17th January: Kid Inventors Day

January 17 is Kid Inventors’ Day (KID), a day to encourage all the children in your life to think outside the box and invent something. Kid Inventors’ day was created several years ago by people who wanted to celebrate the achievements of the youngest inventors as well as encourage more children to be creative.

Just because children possess less knowledge of how the world works, that doesn’t mean they can’t have ideas for practical and useful inventions. In fact, many people believe that children are capable of being particularly creative for the simple reason that they don’t yet know how difficult many things are, and are therefore able to imagine much more than adults. In fact, there are plenty of things we enjoy on an everyday basis that were invented by children or teenagers. And if their creativity doesn’t deserve recognition, what does? Kid Inventors’ Day is the day we celebrate all the kids who dared to defy the world and come up with better solutions than all of the adults before them.

The date was chosen to celebrate this day, January 17th, was no accident—it is the anniversary of renowned polymath, politician and child inventor Benjamin Franklin’s birthday. Due to his countless other achievements, many people don’t know that when Franklin was just 12 years old, he invented the world’s first swim flippers, making him a great role model for every child who dreams of making something nobody has ever seen before. Over the centuries, other children have invented many other things we continue to use today, such as popsicles (a very tasty accident!), the trampoline and earmuffs. Perhaps one of the most impressive things invented by a child is the language of the blind now used the world over, Braille. Louis Braille, its inventor, lost his vision in a tragic accident at age 3 and spent his early teen years developing his new language while studying at The National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris.

Almost 200 years later, American teen Ryan Patterson also improved the lives of the disabled when he invented a glove with special sensors that translates the hand motions of American Sign Language into written words on a digital display.