life history parallels the proverbial success story. He was born in 1921 in the grapevine country of Tulare County, California. While attending Polytechnic High School in Los Angeles, Ed's pet project was building a Model T Ford roadster. Ed learned the fundamentals of mechanics by working with the Model T Fords and later adapted the overhead conversion by Frontenac (more commonly known as Fronty), as well as the George Riley head known to the racers in those days as the "multi-flathead."

http://www.ria.am/en/about-armenia/inventions-of-armenians.html