By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Dr. Robert Penner, 91, has done a lot of things in his life. He was an ophthalmologist with a private practice in Chula Vista; a colonel in the Army Reserve; president of the San Diego County Medical Society and of the San Diego County Eye Bank; and chairman of the San Diego Port Commission, among other distinctions.
While he was in medical practice, he closely guarded a secret about himself. He was color blind. “The best example I can happened years ago when I went into the PX (Army base exchange) and I got this gorgeous gray leisure suit. I loved it! I wore it for three years and then I found out it was pink. Do I look like a pink leisure suit guy? No way!”
So, after Dr. Penner retired from his practice and from the Army Reserve, he decided he’d like to help other people who are color blind. He called upon an Israeli friend who introduced him to two other people who were knowledgeable in the field of Artificial Intelligence, and told them, “I want to create an App that will allow you take your personal closet and digitalize it, and then have it so that it knows the difference between this garment and that garment and can tell you, ‘This does not go with that.’”
“By the time we finished that day, they had filled a white board with diagrams and arrows of what this concept could be,” Penner recalled. “So now it is a free app on Apple called ‘Color Butler’ and you can download it.
“You can develop your own digital closet, or your wife’s closet, or your kid’s closet, in case you want to buy them something. We are highly advanced with it. We have three patents; we’re going for our fourth and our fifth, because it has implications way beyond what I’ve been talking about.”
I checked the App store on my iPhone and sure enough, there was Color Butler listed as a free App.
When does he plan to take it to the next level?
The nonagenarian smiled and said, “well, right now we’re looking for investors.”
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com