Being small and brave is the nectar of this story.
“No Fear “creativity by children is to be noted by many of us adults. From “there ought to be’s “, to fidgeting in the basement, to borrowing from mom and dad, to pitching to neighbors.. products are constantly being born by little munchkins across the globe.
Here are some examples:
Hart Main
Hart Main, at age 13, was making of fun of the candles his sister was selling at school by commenting on how girlie they smelled. Overhearing this criticism, Main’s parents encouraged him to pursue this idea of creating more manly scents. Main used $100 that he had earned as a paper boy to begin his invention, purchasing scents and waxes to create a manly scented candle. He called this invention the ManCan. Main uses recycled soup cans to hold the aromas, and disposes of the contents by donating them to soup kitchens, which makes for a humanitarian business.
Richie Stachowski
Richie Stachowski invented the Water Talkie when he was 11 years old. In 1996 he went on a trip with his family to Hawaii and when they all went surfing, he was inspired by the inability to speak underwater to create a device that would change that. Stachowski, upon realizing that the invention for underwater talking did not exist, began conducting research and pioneering his invention by trying prototypes in pools. Stachowski came up with the Water Talkie which is essentially a device with a plastic membrane and a blow valve that allows people underwater to communicate as far as 15 feet away from each other. Stachowski successfully pitched and landed a deal with Toys “R” Us for this invention, and he ultimately founded a company called Short Stack LLC which developed pool products.
Kathryn “KK” Gregory
Kathryn Gregory is the inventor of Wristies, a product that keeps wrists, forearms and hands warm during the cold. At 10 years old, she was inspired to create this product when her wrists began to hurt from the cold. She invented this “sleeve” that can be worn to keep warm during the winter. Gregory’s mother assisted in developing this product and launching a business. In 1997. Gregory made an appearance on the QVC Network to discuss her product, being the youngest person to sell a product on the network.
Robert Patch
Robert Patch is the 6 year-old inventor of the toy truck design. At the age of 5, Robert took some shoe boxes accompanied with some bottle caps and nails to construct a toy for himself a truck. Robert’s new invention ended up having the ease of being converted into a flatbed styled truck, or a dump truck. Tt was able to be separated into different pieces that the toy truck was comprised of, being its chassis, driver’s cab, truck body, wheels and all that needed to be done was placing the axels appropriately. Robert’s father was a patent attorney and realized what his son had done, seeing key components that made his son’s “new toy” patententable. On June 11, 1962 Robert made history with being the youngest person to receive a US Patent.
Louis Braille
Louis Braille at the age of 15 is the inventor of the commonly known system used for people with visual impairment named after him, braille. His father Simon-Rene Braille, was the village saddler and one day while playing in his father’s shop making holes in a piece of leather with an awl, the tool slipped and Louis Braille was struck in the eye. At the age of 3, he was blind in one eye and 2 years later in both because of the lack of treatment options in this time period and infection. Louis went on to attend one of the first blind schools in the world located in Paris, the Royal Institution for Blind Youth, where he learned the most advanced form of communicating for the blind called night writing. This being too complex for Louis’s liking, he was inspired by the Captain to devise his own system using 6 dots instead of 12 that was in “night writing” and figured 63 ways to place the dots to communicate with the use of your fingertip. Louis then later added symbols for mathematics and music and officially published his own system, Braille, in 1829. Within the years, he had a variety of publications and was offered a professorship where he taught geometry, algebra and history.
Margaret Knight
Margaret Knight, at the age of 12, invented a safety mechanism that made it impossible for a shuttle to leave the loom at cotton mills. Margaret was inspired to create this after she witnessed a “shuttle”, which is the device that carries thread back and forth from a textile loom, coming off a machine after the thread in use snapped, killing a young boy at a cotton mill she worked at. Margaret’s invention was so useful and efficient, it became the standard with power looms and has saved an uncountable number of lives.
