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These child inventors changed the world! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most useful things invented by kids.
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00:00Finding out that my test trip did work, it brought to me the mind that maybe I could help save someone's life.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most useful things invented by kids.
00:12And yes, teenagers count here also.
00:14Forget that. The future...
00:17is electric television.
00:20Number 20, Man Cans, Hart Main.
00:23The idea came to me that there weren't any man-scented candles.
00:27Or at least very few.
00:28Like any good brother, Hart Main would sometimes poke fun at his sister.
00:32On one such occasion, Main was teasing his sister about the so-called girly-scented candles she was selling for a school fundraiser,
00:39saying that she should have more manly scents.
00:41Well, his parents heard the joke and told their 13-year-old son that he should do it himself.
00:46So he did, and Man Cans was born.
00:48Candles with scents like sawdust and coffee, fresh-cut grass, and new baseball mint.
00:53To add an even more male-centric touch, Main put his candles in used soup cans,
00:58donating the contents to soup kitchens across his state,
01:02knowing that we like the candles even more now.
01:05We just served 250 cans of soup at a soup kitchen in Lima.
01:10Number 19, the Oinkasaurus app, Fabian Fernandez-Han.
01:15Okay, Oinkasaurus is an iPhone and iPod Touch app, and it's meant to teach kids about the stock market.
01:22For most of us, the concept of saving money and investing for our future was not something we really thought about until we were older,
01:29and then wish we had started when we were younger.
01:31Well, that is never going to be a regret for Fabian Fernandez-Han,
01:35given that he was 10 years old when he started saving.
01:38If that isn't enough to make you jealous and impressed, when he was 12 years old,
01:42the New York Stock Exchange had a competition to create something that would help educate kids about investing.
01:47Fernandez-Han invented the Oinkasaurus application and won the contest.
01:52But you know, Fabian, 12-year-olds don't invest that often,
01:55so we're hoping that that application will be popular by kids and their parents.
02:0018. Teapack – Kelly Reinhart
02:02Next time you're stuck inside on a rainy day with nothing to do,
02:05just think about Kelly Reinhart and how a day just like that was the beginning of a million-dollar idea.
02:11Reinhart was just 6 years old when her parents, one rainy afternoon,
02:15challenged her and her siblings to draw an idea for an invention,
02:18pledging to turn the best idea into a prototype.
02:21Kelly's idea was for a hip holster thing to carry around video games.
02:25She and her parents made a few changes to the design, but they did make a prototype,
02:29and in 1998, got it patented.
02:3217. Crayon Holders – Cassidy Goldstein
02:35And what she didn't know at the time was she was actually creating a low-tech assistive technology device
02:41that's not only great for all kids, but also kids with disabilities and special needs.
02:46As kids know, and as the parents of kids know, crayons break all the time.
02:50One day, you have a fresh set of beautiful crayons, and not too long later,
02:54you have a set of crayon pieces, some too small to even work with properly.
02:59Well, that was the problem 11-year-old Cassidy Goldstein was dealing with
03:03when she inserted a piece of crayon into a plastic tube used to keep flowers fresh during transport.
03:08This elegant solution became a patent in 2002.
03:11What followed was a licensing deal with Rand International for 5% of the sales,
03:16and a 2006 Youth Inventor of the Year award from the Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation.
03:25Inspire your kids, your nieces and nephews, your students and mentees, and encourage them to follow their dreams.
03:3016. Risties – Catherine KK Gregory
03:34What started in their home in Massachusetts has now exploded into a lucrative business
03:38that just moved into this mill building in Rollinsford.
03:41In 1997, 13-year-old Catherine KK Gregory became the youngest person to sell a product on the QVC shopping network.
03:49Her product, invented three years earlier, was Risties.
03:52While we all think about keeping our arms and hands warm during those cold winter days,
03:56many of us forget about that oh-so-important body part between them, the wrists.
04:00On one cold winter day in 1994, Gregory felt her wrists getting really cold and painful,
04:06and it was that experience that led to her coming up with the idea for Risties.
04:10After taking some time off from the business to go to college, travel, and work as a videographer,
04:15Gregory came back to Risties in 2010 as CEO.
04:18You don't have the individual finger placements of a cut-off glove, and it looks a lot cleaner with this.
