10 Great Inventions by Youngest Inventors of All Times

Inventing something is not as easy as we think, it took several years to invent something or sometime it took whole life to invent anything. There are many people who had great inventions, and here we are discussing the list of 10 Youngest Inventors of All Times who came up with great inventions.

Great Inventions by Youngest Inventors of All Times

Find out the list of Top 10 Youngest Inventors of All Times along with the details of their inventions.

1. Chester Greenwood

(December 4, 1858 – July 5, 1937)

INVENTION: Earmuffs

AGE: 15

Greenwood was one of the youngest inventors of all time, he was born in 1858 in Farmington, Maine. As a 15 year old he was very fond of ice skating. But the icy weather was hard on his exposed ears. He tried to keep them warm by covering them with his gloved hands but that made his hands busy to ice skate.

He even tried wrapping it up with his wool scarf but that got too bulky and the material was itchy to his sensitive skin. So finally he came up with the idea and become one of the youngest inventors ever. He used two pieces of wire and shaped them into circles to cover his ears and connected these two pieces with a longer piece of wire to form a head band. His grandmother sewed velvet to the inside of the circled wires and fur to the outside to make them cold resistant for the ears.

So this way Greenwood’s hands were free to ice skate with his ears all cosy and warm. His product was an instant hit with all his friends who begged him to make earmuffs for them too. Greenwood got a patent for his product in 1877 when he was just 18 years old. He also established Greenwood’s ear protector’s factory in Farmington. By 1883, his factory produced 30000 earmuffs per year, which climbed up to 400,000 by his death in 1937. The guy made a fortune by providing ear muffs to U.S soldiers in WWI. Farmington, Maine is known as the Earmuff capital of the world his idea remains to be one of the great inventions in the history of human kind.

2. Louis Braille

(4 January 1809 – 6 January 1852)

INVENTION: Braille code

AGE: 16

Louis Braille is considered one of the blind people with great inventions. He belonged to a small town named Coupvray, near Paris.

He became blind accidentally when he just 3 years old while playing in his dad’s shop. He injured his eye with a sharp tool and the infection eventually spread to both his eyes, making him blind. At that time, books for the blind had raised letters on them which was painfully hard to read. In 1821, a former soldier visited his school and presented his invention called “night writing”.

This was a 12 raised dot code, which let the soldiers share top secret information on the battlefield without even having to say a word. Louis Braille was fascinated with this code. He started working on it and by the time he was 15 he developed a 6 raised dot writing mechanism and published his first ever Braille book in 1829. His creation became famous as the “Braille system” which is an independent writing system for the blind.

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3. Charles Babbage

(26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871)

INVENTION: First Mechanical Computer

AGE: 19

Charles Babbage was one of the youngest inventors with great inventions; he was born in London, England. He had 3 siblings. His father was a banker. Babbage was very fond of mathematics and algebra. He initiated the concept of programmable computer.

He is known as “the father of computer”. Babbage has the credit of inventing the first ever mechanical computer which led to more complex designs later on. Babbage was the co-founder of the analytical society for promoting continental mathematics and reforming the mathematics of Newton.

Due to his serious economical and complicated mechanical issues, he couldn’t build the computer he had in mind. But better late than never, in 2002, about 153 years later, the mechanical computer was finally finished and it was a huge machine. He was one of the youngest inventors as well as great mathematician.

4. Galileo Galilei

(15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642)

INVENTION: Law of Pendulum

AGE: 18

Galileo was one of the youngest people with great inventions; he was born in Pisa, Italy. He was the oldest on his seven siblings. His father was a musician and wool trader. His father wanted him to study medicine. At the age of 17, in 1581, he was sent to study medicine in the University of Pisa. In 1582, while he was at a cathedral, he noticed a lamp swinging over his head.

His curiosity made him found out that how long it took the lamp to swing back and forth. To notice the time of large and small swings, he used his pulse. Galileo discovered that each swing has exactly the same period. He carried out a number of experiments. He sat up a number of different pendulums. Galileo discovered that regardless of the difference of sizes, the pendulums kept time with each other. Thus he formed the law of pendulum which was eventually used to regulate clocks.

5. Philo Farnsworth

(August 19, 1906 – March 11, 1971)

INVENTION: Television

AGE: 21

With one of the great inventions, Philo Farnsworth was born on Indian Creek in Beaver County, Utah. He was the eldest of his five siblings. His parents wanted him to become a concert violinist but he was more interested in experiments related to electricity.

