Early Origins

The earliest origins of sunscreen, much like many products, date back to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. In order to protect their skin from the sun’s harmful rays, the Greeks used olive oil and the Egyptians used extracts of jasmine, rice, and lupine plants. Although many of these are still active ingredients in skincare we use today, these ingredients don’t hold up as far as sun protection against our now chemically derived products. But those didn’t begin to circulate in our societies until the 20th century.

The Many Inventors Behind Sunscreen

The trek toward the invention of sunscreen started with H.A. Milton Blake, a chemist, who began experimenting with a sunburn cream in the 1930s. Then in 1938, a Swiss chemistry student named Franz Greiter suffered a sunburn while climbing Mount Piz Buin and he set out to create his own sunscreen product.

In the meantime, an airman and pharmacist named Benjamin Green was also in the process of creating his own version of sunscreen. He used a greasy substance called ‘red vet pet’ (red veterinary petrolatum) to protect himself and other soldiers from UV rays during WWII. Rather than being the traditional sunscreen we know as translucent, it was a heavier substance that was meant to act as a physical barrier between your skin and the sun.

Both men were working furiously to perfect their products and get them on the market. Green ended up mixing his original ‘red vet pet’ with cocoa butter and coconut oil and his product would later be bought by Coppertone and become the sunscreen we still know today. Greiter ended up coming out with a product called ‘Gletsher Creme’ or ‘Glacier Gream’ and was eventually picked up by a company called Piz Buin, which was named after the mountain trek that inspired his invention.

Although both men came out with their products around roughly the same time, Greiter’s most important contribution was that he invented the SPF rating in 1962. This is the measure of the fraction of sunburn producing UV rays that reach the skin. The SPF calculation was then adopted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1978 and it changed the way sunscreen was labeled. Once the rules had been adopted, the FDA issued a set of comprehensive guidelines to help consumers identify suitable sunscreen products.

All of these names have been tossed about in regard to who actually invented sunscreen and, since there seemed to be a case of parallel thought, it’s hard to say who was actually the first to invent it. But one thing we do know is that we couldn’t be more grateful for their invention on these 90 degree summer days.

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CLATONIA JOAQUIN DORTICUS (CUBA)

Little is known about Dorticus’ personal life, aside from him moving to New Jersey, where he filed for many patents, the most famous of which was a huge contribution to the world of photography. Before Dectorius, photo development usually meant that the picture needed to be dipped in several chemical baths. Dorticus’ print washer, however, would keep prints from sticking to the side and saved water with automatic register and shutoff. The false bottom of the tank also prevented leftover chemicals from ruining the negatives. In addition to his print washer, he also patented a photograph embossing machine, giving the image either a relief or 3D look.

GUILLERMO GONZALEZ CAMARENA (MEXICO)

It’s very likely the device you’re reading this on has a color display, and for that, you can thank Guillermo Camarena. At the age of 17, he invented and patented his “chromoscopic adapter for television equipment.” When in use, it would adapt black-and-white TVs to color without the need to buy a new set. He would later send his first color transmission from his lab in Mexico City on August 31, 1946. The first publicly-announced color broadcast in Mexico was overseen by him, airing on February 8, 1963. The National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico, his alma mater, named their Intellectual Property Center in his honor.

ALEJANDRO ZAFFRONI (URUGUAY)

The concept of controlled drug delivery is easy to understand, but its execution is far more difficult.  Alejandro Zaffroni dedicated himself to finding a way to deliver a drug over a set amount of time without the need for an IV. In 1968, he founded ALZA to further his research, basing it on the science of endocrinology. Products like NicoDermCQ and Glucotrol were developed by his company, and he filed for the patent for the “bandage for administering drugs.” He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2012, one of the few Hispanic inductees.

