Most inventions are created by older people. But youngsters are often great inventors as well. Here are some examples of inventions created by kids from the young age of 5 to 20 years old. Some of their inventions are actively used today.
Back in 1642, a 19-year-old French boy named Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical adding machine and it was named the Pascaline. Interestingly, it was not really used until several hundred years later when it became successful. But most of the inventions by youngsters have been put to use pretty quickly after the invention.
Benny Benson was 13 when he created the flag for Alaska. The territory of Alaska became a state in 1959. Until Benny’s flag was flown, the Alaskans had flown the U.S. flag, from the time that the United States had purchased Alaska from Russia in the 1850s.
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Robert Heft, at the age of 17, in a class project at school, proposed a new flag for the United States since it had added two countries to its 48, Alaska and Hawaii. He designed a 50-star American flag, and it was quickly turned down by his teacher. When he completed his project he received a B-minus for it.
Then his teacher told him that if he could get the U.S. Congress to accept his idea for the new flag he would get a better grade. Robert Heft created history when Congress did accept his idea. That is our current American flag.
Richie Stachowski, at age 11, was in Hawaii snorkeling in the water. He was frustrated that he could not communicate with his dad about his underwater discoveries there. So by age 13, he designed an underwater megaphone using the Internet for his research. He used $267 of his savings to set up a company called Short Stack, LL, with himself as president, and he then negotiated with retail chains to carry and sell his product, which he called “Water Talkies.� Since the summer of 1997, they have been popular and they have been keeping people underwater communicating ever since.
Kristin Hrabar was 9 years old when she was inspired to design what she called “Laserdriver Tools.� When she and her dad were doing a routine home repair she held a flashlight to help her dad see what was necessary. She suddenly thought that it would be better and easier if the tool her dad was using had its own light.
So she then designed the illuminated nut driver for demonstration in the school’s third-grade science fair. By her 11th birthday, she patented her product and one year later she was making money with it.
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Louis Braille was born in 1809 in a small village near Paris. His father used sharp tools, called awls, to cut the leather goods that he sold to other villagers. While playing with an awl, Louis’s hand slipped and he accidentally poked one of his eyes. The wound became infected and a few days later Louis lost the sight in both of his eyes. He turned blind at the age of 3.
As time went on, he learned to adapt and to lead an otherwise normal life. At school he was intelligent and also creative. He was determined not to let his disability slow him down. He heard of a school in Paris that was for blind children. He went there and he asked a teacher if the school had books for blind people. The books had large letters that were raised up about the page. The books were very big and very expensive and not easy to read.
Louis read all the books, but it took a long time to do so, feeling the letters on each page. He decided that there must be a way for a blind person to read a page quickly, like a non-blind person. He spent a lot of time aiming for an improvement. And as he sat in his father’s leather shop he picked up one of his father’s blunt awls and an idea came to him in a flash. This tool that caused him to go blind could be used to make a raised-dot alphabet that would enable him to read.
So he spent the next week creating an alphabet made up entirely of six dots. The position of the dots would represent the different letters of the alphabet. After he punched out a sentence with the awl, he was able to read it quickly from left to right. His invention worked, and it gave him and many others a new lease on life.
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In 1963 a patent was granted to a 6-year-old inventor, Robert Patch, for what was called a “toy truck.� He designed it so that it could be quickly and easily assembled and disassembled by a youngster and could be changed into different kinds of trucks — dump-truck or van-style body.
These are only very few of the inventions created by youngsters. Isn’t it remarkable how many 5-, 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds were inventors, especially of things that were useful and interesting to use? And usually they did not stop with only one invention.
As they grew older many of them added invention after invention to their list. Some of them reached the 100 mark during their happy lives. I have always been fascinated when I study the lives and accomplishments of young inventors.
Sidney X. Shore is a scientist, inventor and educator who lives in Sharon and holds more than 30 U.S. patents.
