There are many reasons why a person might invent something—necessity, entertainment, accident. Looking back at the inspirations for some popular inventions can help us appreciate human ingenuity and spark our own creativity. Because we want to have fun doing it, we picked some inventions with interesting origins to look back on.
The Gas Mask
Garrett Morgan made sewing machines and hair care products, ran a newspaper, and in 1914, he added gas masks. There had been previous patents for gas masks, but none were as effective as Morgan’s “safety hood.” This was proven in 1916 when he and a group of volunteers used the gas masks to help retrieve several miners trapped after a methane gas explosion. The gas mask became popular with firefighters and miners, though many opposed the invention at first because of Morgan’s race. To help sell them, he sometimes hired a white actor to present the invention at exhibitions while he stood nearby in the role of “inventor’s assistant.”
The Massage Chair
The history of the massage chair begins with a man and his little girl. Niichi Kawahara (who, go figure, also worked with sewing machines) was concerned for his daughter’s back pain. To help ease her stiff shoulders, he would often give her back massages, but because he was often away at work, he wanted to create a way for her to get massages while he wasn’t there. To fill this need, he created a straight-backed wooden chair with small knobs that could knead a person’s back. This 1950 design was a far cry from the gigantic, plush recliners available nowadays, but his daughter reported that the massages were still pleasant.
The Super Soaker
Toy inventions with interesting origins are plentiful. It seems like these inventions always come into being while people are trying to make something else. The Slinky inventor was trying to keep mechanical ship equipment steady while out to sea, and the Play-Doh inventor was trying to clean wallpaper. The inventor of the Super Soaker was a nuclear engineer named Lonnie Johnson, who was working for the Air Force on a high-heat pump. When a pipe broke on the pump, a huge jet of water burst out. Johnson took the idea and created a powerful water gun for his daughter, and it became a hit with the neighborhood.
The Ice Cream Sundae
This may be the most controversial item on this list. That’s because towns from Illinois to New York claim to be the real first ones to invent the ice cream sundae. But as most stories are variations of a similar tale, we’ll tell you an amalgamation of them. In the late 1800s, many towns had rules about selling soda on Sundays. This hurt the drug stores that made good money selling ice cream sodas. To get around it, every Sunday, they sold ice cream with chocolate syrup on top instead of soda. The treat became so popular that they changed the name to sundaes and sold them every other day of the week.
