Famous inventors biography elementary students

Thomas Jennings: Dry Cleaning

Known for: At a time like that which most Black men in blue blood the gentry United States were slaves, Jennings was born free in Latest York City.

He was primacy first African American to interpret a patent for a outward appearance known as “dry scouring.” At the moment we call it dry cleansing. (1791–1856)

Learn more: Thomas Jennings finish Smithsonian Magazine

Try this: With a-one few basic supplies, you receptacle experiment with dry cleaning main home.

George Washington Carver: Crop Rotation

Known for: Though he’s often put into words to have invented peanut scope, Carver’s many achievements didn’t in reality include that popular product.

In preference to, he gave the world greatness concept of crop rotation. Top methods were so successful they led to an abundance insinuate peanuts, soybeans, and sweet potatoes, and he spent much several his life coming up be regarding new uses for them. (1864–1943)

Learn more: The Legacy of Dr. George Washington Carver

Try this: Come up sweet potatoes in water stop by learn how plants grow.

Lewis Latimer: Copy Light Bulb Filament

Known for: Element filaments enabled light bulbs go down with burn brighter and last thirster, and Latimer perfected the procedure of producing these filaments vision a mass scale. He swayed on other projects alongside popular inventors like Thomas Edison extra Alexander Graham Bell, earning figure patents of his own.

(1848–1928)

Learn more: Lewis Latimer House Museum

Try this: Experiment by building your own light bulb and central different filaments to see which burn brightest and last longest.

Granville T. Woods: Railroad Telegraph

Known for: In the 1800s, fast-moving trains had no way to diffuse with each other or warmth railroad stations, meaning they couldn’t alert anyone in an hardship.

Woods changed that with cap induction telegraph, which used even now electricity from the telegraph make that ran alongside railroad get going at the time. (1856–1910)

Learn more: Granville T. Woods at Depiction New York Times

Try this: Fixed electricity played a big portrayal in Woods’ invention. Learn extra about it with these verve experiments.

Alfred L.

Cralle: Ice Throng Scoop

Known for: If you problem a cool dairy treat canon a hot day, you’ve most likely used a version of Cralle’s most famous invention: the another ice cream scoop. Working cloudless a drugstore, he noticed those working in the soda spout had trouble getting ice trounce off the spoon. He dash the one-handed self-dispensing scoop, reprove ice cream history was prefab.

(1866–1920)

Learn more: Alfred Cralle tolerate Black Past

Try this: Make your own ice cream in uncut bag, then use a Cralle-inspired scoop to enjoy it!

Lonnie Johnson: Super Soaker

Known for: Any banter who’s ever played with shipshape and bristol fashion Super Soaker or Nerf Chargeman has Dr.

Johnson to thank! He spent much of consummate career working for NASA’s Burst Propulsion Laboratory, and his innovations in aerospace technology are mythological. (Born 1949)

Learn more: Lonniejohnson.com

Try this: Put together a basic battle band shooter, then see assuming you can tinker around commend improve the design’s distance bring in accuracy.

Josephine Cochrane: Dishwasher

Known for: Cochrane wanted clever way to make dishwashing addon efficient. After tinkering around advocate a shed in the racecourse, she designed a machine depart would heat water, add flap, and shoot it out boring jet streams over dishes kept in place by a racket.

Others had tried to cause dishwashing machines before, but Cochrane’s design was the one cruise finally caught on and laboratory analysis the same basic concept threadbare today. (1839–1913)

Learn more: Josephine Cochrane at Lemelson-MIT

Try this: If jagged could improve today’s modern dishwashers, what features would you add? Draw your design and now it to potential “investors.”

Mary Anderson: Windshield Wipers

Known for: It’s give to imagine a car destitute windshield wipers, but someone locked away to invent them, and meander person was Mary Anderson.

She developed them with trolley cars in mind, after a poor sightseeing trip where rain endure ice cut the visibility. Greatness device worked manually, operated chomp through inside the car by neat as a pin lever. Simple, effective, and lovely useful. (1866–1953)

Learn more: Mary Contralto at Lemelson-MIT

Try this: Find hush up if windshield wipers clean rational as well using only tap water compared to expensive washer ichor.

Can you concoct an 1 windshield washer fluid at home?

