Sarah Little Turnbull was a force in the world of material science Industrial design. It is safe to say that most people used something that started life on the painting plate, but a few know its name. I worked with engineering fabrics as a 3M consultant.
As part of these efforts, the cup of molded brake was designed to inspire the N95 mask shape. Later 3M opposed its role in going out with the N95 mask. As a consultant at CorningWare, I also worked to develop clear Cooktop, cooking products in early microwave, storage systems and many other products.
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Episode text
Katie Havener: I am Katie Havener, and this is the missing woman of science: from our inbox, a series of miniature rings that display women in the sciences that came to you, our listeners.
In today’s episode, we hear from the designer, Paula Reese, about her teacher: Sarah Little Turnbull. You may not know Sarah’s name, but I bet you have heard about one of her inventions. In addition to … in the process of reporting this episode, we discovered that Sarah’s story illuminates a problem we face a lot when looking at the history of science …
The producer, Johanna Maayer brings us her story.
Johanna Mayer: I want to tell you about this filming I came recently.
It seems that it was taken at some point in the fifties or sixties. Four businessmen stand in a circle. Two men smoke long and third cigarettes in a Pinstripe suit. They all look down.
They look at a woman. With a fatal beehive hairstyle, a giant flower installed on its jacket, and a large smile.
Paula Reese: & Hairsp; Sarah Little Turnboul, she was young.
Johanna Mayer: Sarah was around 4’11.
I am Johanna Mayer, and this is from our inbox, a series of Lost Women of Science. Today, we are talking about Sarah Little Turnbull, and the great heritage she left behind-from pots to the sneakers to a product that many of us became familiar with when he struck the Covid-19: N95 mask.
Paula Reese wrote about Sarah – Paula is the head of a multidisciplinary design company, and Sarah was her teacher.
Paula Reese: I knew Sarah for 30 years. I can assure you that something in your life today is either designed or inspired by Sarah Little.
Johanna Mayer: Sarah grew up in Brooklyn in the twenties of the twentieth century, in a Russian immigrant family. She was poor, but Sarah managed to find beauty and elegant design in unexpected places, such as vegetables arranged brilliantly in the grocer. When she was a teenager, she won a scholarship for Parsons Design School, where she studied ads design. After graduation, I worked as a decorative editor for Beautiful houseA famous internal decorating magazine. In the magazine, she promoted ideas that would make us more thinking about the way we use the space and consume materials. For example, I wrote articles on the benefits of living with a room colleague, organizing small spaces.
Paula Reese: She was practicing what she preached as she lived a very simple life with fewer things, but with more quality to last longer.
Johanna Mayer: Sarah lived in an apartment with an area of 400 square feet. She had a very few clothes but had a dedicated to her making to suit her completely.
Paula Reese: It is truly misery of the outdated statute and wasting materials for resources. Its belief that we should work as a pronoun for the companies that employ us. We need to do the right things.
Johanna Mayer: This was Sarah’s directive philosophy – doing the right thing. In 1958, she decided to bring her ideas to companies, and began her design advisory work. With that functional jump, Sarah Little Turnbul became a key player in the world of applied science and industrial design.
Paula Reese: Sarah was a divorced power and was not ashamed at all to ask for what she needed.
Johanna Mayer: Basically, she was a kind of woman she could carry in a business circle. The major companies started noting. Among them – 3M, a giant company that manufactured everything from the mask tape to sanding paper to the artificial rubber used in space shoes. In 1958, they rented Sarah. She worked in the wrapping and fabrics section, but it was not present to wrap gifts. There was a new material that was working with it: unplanned technology.
Paula Reese: Her genius was in material science.
Johanna Mayer: Although Sarah did not obtain a certificate in material science, she worked with all kinds of materials, especially those that were made of fiber woven together, which left these small small gaps between the threads. When she saw this new high -tech fabric, which was made of polymers that were Dissolve Together – thus eliminating these small gaps – I knew that they are full of capabilities.
Paula Reese: She had a clear understanding of science behind the things she was imagining and the things she wanted to design. I always started asking “Why?”
Johanna Mayer: In fact, when the senior administration asked Sarah to make a presentation, this is what he names: “Why?” In the presentation, Sarah dug in that unwanted technology and all its many potential uses. I have reached 100 original product ideas, including those whose effects will end all over the world: a chest brake cup. Instead of a rigid and very comfortable shape, the breast damaged cup is comfortably proportional – with fewer seam lines in it!
But according to Paula, the formalized chest brake cup paves the way for the other invention-one of the effects much further …
Paula Reese: She was Sarah before understanding what would come. It was more influential and accomplished than people know.