LUIS VON AHN (GUATEMALA)

Think back to when you last signed up for a website or had to import personal information. You were probably asked to fill out a CAPTCHA, right? You have Dr. Von Ahn to thank for the “Methods and Apparatuses for Controlling Access to Computer Systems and for Annotating Media Files,” and its successor, the reCAPTCHA. In his free time (when he’s not stopping spam bots from flooding servers), he works as a consulting professor for Carnegie Mellon University. He’s also the founder and CEO of Duolingo. (We checked- Duolingo does, in fact, use the reCAPTCHA he designed.)

ELLEN OCHOA (UNITED STATES)

Much of Ochoa’s early research was spent studying optical systems. She filed for a few patents on the topic, including “Position, Rotation, and Intensity Invariant Recognizing Method.” Eventually, she was named Chief of the Intelligent Systems Technology Branch at the NASA Ames Research Center. However, her biggest claim to fame is as the first Hispanic woman to go to space. Her nine-day mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1993 was just the first of her four flights and multiple stints as Mission Control. She currently serves as the Vice Chair of the National Science Board.

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Debbie Glickman

This innovative Mom created a “Monster Repellent” and other imaginative aromatherapy sprays to help calm various childhood anxieties. She first got the idea for the product when her three-year-old son was moving to his ‘big boy bed’. The transition made him anxious so he’d want to sleep in his parent’s room instead. Knowing that lavender was generally a soothing scent, she found a lavender spray and told him it would keep the monsters away. Seeing how much the spray helped him in this transition period, so she decided to turn her idea into a company. She spent some time researching different childhood fears and pairing them with soothing scents and ended up developing her company- Fairytale Wishes Inc. She first began her company in 2008 and in 2009 she made $10,000 from her products. In 2010 she made $24,000 and today her products are sold in several stores throughout the country.

Pazit Ben-Ezri

Another truly imaginative Mommy, Pazit Ben-Ezri, got the idea for her invention when her three-month-old son couldn’t sleep unless he was in his crib. It became so difficult to put him down for a nap when they were on the go that Ben-Ezri stopped going out at all. So she designed a small cushion with handles that would fit in her son’s crib but could be removed to take him on errands. Once she created her prototype and began using it, lots of other Moms gave her compliments and expressed interest in her product. After sending out test copies and getting feedback, she created her own company called LulyBoo LLC. Not only has she now sold thousands of products, but the company has also developed a whole line of travel-friendly baby products.

Erin Galloway

Erin Galloway, an active mommy-on-the-go, has been working to create a community for moms who want to find time to be more active. As a parent, she empathized with the struggle to make time to exercise when your day is full of cleaning crumbs and changing diapers. With a Master’s Degree in Child Development and Family Science as well as 20 years managing education initiatives for The Ohio State University and Johns Hopkins, she was ready to put her innovative skills to the test by launching two social media communities to help motivate fellow Mom’s – Pump the Bump and Sweaty Mom Survival. Collectively, these platforms have 62,000+ members. She has already shared several activities to help kickstart interactive exercises, but her latest innovation is her very own invention: The Kettlemate. This is a plush kid-sized kettlebell that allows your kids to exercise right along with you. The Kettlemate line will include several characters with different personalities to be used for different types of exercise and health-related activities.

We were able to sit down with Erin so she could tell us a bit more about her revolutionary product, which just launched its own Kickstarter campaign:

Inventionland (IL): What inspired you to invent The Kettlemate?

Erin Galloway (EG): My 3 main sources of inspiration were:

1) The women I met while curating stories and sharing motivation through my Pump the Bump Instagram account. What started out as a fun social account transformed into an inspirational community of women who wanted to maintain an active pregnancy. By the time I was 5 years into managing the community, moms were sharing how they were struggling to stay active and I knew I needed to offer a solution.

2) My degrees and professional background are in child development so I naturally see the ways in which fitness can be an outlet to incorporate early childhood developmental components that could motivate both mom and child. I thought that if I could help moms see how their child was learning, they would be more likely to feel good about fitting fitness into their family routines.

