Know about the Father of Digital Printing- Benny Landa

The Formative Years of Father of Digital Printing

Benny Landa came into this world in 1946 in Poland, to Holocaust survivors Oscar and Lottie. At the age of two, his family moved from Europe to Edmonton, Alberta (Canada).

Benny’s father Oscar worked as a carpenter for 8 years and after that, he bought a small tobacco shop. When struggling to make ends meet, he made a photo booth that served as a studio as well as a darkroom at the rear portion of the tobacco shop.

Benny’s father invented his own unique camera using parts of a bicycle and pulley. This camera was designed with intention of eradicating the need for film by capturing the image onto the paper. This essential concept is what later led to the Digital Printing innovation as Benny introduced it in 1993.

Initially, as a young man, Benny often assisted his father in the booth/dark room and devised a mixer for photographic chemicals by putting rubber tubing and an old photograph electric motor together.

Education and Career

Benny went on to attend the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Israel’s Technion and studied psychology, literature, physics, and engineering respectively. After graduating from the London Film School, Benny began his career at CAPS in 1969.

CAPS was a micrographics research company where Benny played a huge role in designing the innovative micrographic product winning the company a huge contract with the famed Rolls-Royce Aero Engine Division. His determination and innovation soon got him appointed as the head of R&D.

Benny, The Founder, And Innovator

In 1971, Benny and a colleague founded their company, Imtec, a company that went on to become Europe's largest micrographics company. While working on the liquid toners and high-speed image development method, Benny devised the company’s core imaging technology that became the basis of Electro Ink in future,

Benny moved to Israel in 1974 and in 1977, he founded Indigo and introduced the world to Electro Ink. Decades passed, Benny introduced more innovations to the world but it was truly digital printing revolution in 1993 that made Benny the legend he is now known as.

He pulled curtains off the Indigo E-Print 1000, the world’s first digital offset color printing press, at the IPEX show in Birmingham which got the market hooked. With this invention, the era of digital printing began and Indigo became an industry leader while digital printing became a multi-billion industry in less than 2 decades.

HP, Nano graphy and The Second Digital Printing Revolution

Hewlett Packard became an investor in Indigo in 2000 and went on to buy it in an $800 million deal. Now Landa grew even more focused on ‘saving the planet’ using nanotechnology.

Benny surprised the world again in 2012 Drupa Conference as he presented a type of printing technology named Nanography.

Nanography allows high-speed digital printing for large formats and can be used on untreated paper as well as plastic. Benny’s vision was to take Digital Printing beyond photobooks, brochures, labels, decals, business cards, etc.

Benny, The Philanthropist

Benny has been a visionary all his life and an investor and innovator for most but other than that, he is also a philanthropist. He set up the Landa Fund for Equal Opportunity Through Education to facilitate the bright Israeli youth with the access to the higher education they deserve.

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