LGBTQ Inventors and Innovators

It’s Pride Month! To celebrate, we want to recognize LGBTQ invention makers and innovators who, against all odds, made the world a better place for all of us. The joy that is science and innovation is something that needs to be enjoyed by all, yet there are still 69 countries in the world that criminalize homosexuality. Despite the continued discrimination and persecution the LGBTQ community faces, they have still been able to make history.

Alan Turing

A genius invention maker and innovator, through and through. The inventor of the Turing machine. A mathematician and a scientist so brilliant and skilled that he helped defeat the Nazis by building algorithms and machines to decode top-secret German Enigma messages for British intelligence. At the end of the war, Alan shifted his efforts to build one of the very first computer designs in the world, the Automatic Computing Engine.

In 1952, he was arrested for having homosexual relations with another man, a crime at the time. Due to his criminal activities, he could no longer work for the government. Two years later, he tragically committed suicide. One can only wonder what amazing new technologies we would have seen from this brilliant invention maker and innovator had he lived past the age of 41.

George Washington Carver

George was an invention maker, innovator, and an exceptional American agricultural scientist. He is best known for discovering how to use peanuts and sweet potatoes to improve soil quality. In 1896, George started working for the Tuskegee Institute to help poor farmers of the rural where he invented the Jessup Wagon.

This is a horse-drawn classroom and laboratory for demonstrating soil chemistry. One of the things his innovation demonstrated was how farmers could plant a single-crop seed, such as peanuts, which had intense nitrogen fixating properties to improve soil depleted by growing cotton.

Leonardo Da Vinci

To end this list, here is one of the most polarizing LGBTQ invention makers and innovators. He is known around the world for his masterful pieces, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. A master of the “napkin on a sketch.” He especially spent a great deal of time learning about aviation.

Leonardo produced over 500 sketches of various flying machines. Astoundingly, this was 100 years before the Wright Brothers built the first airplane. In his Codex on the Flight of Birds, he writes and sketches his observations and concepts of his aviation theories. These concepts would eventually be acknowledged and used in the development of airplanes.

About: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop-shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. To assist our startup and inventor clients, in addition to above, we help with business strategy, product strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories. Also, our founder Kevin Mako hosts The Product Startup Podcast, the industry's leading hardware podcast. Check it out for tips, interviews, and best practices for hardware startups, inventors, and product developers. Click HERE to learn more about MAKO Design + Invent!