3) My daughter inspired me to launch Pump the Bump during my pregnancy, Sweaty Mommy Survival after she turned 2, and then the Kettlemate as a preschooler. She enjoyed spending time being active together and always cheers me on when I doubt myself. After I created the prototype for the Kettlemate, she wasn’t going to let me back out. She told me to “go be brave mommy” when I said I was scared to create a video and try to sell the Kettlemate to strangers. Her words let me know I was headed down the path I was meant to go down.

IL: What was the hardest part of the inventing process?

EG: The legal aspects intimidate me the most. What documents do I need, what should I apply for first, where is the biggest risk if I don’t put a legal structure in place, etc. I do not have a business background so I am learning as I go and that’s a risky way to learn.

IL: What was the most rewarding part of the inventing process?

EG: The process has taught me about the power of the human connection. I have been consistently amazed by people who offered me a hand when I never expected it. Strangers, friends, friends of friends, etc. who have continued to make my dream possible including:

• Business owners who gave me access to their contacts
• Friends who called in favors on my behalf
• Artists who charged lower fees than they could have
• Childhood friends who helped spread the word about my Kickstarter campaign that I never even knew were paying attention to what I was doing.

I could not be this far in my journey without asking for help and allowing people to support me in the best ways they knew how. The power of paying it forward has come through me and passes on to other women who feel inspired by my story.

IL: What’s your favorite thing about being a Mom?

EG: Rediscovering the world through her eyes. She reminds me to keep things simple, don’t assume adults know the right answers, and to ALWAYS ask more questions.

IL: What’s your favorite activity to do with your daughter and why?

EG: We love baking together. She’s had her own “knife set” since she was 2 and started helping me with weekly meal prep as a Sunday activity. The time in our kitchen, and exploring farmers markets, eventually evolved into a passion for baking. Instead of Saturday morning cartoons, we watch baking shows. Before she was 3, she already started creating her own business, researched about requirements to operate a store, brainstormed what inventory she will have, etc. It gives us something fun to talk about over dinner, research on Google… and of course do lots of taste testing.

IL: What’s your favorite thing to do in your spare time?

EG: I recently moved back to Ohio so spending time with college friends and family is a favorite thing. Watching my friends, and their kids, grow up via FaceTime and Facebook photos thousands of miles away was difficult. Now watching our kids play together while hanging on a back porch with some wine truly brings me joy.

IL: Any advice for fellow inventor parents?

EG: Involve your kids in the process. There is so much a child can learn from hearing your thought process and lessons learned that they could never learn in school. The critical thinking skills required to be an inventor is transferable to every aspect of their life. PLUS on the low days, they are always there to motivate you to keep going because innocence is bliss.

IL: What’s next for you?

EG: I intend to build an entire world of family-friendly fitness products for children 0-12 (books, games, puzzles, etc) and I want to make them available in uncommon places like grocery stores, restaurants, pediatric offices, etc. If I can help families reduce the screen time and increase the “we time,”, families with have tighter bonds and deeper connections that make parenting through all life stages much easier.

The post Mothers of Innovation appeared first on Inventionland.

HEIMLICH MANEUVER

When Henry Judah Heimlich came up with his life-saving procedure in the 1970s, he was at a loss as to what to call it. Eventually, he went with the most obvious solution: naming it after the creator, aka himself. No matter the name, though, the technique is something we should all know how to do and countless lives have been saved because of it.

MASON JAR

John Landis Mason patented this wide-mouthed jar in 1858 after working as a tinsmith. They were unique for their hermetic seal, created by the separate band and lid used in the screw thread design. This allowed the jars to be reused, saving the user money. They were quickly dubbed Mason jars, although many other companies would copy the design over the years. Even today, Mason jars are still popular for canning and other projects.

SAXOPHONE

Adolphe Sax created quite a few horn instruments during his life, but his most famous is the one that bears his name. His dream was to create an instrument with the workings of a woodwind- hence the reed- but with that iconic horn sound. The saxophone changed the face of music forever, even though it took a while to gain popularity. It remained a novelty instrument until the rise of jazz in the 1920s when musicians found it matched the sound of the new genre.