04:2315. Magnetic Locker Wallpaper – Sarah Buckle
04:27We all remember the fun of decorating the inside of our locker at school with posters, pictures, and such.
04:32But many of us also remember the non-fun of taking it all down at the end of the year
04:37and having to scrape off all the tape and that sticky residue.
04:40This putrid rectangle of real estate may be small,
04:45but it's the one place in school where you can do what you want and show who you are.
04:51As a kid, we may have thought that there ought to be a better way to do this,
04:55but unlike the rest of us, 14-year-old Sarah Buckle thought it and did something about it.
05:00What she did was talk to her dad, who was the COO at MagnaCard,
05:04about creating magnetic wallpaper for lockers.
05:07According to her dad, the company made boring magnetic business products,
05:12so this was exactly what they needed.
05:1514. Kid Care Riding Car – Spencer Whale
05:19Spencer Whale was just 6 years old in 1998 when he visited a hospital
05:24and noticed how hard it was for sick children to play and move around when attached to an IV.
05:29So what did Whale do about it?
05:31He went home and worked on creating something that would allow children attached to IVs
05:36to be more mobile.
05:37What he came up with was the Kid Care Riding Car.
05:40This plastic car was big enough for kids and their IVs,
05:44making it possible for these once-immobile children to move around the hospital
05:48and feel just maybe a little more normal during these hard times.
05:5813. Makin' Bacon – Abby Fleck
06:01We know that bacon makes everything taste better,
06:04but in the early 90s, 8-year-old Abby Fleck came up with a way to make making bacon better.
06:10It all started when she and her dad were cooking up some bacon
06:13and realized they didn't have any paper towels to soak up all that fat.
06:16This was the lightbulb moment for Fleck who thought of hanging the bacon
06:20so that the fat dripped off during the cooking process, making it cleaner and healthier.
06:24She and her dad got to work, and eventually, the Makin' Bacon was born.
06:28In 2002, it was reported that Fleck was makin' $1 million in royalties
06:33from a distribution deal signed with Walmart, and it's still going strong today.
06:4712. Reconfigurable Toy Truck – Robert W. Patch
06:51In June 1962, Robert W. Patch was just 5 years old when he took some old shoeboxes,
06:57nails and bottle caps, setting out to make a toy truck.
07:00What he ended up with wasn't just any toy truck, though.
07:03It could be taken apart and put back together, and turned into different types of trucks as well.
07:08The young Patch might never have made history had his father not been a patent attorney
07:13and seen patent potential for his son's creation.
07:15At the age of 6, Patch became the youngest ever recipient of a U.S. patent.
07:20He could invent a new toy truck, but the young Patch still couldn't write his name,
07:25so he signed the patent papers with an X.
07:2811. Water Skiing – Ralph Samuelson
07:31On October 27, 1925, Fred Waller was issued a patent for his Dolphin AquaSkis water skis.
07:38However, it was 3 years earlier that 18-year-old Ralph Samuelson had invented the sport
07:43and performed the first ride-on skis he created.
07:52The problem for Samuelson was that he didn't patent his creation,
07:56nor was there sufficient acknowledgement of it to keep Waller from getting his patent 3 years later.
08:01For a while, Waller was even getting credited by some as the inventor of the sport.
08:05Thankfully today, we can give Samuelson that well-deserved recognition,
08:09if not his well-deserved patent.
08:1210. Popsicle – Frank Epperson
08:15Here's a reason not to tell your kids to clean up.
08:17In 1905, after mixing soda powder and water in a cup with a stir stick,
08:2211-year-old Frank Epperson of San Francisco abandoned his concoction on the porch for the night.
08:26The weather dropped to record lows for the city,
08:29and the next day, Epperson realized he had created a pretty, ahem, cool treat.
08:34He then let the concept lie for 18 years before marketing and patenting it as the Epsicle in 1923.
08:41It was later changed to Popsicle, after his children referred to it as Popsicle.
08:45Today, over 2 billion Popsicles are sold each year and are a summer must.
08:529. Earmuffs – Chester Greenwood
09:00Chester enjoyed the outdoors, and he would go skating with his friends on the Sandy River,
09:06and over time, his ears became frostbitten.
