Inventions Facts for Kids
Genius facts about great inventions
Toilet paper on a perforated roll was patented by Seth Wheeler in 1891. Before this invention, people used whatever was handy — including corncobs, leaves, wool, and old newspapers. The Sears catalog was famously used in rural America partly because it arrived regularly and was printed on thin, soft paper. Wheeler's patent even specified which direction the paper should hang — over the top.
Charles Goodyear spent years trying to stabilize natural rubber, which became sticky in heat and brittle in cold, before accidentally discovering vulcanization in 1839 when he dropped a rubber-sulfur mixture on a hot stove. The heat-treated rubber remained flexible across a wide temperature range. His invention made rubber useful for tires, hoses, boots, and hundreds of other applications.
Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1867 not to make explosives more powerful, but to make them safer to handle. Nitroglycerin, the explosive it replaced, was extremely unstable and caused many accidental deaths. Nobel mixed nitroglycerin with a stable silica material to create a safer, more manageable explosive. Horrified by seeing his invention used in warfare, he left his fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes.
The red-green-yellow color system used in traffic lights was borrowed directly from the railway signaling system that had used those colors for decades. The first electric traffic light was installed in Cleveland, Ohio in 1914. Early traffic lights had no yellow warning light — it was added in 1920 to give drivers more time to react before the light changed.
The ballpoint pen was invented by Hungarian journalist László Bíró in 1938, who was frustrated by the smudging and leaking of fountain pens. He noticed that newspaper ink dried quickly and developed a pen with a tiny rotating ball that picked up thick, fast-drying ink from a reservoir. Pilots in World War Two adopted it eagerly because fountain pens leaked at high altitudes.
The Frisbee toy evolved from the practice of college students tossing empty pie tins from the Frisbie Baking Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, in the 1940s. Fred Morrison designed a plastic flying disc in 1948 and sold it to Wham-O in 1957. Wham-O renamed it 'Frisbee' — a misspelling of the original bakery name — and it became one of the world's most popular outdoor toys.
Teflon, the slippery non-stick coating used in cookware, was accidentally discovered in 1938 by chemist Roy Plunkett at DuPont. He was researching new refrigerant chemicals when he noticed one of his gas tanks was empty but still the same weight. Inside, the gas had polymerized into a slippery white powder that was remarkably resistant to heat and chemicals.
Nylon was invented by DuPont chemist Wallace Carothers in 1935 and was specifically developed as an artificial replacement for silk, much of which came from Japan. It debuted in nylon stockings in 1940 and was an immediate sensation — women lined up by the thousands to buy them. During World War Two, all nylon production was redirected to make parachutes, tents, and rope for the military.
The telephone answering machine was invented by Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen in 1898 using magnetic wire recording. The first practical commercial answering machine was the Ipsiphon, marketed in Switzerland in 1935, and was so large it had to be installed by a technician. Early machines were banned in some countries because authorities considered it rude to not answer a phone in person.
The telescope was invented in 1608 by Dutch spectacle maker Hans Lippershey, who noticed that holding two lenses at the right distance apart made distant objects appear closer. He tried to keep the invention secret, but word spread rapidly. Galileo heard about it within months, built his own improved version, and used it to make his famous astronomical discoveries.