SALISBURY STEAK

This staple of school cafeterias was the creation of James Salisbury, a 19^th-century doctor. Unlike most modern physicians, Salisbury believed that starches and vegetables were the bane of a healthy body. While his views on lean meat were later vindicated, most people agree fruits and veggies are key to a healthy diet. Nevertheless, this mixture of ground meats and gravy has found its way to the hearts (and stomachs) of millions.

GRAHAM CRACKERS

On the opposite end of the diet spectrum was Sylvester Graham and his crackers. Fruits, vegetables, and whole grains were the order of the day- without any meats or spices. He developed the graham cracker to help combat the blandness of this diet, or perhaps to enforce it. Graham also believed eating plainly would promote a morally pure lifestyle. Of course, most now associate the cracker with summer cookouts and beach bonfires thanks to that classic dessert- s’mores. Adding in the other indulgences the Graham cracker appears in, it’s safe to assume Graham’s goal has long been forgotten.

JACUZZI

The Jacuzzi is notable for not being named after one person, but a septet. Immigrants from Italy, the Jacuzzi brothers developed a hydrotherapy pump to use in the bath. Not only did it soothe the arthritis of a relative but caught on among the general public. The whirlpool bath as we know it came from a third-generation Jacuzzi in 1968.

SILHOUETTE

This is one instance where having your name immortalized is not a good thing. Etienne de Silhouette was a strict French finance minister. He made drastic cuts to the upper class during the Seven Years’ War. His name was used to describe anything cheaply made and soon became synonymous with the simple portraits.

BOWLER HAT

We have William Bowler to thank for this classic felt hat, which he designed in 1850. However, we should also give credit to the Earl of Leicester’s younger brother, Edward Coke, for commissioning him in the first place. According to legend, Coke asked Bowler to craft a hat that would protect him from low-hanging branches during horseback riding. So much for wearing a helmet.

BRAILLE

Louis Braille is responsible for the eponymous written language, now most famously used for blind people. However, he originally devised the language after studying up on cryptography- namely, the code of pressed dots Captain Charles Barbier had created to help his men communicate in the dark.

FERRIS WHEEL

Names play a huge role in the history and legacy of the famous ride. George W. G. Ferris (of Pittsburgh!) intended for it to be the spotlight of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, measuring in at 264 feet. Ferris wanted it to rival the creation of Gustave Eiffel for the World’s Exhibition in 1889, the Eiffel Tower. It fell a little short, as the Tower reaches 1,063 feet at its tip. But while the Eiffel Tower would remain a landmark of France, the Ferris Wheel has been duplicated worldwide as a popular amusement park attraction. (It later went on to be the name of Matthew Broderick’s character in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.)

The post Inventions Named After People appeared first on Inventionland.

VAXXWAGON

For many developing countries, being able to distribute vaccines is a challenge. If the medicine gets too warm, it could lose its effectiveness. Anurudh Ganesan, a then 15-year-old student, knew firsthand how lucky he was to have received a polio vaccination in his home country of India. The struggles his grandparents went through to get him the shot led him to build the VAXXWAGON, a modified bicycle with a thermos kept cold by user pedaling.

BAND-AIDS

Mr. and Mrs. Earl Dickson lived at the turn of the century and were, by all accounts, quite a loving pair. Mr. Dickson was indeed so caring he sought to help his wife deal with the many cuts and burns she gave herself while making dinner. Using his skills and resources from working at Johnson & Johnson, he attached gauze to pieces of surgical tape, prepared for whenever she was injured. The result? The earliest adhesive bandages.

MADAME CJ WALKER

The daughter of former slaves, Sarah Breedlove Walker struggled during her life but never lost hope. After developing a lotion to deal with her hair loss, she began selling her product door-to-door before establishing a college in Pittsburgh. The Walker System, as it came to be known, revolutionized the sales industry and gave African-American women a chance to provide for themselves. Today, she’s recognized as the first female African-American self-made millionaire.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

The creations of Leonardo da Vinci are well-documented and discussed, but few talk about just how ahead of his time he was. From birth, he was considered different (being born out of wedlock during an age of strict religious ideas). His interpretations of religion in paintings like The Last Supper flew in the face of societal norms. And of course, his inventions- including scuba suits and modern tanks- are still being perfected today. He may be a Renaissance man, but his work is far from ancient.