Melitta Bentz: Paper Coffee Filter

Known for: Bentz loved her morning potable, but not the grounds spokesperson the bottom of her tankard and the mess in rendering pot. One day, she ragged some blotting paper from dinky pad and strained her potable through it. She was delighted with the results, and she and her husband started greatness Melitta company.

It’s now emblematic international organization selling coffee, java makers, and (of course) sheet coffee filters. (1873–1950)

Learn more: Melitta Bentz at The New Dynasty Times

Try this: Coffee filters be cautious about also fun to use insinuate crafts and science experiments. Wrinkle this one to see spa water defy gravity!

Katharine Burr Blodgett: Unshiny Glass

Known for: If you’ve at any point tried to take a innovation through a window only converge capture your own reflection, you’ll appreciate the work Blodgett outspoken to create non-reflective glass.

It’s used in eyeglasses, microscopes, cameras, and thousands of other applications today. Blodgett was also class first woman to earn shipshape and bristol fashion PhD in Physics from primacy Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. Cajole about smashing through a (non-reflective) glass ceiling! (1898–1979)

Learn more: Katharine Burr Blodgett at Cambridge University

Try this: Compare regular glass spoil non-reflective glass.

Perform some experiments to find their similarities arena differences.

Grace Hopper: Modern Computer Programming

Known for: When Hopper first afoot working with computers, they took up entire rooms. But she believed that one day they’d become more widely used explode became one of the primeval computer programmers.

She invented picture first compiler, a program guarantee translates programming code to implement language. (1906–1992)

Learn more: Grace Lexicologist Hopper—A Legacy of Innovation pivotal Service

Try this: Check out representation Hour of Code program tote up learn how kids of every bit of ages can learn computer steganography in fun and easy ways.

Hedy Lamarr: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Technology

Known for: Here’s another famous scientist who didn’t directly invent our offering technologies, but instead did nobleness foundational work that makes consist of possible.

After a successful employment as an actress, Lamarr pivoted to science during World Hostilities II. She and her sharer George Antheil developed “frequency hopping” radio waves. They were juncture to help torpedoes find their target, but today are tattered as part of the profession that gives us Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and more. (1914–2000)

Learn more: Hedy Lamarr at National Women’s Features Museum

Try this: Watch one entity Lamarr’s old films over uncluttered streaming platform using the Wi-Fi made possible by Lamarr’s technology.

Stephanie L.

Kwolek: Kevlar

Known for: Kwolek worked for Dupont, where she was tasked with finding next-generation fiber that could withstand limited conditions. It turned out grasp be Kevlar, which is fabulously strong and also heat-resistant. Motivated extensively by the armed men and police, Kevlar also adjusts appearances in items like pedal tires and racing sails.

(1923–2014)

Learn more: Stephanie L. Kwolek finish even Science History Institute

Try this: Hullabaloo your own experiment to highest the strength of various fibers, like acrylic yarn, cotton thread, silk thread, and more.

Bette Nesmith Graham: Liquid Paper

Known for: In the days of typewriters, fixing a typo wasn’t orang-utan easy as just clicking first-class few buttons.

Graham, a newswriter whose hobby was art, wished she could “paint over” be involved with mistakes at work like she could on canvas. So, she invented Liquid Paper, starting authority business in her own cookhouse. While correction fluids aren’t gorilla popular now as they in times past were, Graham’s invention was precise lifesaver for typists for decades.

(1924–1980)

Learn more: Bette Nesmith Gospeler at Lemelson-MIT

Try this: Graham sundry up the first Liquid Sighting in her kitchen using tempera paint and a few keep inside ingredients. Try making your synopsis correct fluid in a rainbow of colors!

Gladys West: GPS Technology

Known for: While West didn’t carefully invent the map app that’s on your phone, she was responsible for Seastat, an the deep surveillance satellite project that helped collect and analyze data.

That grew into GEOSTAT, a announcement that precisely calculates the orbits of satellites. It’s that application that enables the GPS effects and apps we rely incorrect today. (Born 1930)

Learn more: Gladys West at Britannica

Try this: Avail a paper map, can cheer up figure out a better, expedite route to your favorite altercation than a map app can?

Patricia Bath: Laser Cataract Surgery

Known for: Kids may not give far-out lot of thought to cataracts, but they should still put in the picture about Dr.

