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Cool Inventions!

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Ice-cream machine

Turn your kitchen into an ice-cream parlor with ColdSnap, a device that takes room-temperature cans of ice-cream mix and turns them into frozen treats in just over a minute. Choose an aluminum pod with your favorite flavor, pop it into the machine, then recycle the can. Regular grocery store ice cream requires energy to keep it cold while it's transported to the stores and sits in freezers. So ColdSnap estimates they can reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of each pint of ice cream between 25 and 50 percent by leaving the big freeze up to you. Now that's cool.

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Ice-cream machine Turn your kitchen into an ice-cream parlor with ColdSnap, a device that takes room-temperature cans of ice-cream mix and turns them into frozen treats in just over a minute. Choose an aluminum pod with your favorite flavor, pop it into the machine, then recycle the can.

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Inventions

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Every year, TIME magazine puts out its list of best inventions. This year's roundup includes 200 innovations that are changing how we live, work, learn, and play. TIME for Kids highlighted 10 of them here. Which invention do you think...

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Read Aloud Book on Inventors

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Vooks - Stories and Read Alouds for Kids

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Famous Inventions for Kids! | Animated Read Aloud History and Science | Vooks Narrated Storybooks

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Kids Academy

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American Inventors for Kids | Inventors Who Changed the World | Kids Academy

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8 Black Inventors Who Made Daily Life Easier | HISTORY

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Black inventors changed the way we live through their brilliant innovations, from the traffic light to the ironing board.

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Scientists, engineers, and inventors find the solutions to the world's problems. Learn about the work that these Black scientists and inventors have accomplished that make our lives better.

George Washington Carver was an agricultural chemist who gained acclaim for his discovery of alternative farming methods. Carver is best known for his discovery of uses for the peanut. Among the products Carver developed from peanuts were soap, face powder, mayonnaise, shampoo, metal polish, and adhesives-but he did not invent peanut butter.

Known as a "human computer," Dorothy Johnson Vaughan was part of a team that did mathematical calculations to help launch satellites-and later humans-into space. The group used math to help engineers figure out how wind and gravity affects aircrafts.

When she was first hired to work on the space program, Vaughan's department was segregated, or separated, by race. She and the other African-American women in her unit used separate dining areas and bathrooms. Six years after she was hired, Vaughan became the manager of her division and its first Black supervisor.

A decade later, the agency desegregated and she joined the Analysis and Computation division, where she learned computer programming and worked on the program that launched John Glenn and other astronauts into space for the first time. The accomplishments of Vaughan and other female African-American mathematicians was the focus of the book and movie Hidden Figures.

Mark E. Dean is one of the top engineering minds at the International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation. He made his first mark in the industry in the early 1980s, when he and a colleague developed a system that allowed computers to communicate with printers and other devices. Every time you print something, you can thank Dean.

In all, Dean holds 20 patents, and was honored as one of the "50 Most Important African Americans in Technology" by the California African-American Museum in 2000. Dean wants to help increase awareness of the contributions of Black engineers to both the engineering industry and the African-American community.

Before her 30th birthday, Mae C. Jemison had received two undergraduate degrees and a medical degree, served two years as a Peace Corps medical officer in West Africa, and was selected to join the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's astronaut training program. Her eight-day space flight aboard the space shuttle Endeavour in 1992 established Jemison as the United States' first female African-American space traveler.

Percy L. Julian is known as the "soybean chemist," for his extraordinary success in developing innovative drugs and industrial chemicals from natural soya products. The firefighting solution he devised, known as "bean soup," helped save the lives of thousands of sailors and naval airmen during World War II. His discoveries earned him more than 130 chemical patents and many professional awards.

His spirit lives on in dozens of lifesaving discoveries, as well as in the halls of Percy L. Julian Junior High School in Oak Park, Illinois. Julian was quoted as saying, "I have had one goal in my life, that of playing some role in making life a little easier for the persons who come after me."

Sarah Breedlove Walker was an inventor and businesswoman, and became one of the largest employers of African-American women of her time.

Often know as Madame C.J. Walker, she manufactured beauty products for other African-American women using formulas she developed after working for a pharmacist who taught her chemistry. Her popular hair-softening cream and shampoo helped heal dry skin and other itchy annoyances that were common in the early 1900s because indoor plumbing wasn't widely available.

Walker's company hired and trained thousands of Black women to sell her hair-care products in shops, by mail, and door-to-door. This helped many become more independent during a time when job opportunities for women were limited.

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Black Scientists and Inventors | Black History Month

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Learn about these inspiring men and women.

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These Black inventors and scientists created technology we use today

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The first open heart surgery, an improved traffic light and the technology behind 3D movies and images are all accomplishments achieved by Black Americans. Many of these scientists, doctors and inventors broke barriers while facing racial discrimination and are to thank for the technology we rely on today.

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Madam CJ Walker

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BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health, and Technology

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George Washington Carver

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Learn how George Washington Carver became a renowned scientist during the Jim Crow era

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Alice Ball

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BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health, and Technology

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Benjamin Banneker

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Learn More About these 35 Scientists for Black History Month | Science Buddies Blog

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Celebrate Black History Month by learning more with your students about these 35 African American scientists and engineers.

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African American Inventors | Scholastic.com

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Famous African American Inventors: An Interactive Teaching Resource for Grades 4-8.

