You don't have to be a grown-up to have a really great idea!
The 14 Coolest Things Invented by Kids
Trampolines
If you love to bounce, you can thank George Nissen. At age 16, he invented the trampoline after watching trapeze artists drop into the safety nets beneath them. According to The Independent, “This led Nissen to come up with a piece of equipment he called a bouncing rig. Using his parents’ garage as a workshop, he simply strapped a canvas sheet to a rectangular steel frame.” This kid invention went through many iterations, some with the help of Nissen’s gymnastics coach, before it became what we know as the trampoline—which Nissen, a diver, named after the Spanish name for a diving board, el trampolÃn.
Makin Bacon
A lack of paper towels helped inspire Abbey Fleck to create a new way to make crispy bacon fast. One morning in 1993, when her family didn’t have paper towels to soak up the excess grease from microwave-cooked bacon, the then-8-year-old decided to figure out a better way to cook the beloved breakfast meat. After a little trial and error, she came up with the Makin Bacon, a microwave-safe stand that allows you to drape bacon over it as you cook. The bacon can then crisp up while the fat pools in a bowl underneath. Her brilliant idea helped make her a millionaire as a teenager.
Earmuffs
In 1877, 15-year-old Farmington, Maine, resident Chester Greenwood was tired of having cold ears when he went ice skating. So he built a wire frame and had his grandmother help sew pieces of beaver skin to it to keep his ears warm. The earmuffs were a hit—especially with soldiers during World War I. Now, Farmington celebrates Chester Greenwood Day and hosts an annual parade in honor of its state’s beloved inventor.
Braille
Before 1824, when 15-year-old Louis Braille invented the raised series of dots that make up the Braille alphabet, visually impaired people read by feeling their way over raised letters—a slow and laborious process. After he was blinded by an eye injury at age 3, Braille translated a type of communication used by the French military into an alphabet that could be more easily read by the blind. According to Britannica, in 1854 the system was officially adopted by the National Institute for Blind Children in Paris, Braille’s alma mater, and a universal Braille code for the English-speaking world was adopted in 1932.
Christmas tree lights
Christmas trees used to be a big fire hazard back in the day, when lit candles adorned the trees. But in 1917, 15-year-old Albert Sadacca, whose family owned a novelty lighting company, helped put an end to that by inventing less expensive strings of light bulbs to add pizazz to the holiday—without the risk of burning the house down.
Toy trucks
One of the youngest kid inventors was Robert Patch, who was granted the patent for the toy truck when he was just 6 years old, back in 1963. “I took some shoe boxes and some bottle caps and nails, and was making a truck,” Patch told LAist, adding that his invention was meant to be taken apart and refashioned into different types of trucks, like a very early Transformer. His father, a patent attorney, helped him get the patent, but “at the time I had to sign the patent application, I couldn’t write my name,” he said. “So I signed it with an X.” Patch never profited off his invention, though, as his father didn’t think it was worth marketing. If only he knew!
Superman
The Man of Steel was first imagined by a pair of 17-year-olds, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, in 1933. Some comic book historians believe the origin of the idea came from the death of Siegel’s father, who was killed in an armed robbery at his store. After failing to make Superman a weekly newspaper comic strip, they sold their rights to the character to Detective Comics, later DC, for $130 in 1935. Three years later, in 1938, the character made his first appearance in comics. That $130 check sold for a whopping $160,000 at auction in 2012. Though they later wrote off and on for DC Comics, Siegel and Shuster never stopped trying to re-obtain their copyright of the character.
Popsicles
Like many amazing foods, Popsicles were created by mistake. Eleven-year-old Frank Epperson accidentally left a cup filled with soda powder, water and a stirring stick on his porch overnight—where it froze. And just like that, the delicious dessert was born! Nearly 20 years after his accidental discovery in 1905, he started selling his sweet treats.
Now, Americans eat more than 2 billion Popsicles every year. In fact, Popsicles are one of the items whose brand name has become synonymous with the thing itself—we tend to call all frozen fruit pops Popsicles, even though “Popsicle” is a specific brand. Not bad for an 11-year-old!
The Hot Seat
Alissa Chavez was upset about the stories of children who died when they were accidentally left in hot cars—and she wanted to do something to help prevent it. In 2014, at age 14, she came up with the idea of The Hot Seat, a small cushion with a sensor that’s placed in the car seat and connects to the parent’s smartphone. If the cushion senses that the smartphone has moved more than 20 feet from the car with the baby still in the seat, it sounds an alarm. Chavez’s prototype was her submission for her school’s science fair.