At the age of 16 he drew a drawing for his chemistry teacher, which explained Farnsworth’s belief that electricity could be transformed into pictures if one can control the speed and direction of fast flying electrons. Farnsworth called it as “image dissector”. In 1927, at the age of 27, he was finally able to produce the first television transmission which comprised of 60 horizontal lines. The first image transmitted was a dollar sign. Philo Farnsworth was known as the father of television.

6. Alexander Graham Bell

(March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922)

INVENTION: Telephone

AGE: 29

Alexander Bell one of the great youngest inventors was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He had two brothers, both of whom died of tuberculosis. His father developed a Visible speech system, a set of written symbols, to help the deaf in speaking.

Bell used to be very interested at the possibility of transmitting speech over wires. At the start, Bell’s main interest was in improving telegraph transmission, which could only transmit one message at a time. His harmonic telegraph was based on the idea that several notes could be sent using the same wire if the notes differ in pitch. Between 1873 and 1874, he spent all his time trying to improve the harmonic telegraph. Than eventually he was side tracked by the idea to transmit human voice over wires.

But since he was not a technical person, he found himself an assistant Thomas A. Watson. The two men worked very hard for a year and were successful in sending their first every voice message on March 10, 1876. The famous words were “ Watson – come here – I want to see you”. Bell organized a telephone company in July 9, 1877. When he died in 1922, the whole telephone system was shut down for a minute to give him tribute. Until now, his idea remains to be the number one in the list of great inventions.

7. George Nissen

(February 3, 1914 – April 7, 2010)

INVENTION: Trampoline

AGE: 16

Nissen was one of the youngest inventors and his invention remains to be one of the great inventions of all time.  He was born in Blairstown, Iowa. He used to be a gymnast in his high school. He got the idea of it while watching a circus in which he saw the trapeze artists drop down to net stretched below after finishing off their routines.

He wondered if there could be a thing that would keep them bouncing and flipping. At the age of 16, he strapped together a metal frame and a canvas sheet. But it did not turn out to be as springy as he had anticipated. He called it a bouncing rig. Several years later, he along with his gymnast teacher made a more flexible contraption with a nylon sheet.

They still called it a bouncing rig. After going to the college, he continued his gymnastics career and won three NCAA championships for his university of Iowa. In 1937, Nissen along with his two friends started performing gymnasts in Midwest and Texas and than in Mexico. He learnt the Spanish word for diving board over there which was “el trampolin”. He added an “e” to the word and the registered his Trampoline, which is a joy inducing device for many around the globe.

8. Blaise Pascal

(June 1623 – 19 August 1662)

INVENTION: Calculator

AGE: 19

Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand, France. His father was a talented mathematician and a tax collector. He being a child prodigy was educated by his father.

Pascal was naturally very drawn towards mathematics. In 1642, while he was still a teenager, he started working on calculating machines. After three years of hard work, he was finally able to invent the mechanical calculator. He initially created a wooden box that had 16 separate dials.

Addition and subtraction was done by the turning of each dial. Pascal did what other has been trying to do and failed. Leonardo di vinci also tried to make a machine that was similar to the one made by Pascal. Who can deny that this invention is among the great inventions that have so far remained relevant?

9. George Westinghouse

(October 6, 1846 – March 12, 1914)

INVENTION: Rotary Steam Engine

AGE: 19

George Westinghouse was born in Central Bridge, New York. He had nine siblings. His father was an agricultural machine shop owner. He initially worked in his father’s shop. In 1876, he developed a rotary steam engine when he just 19 years old. He received his first patent on October 31, 1865.

In April of 1869, he received another patent for his invention “the air brake system” where compressed air was used instead of manually-operated brakes. This made the train travel more safely with higher speeds. In fact, this idea is among the great inventions that even Modern trains use brakes based on this design with variations.

10. Becky Schroeder

INVENTION: Glo-Sheet

AGE: 10

Coming up with one of great inventions, Becky Schroeder invented the Glo-sheet in 1974 and become one of the youngest inventors, she invented while doing her math homework in her mother’s car. As it was getting dark, she couldn’t see her paper.

She didn’t have flash light and didn’t even want to turn on the car’s inside light as the whole car would lit up. She thought it would be good if she could light up her paper somehow. She took out her glow in the dark Frisbee and with some investigations she found out that it is phosphorus that makes objects glow in the dark.

She experimented with phosphorescence paint, spreading it over the papers. She experimented by spreading the paint over a clipboard and clipping a paper over it. With further experiments and modifications, she finally developed her invention and named it “the glow sheet”. She is the youngest female ever to receive a U.S patent.

Invention is not something that comes with great talent and dedication. But what has remained to baffle people from all generations is the fact that when it is generally believed that one can invent something after years of experience and education, other while at their tender age and relatively low education could still come up great inventions that have ever remained amazing.