GUNPEI YOKOI

Long before they manufactured video games, Nintendo made Hanafuda cards. One day, the president visited the factory Gunpei Yokoi was working at and noticed a toy Yokoi had made. The extending arm, later dubbed the Ultra Hand, was then rushed into production and became a smash for Nintendo. Yokoi continued to develop toys for Nintendo, including the first in the lucrative Game Boy line of consoles. He’s also known for the creation of the control pad, a staple on many gaming consoles to this day.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

When he wasn’t busy being a founding father, Benjamin Franklin enjoyed experimenting. His discovery of electricity, if somewhat misattributed, is common knowledge. But what about the Franklin stove? The lightning rod? Indeed, not all of his ideas were amazing- he wanted to make the national bird the turkey, for example- but what makes him inspiring was his stance on his inventions. He never patented his inventions because he believed everybody should be able to use them.

DISHWASHER

Josephine Cochrane wanted to make life easier for her servants by lessening the work they had to do to clean the dishes. She built a machine with a motor spinning a wheel inside of a copper boiler. This was the first automatic dishwasher to use water pressure. After her alcoholic husband left her with debt after his death, she patented the creation in 1886 and used it to open her own factory and revolutionize households forever.

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1) Marie Curie: Theory of Radioactivity

One of the greatest scientific minds of all time, Marie Curie was the first person to study the Theory of Radioactivity and discovered that we could split an atom. After the tragic death of her husband, Pierre Curie, she became the first woman to hold the position of Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences. Marie received a Nobel Prize for her work with radioactivity and she received it a second time for discovering polonium and radium.

2) Grace Hopper: The Computer

Prior to Grace Hopper’s work on computers, all programs were written in numerical code. She not only designed Harvard’s Mark I computer in 1944, but she also invented the compiler. This device translated written language into computer coding. Later, she co-invented COBOL- the first universal programming language used in business and government. As if all of this wasn’t enough, she also coined the terms ‘bug/debugging’ and she was a Rear Admiral in the Navy.

3) Rosalind Franklin: DNA Double Helix

The discovery of the DNA double helix is often attributed to James Watson and Francis Click, who won the Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1962. However, they weren’t actually the ones who made the discovery. The first person to capture the photographic image using x-ray diffraction was British biophysicist Rosalind Franklin. Though her two competitors stole credit for the discovery long ago, Rosalind has more recently begun to receive credit for her contributions.

4) Stephanie Kwolek: Kevlar

That’s right, the fiber credited with saving countless lives was discovered by female inventor Stephanie Kwolek. She made the discovery as she attempted to invent an alternative for steel in radial car tires. She was attempting to turn a solid polymer into a liquid and although this failed, when she looked closer she realized the fibers in the substance were five times stronger than steel. Since its discovery, it has been used for anything from bicycle tires to (most famously) police protective vests.

5) Josephine Cochrane: The Dishwasher

This is the woman you can thank for keeping us from having to wash every dish by hand. She originally came up with the idea of a mechanical dishwasher that would hold dishes in a rack while pressurized water sprayed them clean. After her husband passed, she began marketing her inventions to hotels until, eventually, it became the standard household appliance we now know today.

6) Maria Beasley: The Life Raft

Though Maria invented several successful devices, her most famous is the life raft. Prior to her contributions, emergency rafts were simple planks with no guard rails. Maria invented a more sophisticated device that was fireproof, easily folded and unfolded for storage and had guard rails on the sides to keep people safe inside.

7) Dr. Shirley Jackson: Modern Day Telecommunication

A more modern-day female inventor, Shirley made history as the first black woman to graduate with a PhD. from MIT in 1973. She then began to work at Bell Laboratories, where she completed research that led to such creations as solar cells, fiber optic cables, portable fax machines, touch-tone telephones, caller ID and call waiting.