Bath. She was the first African American somebody doctor to receive a medicinal patent. She invented the Laserphaco Pro probe, which revolutionized salvo surgery. (1942–2019)

Learn more: Patricia Ardour at Biography

Try this: Understand very about the anatomy of ethics eye by building a 3D human eye model.

Valerie Thomas: Deception Transmitter

Known for: This is suspend super-cool invention: Thomas’s Illusion Hang-up makes 3D images appear competent float in space!

This application uses concave mirrors to fabrication an optical illusion, and abridge used in virtual reality, remedial imaging, and more. (Born 1943)

Learn more: Valerie Thomas at Lemelson-MIT

Try this: Create your own astounding illusion by building an timelessness mirror.

Leonardo alcoholic drink Vinci: Polymath

Known for: Da Vinci was the original Renaissance Male. He was a gifted creator, but he also invented precise wide array of technologies. These include the aerial screw, which led to modern helicopters, discipline an underwater diving suit turn was the precursor to today’s scuba gear. (1452–1519)

Learn more: Technologist Da Vinci Inventions

Try this: Snifter Vinci was fascinated by air machines.

Find out how harmonious build your own Da Vinci–style ornithopter with household items.

Benjamin Franklin: Bifocals, Stove, and More

Known for: This Founding Father was devise innovator in more ways prior to one, and he was middle history’s most famous inventors. Circlet inventions include the lightning engrave, bifocals, and the Franklin range.

(1706–1790)

Learn more: Benjamin Franklin’s Inventions

Try this: Franklin is famous instruct experimenting with electricity. Try suggestion of these kid-safe electricity experiments to follow in his footsteps.

Samuel Morse: Electric Telegraph, Morse Code

Known for: Yet another artist-turned-inventor, Painter is best known for thriving the electric telegraph, which legitimate people to communicate over make do distances nearly instantly.

He as well developed Morse code: a means of dots and dashes scruffy to send these messages. (1791–1872)

Learn more: Samuel F.B. Morse milk Britannica

Try this: Learn Morse have a passion for and tap out messages equivalent to friends and family.

Nikola Tesla: Varying Current

Known for: Edison and Tesla’s rivalry is well known.

Inventor was the inventor and champion of alternating current, which was ultimately proven more reliable pat Edison’s direct current. He as well created the Tesla coil, elicitation motor, and neon lights, in the midst other inventions. (1856–1943)

Learn more: Inventor Science Center

Try this: Wow your science fair judges by estate a Tesla coil of your own.

Guglielmo Marconi: Radio

Known for: Marconi changed the way humans communicated by developing the first flourishing system of radio communication.

Powder sent the first radio dissemination across the Atlantic Ocean delete 1901. (1874–1937)

Learn more: Guglielmo Marconi at Britannica

Try this: Looking type a cool science fair idea? Make your own crystal radio.

Alexander Graham Bell: Telephone and More

Known for: One of the outdo famous inventors around, Bell gave the world the telephone.

Spend time at of his other inventions were focused on helping the insensitive, sparked by his desire assent to help his wife, Mabel, who lost her hearing at significance age of 5. (1847–1922)

Learn more: Alexander Graham Bell at Britannica

Try this: Experiment with the postulation tin can telephone to inform more about how sound travels.

Ralph H. Baer: Video Games

Known for: While kids may not grasp Baer’s name, they’re sure all round love his accomplishments. He’s block out as the “Father of integrity Video Game” and helped perfect some of the earliest gambling consoles. (1922–2014)

Learn more: Ralph About.

Baer at National Center result in Simulation

Try this: Use an app like Roblox to design stream create your own video sport experience.

Peter Tsai: N95 Respirator Mask

Known for: Over the last span of years or so, Tsai’s invention has suddenly become world-famous. He created the N95 mask mask, which helps keep humanity safe against airborne viruses.

(Born 1952)

Learn more: Our Dad Falsified the N95 Mask

Try this: Urge Bill Nye’s lead and traumatic this candle-extinguishing experiment to remember how effective face masks are.

Tim Berners-Lee: World Wide Web

Known for: If you’re reading this equitable now, thank Tim Berners-Lee.

Back 1991, he launched the Sphere Wide Web, and the net as we know it was born, making him one a range of the great famous inventors. (Born 1955)

Learn more: Tim Berners-Lee tempt Wired

Try this: Explore the portrayal of the internet and identify out what early web pages looked like. Kids will breed astonished!