Inventions: the product, mostly, of thirty-somethings
Over 40, and still not delivered your “great idea”? You may be too late. A sample of the 100 greatest inventions of the 20th century, as compiled by a patent expert at the British Library, suggests that it is in their thirties that men (and it is invariably men) are struck by inspiration. Curiously, happenstance can be just as much the mother of invention as necessity.
Consider the American engineer Percy Spencer, who, trying to help the British develop radar, walked past a magnetron one day with a chocolate bar in his pocket, found it had melted, and conceived of the microwave. Art Fry, an adhesives expert in Minnesota - and keen chorister - was frustrated that the scraps of paper he used as bookmarks in his hymnal would always fall out. One day, a colleague made some weak glue by mistake, and thus was born the Post-it Note.
There is, evidently, an under-representation of women - though it’s not for want of involvement in the process. In 1906, Bess Cary, the soon-to-be fiancée of a little-known American inventor, wanted an ice cream while picknicking on an island in Lake Okauchee. Her beloved was dispatched two miles to fetch one in a rowing boat - and he promptly had the idea for an outboard motor.
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