Early television
One of the pioneers who helped bring us this life-changing technology was just 15 years old when he first dreamed it up. “In the summer of 1921, while plowing a field with a horse-drawn disc harrow, [Philo T. Farnsworth] eyed the furrowed rows” and said, “I can scan it like you read a book, one line to the other,” his wife, Elma “Pem” Farnsworth, told the Television Academy. Farnsworth created diagrams for an electronic television system that year, and it transmitted its first image six years later.
Water skis
At 18, Ralph Samuelson wanted to combine his passion for snow skiing with his love of the water and aquaplaning. In 1922, he took “two 8-foot-long, 9-inch-wide pine boards,” according to Smithsonian Magazine, and “using his mother’s wash boiler, he softened one end of each board, then clamped the tips with vises so they would curve upwards. He affixed leather straps to hold his feet in place and acquired 100 feet of window sash cord to use as a tow rope.” Later, a blacksmith made “a small iron ring to serve as the rope’s handle,” and water skis were born!
Of course, it took several years before Samuelson (and later, others) perfected both the invention and how to use it, but his hometown of Lake City, Minnesota, remembers Samuelson’s contributions with a life-size bronze statue at Ohuta Park and Beach near Lake Pepin, where he used to hit the water.
Magnetic locker wallpaper
If you ever decorated your high school locker, you can thank inventor Sarah Buckel for dreaming up this easy way to make your school storage look snazzy. As a 14-year-old in 2006, Buckel was tired of having to scrape her locker door clean of decorations at the end of every school year, so she came up with the idea of easy-to-swap magnetic locker wallpaper instead. It didn’t hurt that her dad was the chief operating officer of MagnaCard, a company that manufactured magnets.
Snowmobiles
Joseph-Armand Bombardier, 15 at the time, strapped a car engine to four ski runners and a propeller to create the very first of these fun wintertime vehicles way back in 1922. Though it almost went for a mile, “his father ordered the machine dismantled because its open propeller could cause considerable injury,” says the Canadian Encyclopedia. After finishing school, Bombardier became an apprentice at a garage, where he learned engineering, and two years later, his father built him his own workshop. All the while, he tinkered with the idea of a snowmobile, ultimately patenting it in 1937. “The first buyers (about 100 in 1939) were country doctors, ambulance drivers and priests living in remote areas,” but his clientele grew over time, leading him to create the popular Ski-Doo in 1969.
Swim fins
Noted inventor and Founding Father Benjamin Franklin was just 11 years old when he fashioned fins to make swimming easier. However, unlike today’s rubbery fins on your feet, his 1717 kid invention was hard paddles that were attached to your hands. “In swimming, I pushed the edges of these forward, and I struck the water with their flat surfaces as I drew them back. I remember I swam faster by means of these pallets, but they fatigued my wrists,” he wrote to his French translator in 1773, according to USHistory.org. “I also fitted to the soles of my feet a kind of sandals, but I was not satisfied with them,” he added. You can impress your friends with this bit of trivia next time you go snorkeling!
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Sources:
- USHistory.org: “The Electric Ben Franklin: Swim Fins”
- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Magnetic wallpaper attracts teens”
- Biography: “Philo T. Farnsworth”
- Television Academy: “Philo T. Farnsworth: Hall of Fame Tribute”
- Country Living: “The History of Popsicles”
- Popsicle: “Our Story”
- Smithsonian Magazine: “Cleveland, the True Birthplace of Superman”
- Smithsonian Magazine: “The Man Who Invented Water Skiing”
- LAist’s Take Two: “50 years later, Robert Patch remembers being youngest person with a US patent”
- Britannica: “Braille”
- Independent: “George Nissen: Inventor of the trampoline”
- Makin Bacon: “Our Story”
- CBS Sunday Morning: “Almanac: Ear muffs”
- Downtown Farmington: “Chester Greenwood Day”
- Library of Congress: “Who invented electric Christmas lights?”
- Reuters: “Check that bought Superman rights for $130 sells for $160,000”
- TEDxTalks: “One child too many | Alissa Chavez | TEDxYouth@ABQ”
- The Canadian Encyclopedia: “Joseph-Armand Bombardier”
- Ski-Doo: “Explore the 2026 Ski-Doo snowmobile lineup”
