Marion Donovan..Inventor of the disposable diaper.

Marion Donovan

Inventor of Disposable Diapers

Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1917, Marion Donovan was instilled with an inventive spirit at a young age. She spent the greater part of her childhood hanging around the manufacturing plant run by her father and uncle, two men who combined to invent, among other things, an industrial lathe for grinding automobile gears and gun barrels.
Years later, as a post-World War II housewife and mother of two in Connecticut, Donovan would make good use of the ingenuity that she had observed in her youth. Frustrated by the thankless, repetitive task of changing her youngest child's soiled cloth diapers, bed sheets and clothing, she decided to craft a diaper cover to keep her baby – and the surrounding area – dry. Donovan sat down at her sewing machine with a shower curtain and, after several attempts, she completed a waterproof diaper cover.
Unlike the rubber baby pants that were already on the market, Donovan's design did not cause diaper rash and did not pinch the child's skin. The soon-to-be famous female inventor subsequently perfected her invention, adding snap fasteners in place of the dangerous safety pins that were commonly used. Donovan named her diaper cover the "Boater" and explained that "at the time I thought that it looked like a boat."