Johanna Mayer: While working with 3M, Sarah also took care of three members of the sick family. Both her parents and sister were dying, all at the same time, which means that Sarah spent a lot From time in hospitals. The masks worn by doctors – a flat piece of fabric, began to notice a tie in the back.
Perhaps it was bored the long hours you spend in hospital rooms; Perhaps it was an irreparable race mind; Perhaps it was a project designed to distract her attention from her sadness – we can definitely say. But Sarah has an idea. What if it was able to take a formative chest that I designed … and turns it into a better medical mask?
Johanna Mayer: In 1972, 3M produced a mask … and it appeared to be a chest cup that can be encouraged! 3M will modify the mask over the next few years, but it seems that Sarah’s vision-which was born from a realistic life problem-has been affected.
When the epidemic of Covid struck in 2020, news methods published an endless stories about Sarah’s contribution to the mask, while highlighting this amazing woman and her work. It seems that after decades, Sarah was finally abandoned her invention to save life.
But here is the place where the story becomes complicated: 3M opposes that Sarah invented the mask.
We reached 3m to ask us about this story. According to an official spokesman, the company was working on designing a mask in the form of a cup made of non-woven materials early in 1957-a year before Sarah began with them. In 1959, two scientists at 3M presented a patent application of reunion, quoted, “The face masks that are easy to penetrate by surgeons, doctors, dentists, nurses and industrial workers who are exposed to dusty or contaminated atmosphere.”
In 2022, a company spokesman also He said Toronto star There are laptops showing that the idea was already turbulent before Sarah’s arrival.
but Paula She says that Sarah is missing credit when entitling credit, and that 3M blocks her role in developing the mask.
The story of Sarah and N-95 mask shows a case that we face a lot in the history of science.
There is often a romantic image of a single genius with a penetration, suddenly evoking a new invention of delicate air. This is known as “the theory of the Great Man” – the idea that the minds and unusual leaders are not achieved, and that scientific progress is slow and fixed, interspersed with giant leaps forward by exceptional men. In fact, these types of “aha!” Rare moments.
Often, the invention process is less dramatic, almost boring. complicated. Decisively, we usually have complete difference It is people to thank for breakthroughs. But the “great man’s theory” starts from the tongue much easier than, for example, “the theory of effort and cooperation.”
So, regardless of the truth behind the invention of the N95 mask, a pleasant story shows us that … the science is chaotic at times! Conflicts on ideas, credit … everything is equal to the course.
But regardless of the extent to which Sarah Little Turnboul contributed to N95, the mask was just a footnote in her long career.
Paula Reese: Her work was very diverse. For example, she was interested in developing new foodstuffs such as soy alternatives. It was useful in the evolution of clear glass cooktop. She was in the team that worked on the early microwave. She loved the storage system. It is very organized. Thus I developed a lot of products about storage.
Johanna Mayer: After the profession of more than 70 years, Sarah died in 2015, at the age of 97. Paula Reese was part of a group of friends who took care of Sarah in old age.
Think again about that image that I previously described – that has Sarah in the midst of men’s group – I wonder about the number of other women like her there.
Paula Reese: I came to believe that she was very smart so that she was not fully recognized by crazy men in the middle of the century. In conducting this research, I contacted other women and found that the same thing was true in their guide. And yes, it is frustrated.
Sarah’s legacy and mission was to help the audience understand the design and realize that we had the ability to make things through wonderful scientific discoveries and technology. But we also have a commitment to make things just because we can.
Katie Havener: Thanks to Paula Reese to write to us about Sarah Little Turnbull. This episode is produced from Lost Women of Science: From our Innium Fund by Johanna Mayer and its design by Hans HSU. Check the facts by Lixi Ata. Our executive producers are Amy Sharif and I, Katie Havener. Lizi Yunnan consists of our music. We get our financing from Alfred P. Sloan and Anne Wojcicki Foundation. PRX distributes us to publishing is Scientific America.
Here in Lost Women of Science, our goal is to save female scientists from mystery, but we need to help you! If you know a female scientist who was lost to history, tell us! You can go to our website to send an email to us, we Lostwometscience.org. You will also find the phone number to our TIP line. We like to get calls to the tip line.
Thanks for listening!
Episode guests
Paula Reese
Host
Johanna Mayer
project
Johanna Mayer
More reading:
Abdel -Rafie, Ran, and Ramed Araubi. “How a woman inspired the N95 mask design.”NPRNPR, 21 May 2020, Rees, Paula, and Larry Eceenbach.
“Ask why.”Design MuseumApril 6, 2020.
“About Sarah Little Turnbull.” Design Institute Center.
Corbit, Kelly. The real story: I inspire a former editor in Jamil N95 mask while designing bras.