Inventions Facts for Kids
Genius facts about great inventions
The internet evolved from a US military project called ARPANET, developed in the 1960s to create a communication network that could survive a nuclear attack by automatically rerouting messages around damaged nodes. The World Wide Web — the system of linked web pages we use today — was invented separately by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989. He gave it away for free so everyone could use it.
Roller skates were invented in 1760 by Belgian inventor John Joseph Merlin, who debuted them at a masquerade party in London while playing the violin. Tragically, he had not yet invented a way to steer or stop, crashed into a large mirror, and was badly injured. Improved designs with a braking mechanism took decades to develop.
The first practical dishwasher was invented by Josephine Cochrane in 1886 because she was tired of servants chipping her fine china while washing dishes by hand. She designed a machine with wire compartments that held dishes while hot water sprayed over them. When she patented the design, she also started her own manufacturing company, which eventually became KitchenAid.
When Post-it notes were first commercially released in 1980, they came in only one color: the now-iconic canary yellow, chosen simply because that was the color of scrap paper available in the lab next door when Art Fry was developing them. Other colors were not added until 1995. Today Post-it notes come in more than 60 colors.
The Super Soaker water gun was invented by Lonnie Johnson, a NASA aerospace engineer who was working on an environmentally friendly heat pump at home in 1982. He accidentally shot a powerful stream of water across the bathroom and thought it would make a great toy. Johnson used the royalties from his invention to fund his research into advanced battery technology.
Barbed wire was patented by Joseph Glidden in 1874 and fundamentally transformed the American West. Before its invention, the lack of fencing material meant the open range was shared freely by ranchers. Barbed wire allowed farmers to cheaply enclose their land, leading to conflicts with cattle ranchers and eventually ending the era of the great cattle drives.
Early mechanical refrigerators in the 1800s and early 1900s used toxic or flammable chemicals as refrigerants, including ammonia, methyl chloride, and sulfur dioxide. Dangerous leaks caused several fatal accidents, leading to the development of Freon (a chlorofluorocarbon) in 1928 as a safer alternative. It was later discovered that Freon damages the ozone layer, and it too was eventually phased out.
The ENIAC, one of the world's first general-purpose electronic computers, was completed in 1945 and could perform 5,000 additions per second — revolutionary at the time. It weighed 30 tons, occupied a room the size of a house, and required 18,000 vacuum tubes. A modern smartphone performs billions of calculations per second and fits in your pocket.
Aluminum was considered more precious than gold or silver in the early 19th century because it was so difficult to extract from ore. The Washington Monument was topped with aluminum in 1884 as a sign of wealth and prestige. The invention of the Hall-Héroult electrolytic process in 1886 made aluminum cheap to produce, and it rapidly became the common metal we know today.
The earliest known sunglasses were flat panels of smoky quartz used by Inuit people to reduce glare from snow, and by Chinese judges around 1200 AD to hide their expressions during court proceedings. Modern tinted glass lenses for sun protection were developed in the early 1900s. Mass-market sunglasses were popularized by Hollywood movie stars in the 1930s.