Henry Orenstein, the inventor who gave the world Transformers toys and televised poker, has died at age 98.
Henry Orenstein: Holocaust survivor, toy entrepreneur, poker legend. He was photographed above for a Newsweek article in 2016. (Picture: Shaminder Dulai/Newsweek)
Orenstein revolutionized poker by devising the “gap card cam,” which allowed a tv viewers to see gamers’ face-down playing cards. His invention turned the sport right into a viable spectator sport and sparked the poker growth of the mid-2000s.
He was himself a poker champion, profitable a World Sequence of Poker bracelet in 7-card stud.
With Transformers, he created probably the most widespread toy strains of the Eighties, which later launched a blockbuster film franchise.
Holocaust Survivor
Orenstein was born in Hrubieszów in southeastern Poland in 1923. He was a Holocaust survivor whose mother and father have been murdered by the Nazis.
He and his brothers have been deported to the Majdanek focus camp on the outskirts of Lublin, after which to the Płaszów camp exterior Krakow, below infamous sadistic warfare prison Amon Goeth. Lastly, he was transferred to the Ravensbrück camp in Germany, which was liberated by the Purple Military in April 1945.
Roughly 7,500 Jews lived in Hrubieszów in 1939. Orenstein and his two brothers have been amongst an estimated 140 from the city to outlive the Holocaust.
‘I Shall Survive’
Orenstein attributed his survival, partially, to telling his captors, falsely, that he had skilled as a scientist.
Extremely, this allowed him to enroll in a delusionary Nazi scheme to save lots of the German warfare effort through the use of Jewish scientists and engineers to create a gasoline that might paralyze enemy tanks and plane.
In response to Orenstein’s 1987 ebook, I Shall Survive, the scheme was a sham. It was largely composed of prisoners with out these expertise who have been merely playing the warfare would finish earlier than the SS discovered them out.
Orenstein additionally realized the German “professors” overseeing it saved it going as a result of it prevented them from being drafted into the military to struggle on the Russian entrance.
Inventor, Poker Legend
Orenstein arrived in America in 1947 with little to his identify and located a job working on the Libby’s canned meals manufacturing facility in Upstate New York. Sooner or later, he noticed a doll in a division retailer window on sale for $29.95.
Satisfied he might make toys of comparable high quality at a less expensive worth, he grew to become a toy producer, creating widespread Nineteen Fifties doll “Betty the Stunning Bride.”
In lower than a 12 months, he offered 1.5 million of those dolls.
He later based the businesses Deluxe Studying and Topper Toys, which produced Johnny Lightning toy automobiles and Daybreak Dolls.
On the time of his dying, Orenstein had over 100 patents to his identify.
Sport-Changer
Previous to his invention of the opening card cam, watching poker was like watching paint dry. Until a pot went to showdown, the viewers wouldn’t get to see any playing cards the gamers have been holding. This made following the motion unattainable.
Within the late Nineteen Nineties, Orenstein created a brand new form of desk with glass home windows at every place and a digital camera beneath that would learn the beforehand hidden playing cards.
NBC Sports activities President of Programming Jon Miller as soon as stated that Orenstein was “single-handedly liable for the success of poker as we speak.”
He was inducted into the Poker Corridor of Fame in 2008.