8) Katharine Burr Blodgett: Non-reflective Glass

During World War II, Katharine was a crucial mind in the research behind several inventions, including gas masks, smoke screens and a technique for de-icing airplane wings. However, her work in chemistry on a molecular level resulted in her most important invention: non-reflective glass. This type of glass is what we now use in glasses, car shields, and computer screens.

9) Hedy Lamarr: “Frequency Hopping” Technology

You may know Hedy Lamarr as a glamorous black and white film star, but did you know she also worked to improve torpedo technology in WWII? A gifted mathematician and engineer, she worked with a composer to develop the idea of ‘frequency hopping’ which would encrypt torpedo control signals. This technology was able to prevent enemies from sending torpedos off course. Even more impressively, the type of technology she developed ended up being the foundation for many modern-day inventions, including Wi-Fi and GPS.

10) Mary Anderson: Windshield Wiper

Much like many great inventors, Mary wanted to solve a problem. She saw how unsafe it was to drive in bad weather when she visited New York City in 1902 and rode a trolley car in falling sleet. She quickly came up with a working model that used a lever inside the car to control a rubber blade on the windshield. Though she had trouble selling her invention at first, eventually Cadillac included her invention on its vehicles in 1922.

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1. Tesla’s mother always encouraged his career in science; his father, on the other hand, only allowed it after a near-death experience.
Tesla’s mother, Georgina Djuka Tesla, was his biggest inspiration and responsible for sparking his love of working with electricity. When he was growing up, she would invent small electrical appliances in her spare time, including a mechanical egg beater. Tesla’s father, a talented writer and poet, was a priest and insisted his son follow in his footsteps to pursue the priesthood. It was only when Tesla was 17 and became extremely sick with cholera that his father promised his son if he survived that he could attend university and study engineering.

2. He gave all of his own money to his research and was a terrible entrepreneur; he was, at his base, an environmentalist and humanist.
One of Tesla’s larger concerns was, “the fact that people consume the Earth’s resources too fast.” Because of this, he studied different ways to gather energy from the earth naturally, including the creation of artificial light in his lab. Tesla never cared for making money through his research (as opposed to his rival, Edison). To pursue inventing he moved to the United States in 1884 with little-to-no money. When he died, he died with empty pockets and more than 275 patients in 26 different countries. His goal was to invent things to make human life better, not to make money.

3. He created an “earthquake machine.”
The machine was actually called a high-frequency oscillator, which was a piston set underneath a platform, and caused his lab and the building which he was in to shake violently. This machine didn’t cause the neighborhood to collapse or the buildings to fall down, but reports say that it did cause close friend Mark Twain to panic and helped to solve Twain’s recurring digestive problem. This was one of the only inventions that wasn’t seized later by The Office of Alien Property. Most of the other inventions were later returned to join the high-frequency oscillator in the Tesla Museum in Belgrade. Other inventions that were returned included his attempts at creating a particle gun and a death ray.

4. Tesla had some very famous friends.
  Besides Twain, Tesla’s friends included French actress Sarah Bernhardt, English poet and journalist Rudyard Kipling, Wilhelm Conrad Roengen, who discovered X-rays, and financier and banker J.P. Morgan. Another poet, Robert Underwood Johnson, penned the poem “In Tesla’s Laboratory.” Also, though Edison was seen as his rival to many, the two were far from not being on speaking terms and eventually found a great respect for one another.

5. He was amusing and generally pretty catty.
People knew Tesla as many different things: weird, committed, highly opinionated…but everyone agreed that he had a great sense of humor. Tesla wrote to one of his close friends in 1901 to talk about how Rudyard Kipling invited him to a rundown hotel for dinner saying: “What is the matter with inkspiller Kipling? He actually dared to invite me to dine in an obscure hotel where I would be sure to get hair in cockroaches in the soup.”

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