09:11The cold's to blame for this invention too.
09:13In 1873, while ice skating in Farmington, Maine,
09:1715-year-old Chester Greenwood was bothered by his cold ears,
09:20allergic to the wool used in then-popular hats with ear flaps,
09:26Greenwood got creative.
09:28He took wire, shaped it into circles,
09:30and then asked his grandmother to sew what was either flannel or beaver fur onto them.
09:34Chester Greenwood made a fortune manufacturing military earmuffs during World War I
09:39and inspired a business that prospers anew with each winter cold spell.
09:43He patented the idea by age 19,
09:45and earmuffs would go on to be used by American soldiers in World War I.
09:49Current residents of Farmington now hold a parade to celebrate Greenwood and his invention,
09:54which is still seen as an effective way to warm our ears.
09:58The next time you feel Jack Frost nipping at your ears,
10:01remember Farmington's favorite song,
10:03and remember to put on your earmuffs.
10:058. The Hot Seat – Alyssa Chavez
10:14From science fair project to potentially life-saving consumer childcare product,
10:19this small pad with a sensor can be placed by parents under an infant's booster or car seat.
10:24If the parent then walks further than 20 feet from the car,
10:27an alarm will sound on their phone and keychain.
10:29There'll be an alarm on the key fob, on the vehicle, and then on the app for cell phones.
10:34The car can also be equipped with an alarm to alert people nearby that there's an unattended infant in the vehicle.
10:40Growing up very close to children in her mother's daycare,
10:4317-year-old Alyssa Chavez got the idea after researching the grim statistics of child-hot car deaths.
10:48The product, now patented, is available through her company, Acila.
10:52I got a patent in 2012, and I've been working with engineers since then
10:57to perfect the design and the schematics and what technology would be best to use for this.
11:027. Water Talkie – Richie Stahowski
11:05Out of his $267 that he saved up, he funded the project himself.
11:11Snorkeling can give you access to some awe-inspiring underwater sights.
11:15The only problem? You can't communicate with your friends until you're back on the surface.
11:19Having experienced this frustration firsthand on a trip to Hawaii,
11:2311-year-old Richie Stahowski decided to find a solution.
11:26After researching how sound travels underwater and some experimentation,
11:30he created the Water Talkie, a simple but effective device
11:33that lets people talk to each other up to 15 feet away underwater.
11:36I was seeing all these really cool fish underwater,
11:39and every time we came up to talk to each other, I just told my dad about the fish I saw,
11:44and then I could never find him again because I couldn't talk underwater.
11:47Following his pitch, Toys R Us ordered 50,000 Water Talkies,
11:51and Stahowski opened his own company, ShortStack LLC.
11:55Three years and a few products later, he sold it for a reported $7 million.
12:00Hey, kid! How are you doing today?
12:036. All-Electronic Television – Philo Farnsworth
12:07Philo sees something in the lines of Earth.
12:11The possibility of slicing an image into parallel rows.
12:15Philo Farnsworth is considered one of the inventors of electronic TV,
12:19coming up with the idea for an image dissector at age 15.
12:23At the time, mechanical televisions worked by scanning pictures through a wheel
12:27with holes that would spin around,
12:29but Farnsworth wanted to scan images in a line pattern instead.
12:32He actually got the idea from the lines he would create when plowing fields.
12:36As a 21-year-old, he finished building the dissector.
12:40He later won a lengthy patent lawsuit with RCA,
12:43and after his death, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
12:515. The Modern Snowmobile – Joseph-Alma Bombardier
12:55There was always a certain daredevil quality to my uncle,
12:58except for his hat.
13:00As he skimmed through the snow in what we call the big wooden back tub.
13:03Living in rural Quebec in the early 1900s,
13:06Joseph-Alma Bombardier was always a tinkerer.
13:09Given an old Model T engine at 15,
13:12Bombardier worked on it with his brother,
13:14and in 1922, came up with his first snowmobile.
13:17Well, it was just a sled and a propeller powered by the Model T engine,
13:20but it was a start.
13:21From his first experimental snowmobile to jet aircraft,
13:24Joseph-Alma Bombardier's vision would eventually circle the world.