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8 World-Changing Black Inventors That Every Kid Should Know About

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From street lights and video games to blood plasma and cataract surgery, these brilliant innovators rose to the top of their fields despite segregation and racial discrimination. In honor of Black History Month, here are eight Black inventors who made the world a better place.

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Bricks 4 Kidz | Black History Month | Bricks 4 Kidz - Kids Franchise

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This list of African-American inventors and scientists documents many of the African Americans who have invented a multitude of items or made discoveries in the course of their lives. These have ranged from practical everyday devices to applications and scientific discoveries in diverse fields, including physics, biology, math, and medicine.

African Americans have been the victims of oppression, discrimination and persecution throughout American history, with an impact on African-American innovation according to a 2014 study by economist Lisa D. Cook, which linked violence towards African Americans and lack of legal protections over the period from 1870 to 1940 with lowered innovation. Despite this, many black innovators have been responsible for a large number of major inventions.

Among the earliest was George Washington Carver, whose reputation was based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, which aided in nutrition for farm families. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own food and as a source of other products to improve their way of life. The most popular of his 44 practical bulletins for farmers contained 105 food recipes using peanuts. He also developed and promoted about 100 products made from peanuts that were useful for the house and farm. He received numerous honors for his work, including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP.

A later renowned scientist was Percy Lavon Julian, a research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine, and a pioneer in the industrial large-scale chemical synthesis of the human hormones, steroids, progesterone, and testosterone, from plant sterols such as stigmasterol and sitosterol. His work would lay the foundation for the steroid drug industry's production of cortisone and other corticosteroids.

A contemporary example of a modern-day inventor is Lonnie George Johnson, an engineer. Johnson invented the Super Soaker water gun, which was the top-selling toy in the United States from 1991 to 1992. In 1980 Johnson formed his own law firm and licensed the Super Soaker water gun to Larami Corporation. Two years later, the Super Soaker generated over $200 million in retail sales and became the best selling toy in North America. Larami Corporation was eventually purchased by Hasbro, the second largest toy manufacturer in the world. Over the years, Super Soaker sales have totaled close to one billion dollars. Johnson reinvested a majority of his earnings from the Super Soaker into research and development for his energy technology companies - "It's who I am, it's what I do." As of 2019, Johnson holds over 120 patents, with more pending, and is the author of several publications on spacecraft power systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_African-American_inventors_and_scientists&action=edit&section=1

Name

Years

Occupation(s)

Inventions / accomplishments

References

Ball, Alice Augusta

1892-1916

Developed a technique to make chaulmoogra oil injectable and absorbable, for the first effective treatment of Hansen's disease (leprosy)

Banneker, Benjamin
1731-1806

Almanac author; surveyor; farmer

Constructed wooden clock; astronomer; assisted in the survey of the original boundaries of the District of Columbia; authored a series of almanacs and ephemerides; naturalist: recorded observations on emergences of periodical cicadas and on the behavior of honey bees.

Beard, Andrew
1849-1921

Farmer, carpenter, blacksmith, railroad worker, businessman, inventor

Janney coupler improvements; invented the car device #594,059 dated November 23, 1897; rotary engine patent #478,271 dated July 5, 1892

Blackwell, David
1919-2010

Mathematician, statistician

First proposed the Blackwell channel model used in coding theory and information theory; one of the eponyms of the Rao-Blackwell theorem, which is a process that significantly improves crude statistical estimators

Brady, St. Elmo
1884-1966

Published three scholarly abstracts in Science; collaborated on a paper published in the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry

Brown, Oscar E.

18xx- ?

Inventor

Received a patent for an improved horseshoe

Cardozo, William Warrick
1905-1962
Pediatrician
Sickle cell anemia studies; in October 1937 he published "Immunologic Studies in Sickle Cell Anemia" in the Archives of Internal Medicine; many of the findings are still valid today

Dabiri, John

1980-
Biophysicist
Expert on jellyfish hydrodynamics and designer of a vertical-axis wind farm adapted from schooling fish

Jackson, John W. Jr.

1953-2007

Co-inventor of imaging x-ray spectrometer. NASA engineer. United States of America Army Civilian Engineer.

Jackson, Shirley
1946-

Physicist

Distinguished and pioneering scientific career, achieving several "firsts" as a woman and as an African-American

Land, Adrian
Microbiologist
Researcher on Streptococcus pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus

Latimer, Lewis
1848-1928

Inventor, draftsman, expert witness

Worked as a draftsman for both Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison; invented the more durable filament, which made the incandescent light bulb last long enough to be useful; became a member of Edison's Pioneers and served as an expert witness in many light bulb litigation lawsuits; said to have invented the water closet.

Mahoney, Mary
1845-1926

Nurse

First African-American to study and work as a professionally trained nurse in the United States

Martin, Thomas J.

1842-1872

Inventor

Awarded a patent in 1872 for improvements to the fire extinguisher

Poindexter, Hildrus
1901-1987

Bacteriologist, epidemiologist

Work on the epidemiology of tropical diseases, including malaria

Ross, Archia

Turn of 20th century

Inventor

A runner for stoops (1896), bag closure device (1898), a wrinkle-preventing trouser stretcher (1899), a garment-hanger (1903), and a holder for brooms and like articles.

Temple, Lewis
1800-1854

Inventor, blacksmith, abolitionist

Inventor of the toggling whaling harpoon head

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List of African-American inventors and scientists Facts for Kids

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Learn List of African-American inventors and scientists facts for kids

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Black Inventors

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View the Black Inventors collection on Epic plus over 40,000 of the best books & videos for kids.