Our world has never been more exciting. Young inventors are creating and changing our future with innovative ideas.
The youth of our time is much different. Setting a higher standard for us as humans. With their knowledge of technology, we see more and more opportunities that we’d never dreamed of before. Despite their young age, these inventors have the talent to create the best tools, gadgets, and toys, which open our eyes to even more possibilities.
Young inventors and our future
Our youth today, don’t even have to leave home to be amazing. They are building businesses worth millions in the comfort of their own private space. The most outstanding part of all this is that most of the youth of our day, who end up being inventors, come from humble beginnings.
Springing from these beginnings, we see impressive growth into entrepreneurs in their own right. We may wonder what we’ve created in our children today, and we should be proud.
Not only do our youth become successful, but they also become world renown for their creations and innovation.
Here are a few which you may have heard of:
Mark Zuckerberg
The first of our young inventors that springs to mind, and perhaps the most well-known, is Mark Zuckerberg. Just before his 20thbirthday, Zuckerberg launched Facebook back in 2004 with his fellow students at Harvard University.
Facebook hit the 1 million user mark by December of 2004. By September 2017, Facebook had2.07 billion monthly active users worldwide. Zuckerberg arguably transformed the way we interact with the world, providing a microscope into each individual life.
The site has also evolved to become an advertising powerhousewith a reported $39.9 billion in ad revenue in 2017. Zuckerberg himself is now worth $58.7 billion, according to Forbes.
Matt Mullenweg
Zuckerberg was only one of many young inventors to make his name out of theinternet. Mullenweg created the world’s first user-managed system in 2003 which we know asWordPress. Aged 19, Mullenweg’s content management system opened up the floor tobillions of people looking for a window to the outside world.
Whilst other websites have made attempts at a similar format, WordPress remains unique and everyone from the Rolling Stones to the Republican Party uses it. The company values at over $1 billion.
Robert Heft
It all started with an assignment in history. A schoolboy, in 1958 Ohio, started a task that would lead to something bigger than he originally thought. He tackled redesigning the American flag. From scraps of material in the basement of his grandparent’s home, Robert Heft, made the flag. His teacher awarded him a B minus.
Heft gave his design to the White House and then-President Eisenhower was extremely impressed. Heft stood back and watched his flag raised for the first time in Washington on 4 July 1960. This flag, the same one we salute today, made Heft a person of great remembrance. He was a young inventor with huge ideals that worked.
Mary Shelley
Aged at just 18, Mary Shelley was the creator of Frankenstein’s monster. But, more than likely, this was not her only creation. Some have attributed Shelley to be one of theyoung inventors of science fictionas we know it today.
She took Gothic horror and modern technology to create a story that was inspired by her travels around Europe. Remembering Shelley’s backdrop of romantic poetry in a man’s world, Mary was afemale pioneerof literature and it is one of many reasons why her name still survives to this day.
Blaise Pascal
A mechanical prototype was Pascal’s earliest works. After all, he was a mathematician and physicist with a well-known reputation for inventions. Whilst still a teenager in 1642, Pascal created the Pascaline, which could add and subtract inputs using a wheel-based system. The simplecalculator is how we know this invention in modern times.
Louis Braille
Braille was one of the youngest inventors. The truth is, Braile was blinded at the age of 3 by an accident, which is the basis of why his invention came to life. He went on to be a musicianafter developing an embossed dot reading format from a military messaging system when he was just 15.
This amazing man developed an invention use across the world today. It’s known as Braille, a format of dots used to guide the blind, aptly named after its genius creator.
- Siegel and Shuster
Perhaps they themselves are the young inventors of comic book characters as we know them today. But, in 1933, teenagers Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster came up with the illustrated short story “The Reign of the Superman.”
The first Superman wasn’t a good guy. I know, I hate to burst your bubble. Instead, he was a telepathic villain with a bald head. Yes, he was much different than the hero we know in modern comics and movies. This is because science fiction fans, Siegel and Shuster, had originally written the sketch for their fan-zine “Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization.”
The first appearance of this character was in “Action Comics” in 1930. His renowned acts: traveling to Kosovo to teach children and supporting the propaganda of WWII.
Chester Greenwood
No one likes cold or numb ears from playing outside. This is the main reason for Greenwood’s invention. When he was 15, he loved to ice skate, but his ears would grow incredibly cold. So, he asked his grandmother to help him fashion fur and wire into the first rudimentary “ear muffs” or “ear warmers”.
By his mid-20s, Greenwood had produced over 50,000 pairs of these remarkable accessories. He patented At the time of his death, there were more than 400,000 pairs of earmuffs in manufacture. In Farmington, Main, in 1977, residents started to observe Chester Greenwood Day in remembrance of this young inventor.
Final thoughts
Next time you log in to Facebook or see the American flag, you might just find yourself wondering what these young inventors will come up with next!
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