Marion Donovan - Inventor of disposable nappies
We’ve all heard of brand names like Huggies and Pampers but they should really be called "Donovans" after their inventor, Marion Donovan. Twentieth-century inventor, Marion O'Brien Donovan (1917-1998), made a career of designing solutions to everyday, domestic problems. Her career is framed by her invention in 1949 of the "Boater" a nappy cover made of surplus parachute nylon.
In 1946, fed up with wet nappies and the endless washing of bedclothes. To her, cloth nappies "served more as a wick than a sponge," and rubber pants assured a nasty case of nappy rash. Looking for a way to hold the dampness in without keeping air out, she experimented by cutting up her shower curtain and sewed a moisture-proof nappy cover, and replacing safety pins with snaps. The final design was made out of nylon parachute cloth which didn’t cause nappy rash.
Three years later, she introduced the "Boater." Donovan's attempts to sell her idea to leading manufacturers failed, but her product became an instant sensation and commercial success when she began selling the Boater at Saks Fifth Avenue in 1949. Meanwhile she was hard at work creating the world’s first disposable. It was made of soft absorbent paper whose lining drew moisture away from the baby’s skin, a prototype which is still used today. In 1951, Donovan sold both her company, Donovan Enterprises, and her nappy patents to children's clothing manufacturer Keko Corporation, for one million dollars.
Marion O'Brien was born into a family of inventors on October 15, 1917, in South Bend, Indiana. Marion's father, Miles O'Brien, with his identical twin brother John, developed an industrial lathe for manufacturing gun barrels and founded the South Bend Lathe Works in 1906. After her mother died when she was seven, Marion spent a majority of her time at her father's factory, even inventing a "tooth powder" while in elementary school. She graduated with a B.A. in English from Rosemont College in 1939, and worked briefly for both Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. In 1942, she married James F. Donovan and moved to Westport, Connecticut
Although she is most remembered as the "grandmother" of the disposable nappy, as inventor and entrepreneur Donovan created products that addressed problems in personal health, beauty, and household needs.