
Kid Inventors’ Day is the day we celebrate all the kids who dared to defy the world and come up with better solutions than all of the adults before them.
Just because children possess less knowledge of how the world works, that doesn’t mean they can’t have ideas for practical and useful inventions. In fact, many people believe that children are capable of being particularly creative for the simple reason that they don’t yet know how difficult many things are, and are therefore able to imagine much more than adults.
- The date was chosen to celebrate this day, January 17th, was no accident—it is the anniversary of renowned polymath, politician and child inventor Benjamin Franklin’s birthday.
- Swim Flippers: Many people don’t know that when Franklin was just 12 years old, he invented the world’s first swim flippers.
- Over the centuries, other children have invented many other things we continue to use today, such as popsicles (a very tasty accident!), the trampoline and earmuffs.
- Braille: Perhaps one of the most impressive things invented by a child is the language of the blind now used the world over, Braille. Louis Braille, its inventor, lost his vision in a tragic accident at age 3 and spent his early teen years developing his new language while studying at The National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris.
- Almost 200 years later, American teen Ryan Patterson also improved the lives of the disabled when he invented a glove with special sensors that translates the hand motions of American Sign Language into written words on a digital display.
- Christmas Lights: By 1917, people were more used to electricity and 15-year-old Albert Sadacca was ready to capitalize on their trust. Prior to that time, those brave enough to try electric Christmas tree lights had to shell out approximately $2000 in today’s money for the privilege. Sadacca had the idea to create an affordable set of Christmas lights and had them produced by his parents’ novelty lighting company. It’s because of him that lights are now a ubiquitous part of the holiday season.
- Trampoline: As a teenage gymnast, George Nissen and his coach created a “bouncing rig” that helped him generate the power and height to do a back somersault. Originally made out of scrap steel and tire inner tubes, the platform was adapted later into a portable version that he called the “trampoline.”
- In the 1950s, gas stations bought trampolines to use as “jump centers,” a way for kids to get a little energy out before getting back in the car with their parents.
- Snowmobile: Quebec native Joseph-Armand Bombardier had always been a tinkerer, and on New Year’s Eve in 1922, he surprised his family with his latest creation. He had mounted the engine of a Ford Model T to four runners, with a handmade propeller perched on the back.
- The 15-year-old inventor continued perfecting his snowmobile over the years, adding tank-like tracks to it in 1935. By 1959, his tinkering had resulted in the Ski-Doo, the first ultralight snowmobile model.
- Ear Muffs: It wasn’t until the late 19th century that 15-year-old Chester Greenwood of Maine had enough of the cold, made a wire loop, and asked his grandmother to sew fur onto the ends and what we now know as earmuffs were born. His Greenwood’s Champion Ear Protectors, as they were originally called, even kept U.S. soldiers’ ears warm during WWI.
- Popsicle: It was 1905, when 11-year-old Frank Epperson left a mix of powdered drink mix, water, and a stir stick out on his cold porch overnight. The frozen pop he found in the morning would be called the Epsicle but later on his kids changed it to Pop’s ‘sickles, which eventually became the name we know today – Popsicle.
- Television: Born in 1906, by his teenage years Philo T. Farnsworth had already completed a number of sketches and designs for instruments that would eventually be crucial to the invention of the television. Most famously, Farnsworth would go on to design the first video camera tube – or ‘image dissector’, as he called it.
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