13:28He later significantly improved the design,
13:31swapping out the propeller for caterpillar tracks,
13:33and began marketing a multi-passenger vehicle in the 1930s and 40s.
13:37In the 1950s, he got back to his initial dream,
13:40producing the lightweight, more motorcycle-sized variety of Ski-Doo that's still used today.
13:544. Trampoline – George Nissen
13:56Improved and made safe,
13:58the trampoline is really the first American contribution to the gymnastics field.
14:02In 1930, after watching trapeze artists fall into their safety nets,
14:0616-year-old George Nissen, a high school gymnast,
14:09thought it would be cool if the nets allowed the acrobats to bounce back up again and again.
14:13So, he went out and found a rectangular metal frame,
14:16stretched canvas over, and created what he dubbed the bouncing rig.
14:20I just feel like I could really turn over.
14:23We don't want to see how the trial and error testing went for this one.
14:26Later, in university, his coach, Gary Griswold, helped him perfect his model.
14:30While they traveled the Southwest United States together,
14:33they learned the Spanish word for diving board, trampoline,
14:36and adopted this word for the invention.
14:38When you get 90, well, you're glad to be anyplace,
14:41but this is great to see the trampoline progress so far.
14:463. Calculator – Blaise Pascal
14:49Sure, philosophers might know him from Pascal's wager,
14:52but this child prodigy gave us something the whole world can appreciate, the calculator.
14:56In 1642, at age 18, Pascal wanted to help his father calculate taxes
15:01and came up with Pascal's calculator, later renamed Pascaline.
15:05It could add or subtract two numbers and repeat to produce multiplication or division.
15:10Over there in Clermont-Ferrand, where Pascal was born,
15:14is the mechanical calculator, or as he called it, machine arithmetique.
15:20He released it to the public in 1645, and four years later, the king gave him the patent.
15:26Unfortunately, the calculator was quite heavy, expensive, and known for mechanical faults,
15:31and thus never saw commercial success.
15:33Others created calculating machines before and after,
15:36but Pascal is regarded as the father of the mechanical calculator.
15:402. Pancreatic Cancer Nanotubes Test – Jack Andrejka
15:45Jack's an average teenager in a lot of ways,
15:48but he's loved science since he was three,
15:51and when his family lost a friend to pancreatic cancer, it made him think.
15:5515-year-old Jack Andrejka invented something that may very well save tens of thousands of lives.
16:01Because of the lack of funding for the less prevalent pancreatic cancers,
16:05ELISA, the detection method, was expensive, unreliable, and hadn't been updated in over 60 years.
16:11When I compared it to the current gold standard of protein detection called ELISA,
16:16it was actually 168 times faster, over 26,000 times less expensive, and over 400 times more sensitive.
16:24With the recent discovery of carbon nanotubes, however,
16:27Andrejka and his mentor at Johns Hopkins University were able to create a more reliable test at a fraction of the cost.
16:33His initial idea was reportedly rejected by 199 labs before one professor gave him a chance.
16:40He went on to win the Youth Achievement Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award,
16:44and $75,000 at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
16:49It is my honor to present to you the top award winners of the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
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17:15Number 1. The Braille Alphabet – Louis Braille
17:18You feel that? One dot in the top corner represents an A.
17:23That's an A. What's a B feel like?
17:27Having lost his vision in a childhood accident, Louis Braille attended a school for blind people.
17:32The books had raised letters so the students could learn with their fingers,
17:35but this caused the books to be bulky and expensive.
17:38In search of a more effective alternative, Braille learned a military code called Knight Writing.
17:43By 1824, he had developed a similar but simplified style of code based on six dots.
17:49You don't have a spelling system. You just have dots and dashes that represent sounds.
17:55Now what on earth would a blind person want with spelling?
18:00He was just 15 years old at the time.
18:02Today, there's an estimated 285 million visually impaired people in the world.
18:08Braille's code has been translated into many languages,
18:11making the written word more efficient and accessible for people with visual impairments and low vision across the globe.
18:17You read Braille? Yeah. Don't you?
18:20Oh, uh, no. I'm not, um, blind. It's alright to say it.
18:27Which of these under-20 inventors impressed you the most? Let us know in the comments.
18:33Check out these other clips from WatchMojo.
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