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Meet inventor Stanley
Mason, who
sold his first invention at the age of 7
By Paul Niemann
(This is the third in a three-part series on the "Fathers of
Invention")
1.
"Meet Thomas Edison, the greatest inventor of all time, with 1,093
U.S. patents"
2.
"Meet Jerome
Lemelson -- the most prolific inventor of the modern era"
[JULY 3,
2003]
Stanley Mason was born in
1921 in Trenton, N.J. When he was just 7 years old he turned out his
first successful invention -- a clothespin fishing lure that he sold
to his friends. Now 82 years young and living in Connecticut,
Stanley Mason has created more than 100 inventions in his lifetime
and received 60 U.S. patents over the last 50 years.
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Stanley Mason had something in common
with Thomas Edison and Jerome Lemelson, the inventors we profiled
over the last two weeks in this column: They each realized early in
their inventing careers that there was no use inventing anything
that could not be sold at a profit. This is important when you
consider that 98 percent of all patents fail to produce a profit.
Yet Stanley is different from Edison in
that he considers himself to be "an inventor of ordinary, everyday
products." Like Edison but unlike Lemelson, he started out working
alone and later established his own team of inventors.
Like many great inventors, Stanley
improves existing products and creates entirely new ones. Major
products that fit into his "new and improved" category include
these:
His most successful "brand-new"
products include these:
This last one, the form-fitted
disposable diaper with no pins, is the product for which Mason is
most well-known. He didn't invent the first disposable diaper,
though. That was accomplished by Marion Donovan in 1946. She sold
her diaper rights to the founder of Pampers nine years later for $1
million.
In case you're wondering, it was NOT
Stanley Mason who invented the Mason jar. That honor goes to John
Mason of New York City, who patented it in 1858. Like many new
products, the Mason jar is named after its inventor. In case you're
still wondering about the Mason jar, both the flat metal disk and
the lid of the Mason jar were invented by two separate inventors in
later years, neither of whom was named Mason.
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second column in this article] |
Now, back to our story.
Mason reportedly starts every morning
with an invention and believes in patenting each new idea before
telling anybody about it. Some inventors, though, will tell you that
it's better to do some market research before patenting your product
to determine if there's a market for it.
The company that Stanley started, Simco,
located adjacent to his Connecticut farmhouse, has been inventing
new products for Fortune 500 companies since its inception in 1973,
specializing in food packaging, cosmetics and medical devices.
Stanley's wife, Charlotte, is an
inventor in her own right. She has received patents and has taught
African women in the Congo how to become entrepreneurial. Stanley
and Charlotte have traveled and worked in 80 countries around the
world.
Stanley Mason currently teaches
entrepreneurship in an MBA program at Sacred Heart University in
Fairfield, Conn. He also lectures at high schools on
entrepreneurship and has written two books on inventing. "Going
Solo" and "Inventing Small Products for Big Profits, Quickly" are
available nationwide at major bookstores.
Next week:
Take our semiannual Invention Mysteries
quiz.
[Paul
Niemann]
Paul Niemann is a contributing author
to Inventors' Digest magazine and he also runs
MarketLaunchers.com,
helping people in the marketing of their new product ideas. He can
be reached at niemann7@aol.com.
- - -
Last week's
column in LDN:
"Meet Jerome
Lemelson -- the most prolific inventor of the modern era"
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