Sara Little Turnbull was a pressure on this planet of supplies science and industrial design. It’s protected to say most individuals have used one thing that began life on her drafting board, however few know her identify. She labored with engineered materials as a marketing consultant for 3M.
As a part of these efforts she designed a molded bra cup that impressed the type of the N95 masks. Later 3M disputed her function in arising with the N95 masks. She additionally labored as a marketing consultant for CorningWare on clear-glass cooktop improvement, early microwave cooking merchandise, storage programs and lots of different merchandise.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Katie Hafner: I am Katie Hafner, and that is Misplaced Girls of Science: From Our Inbox, a sequence of mini episodes that includes ladies in science that got here to us from you, our listeners.
On at present’s episode, we hear from designer, Paula Rees, about her mentor: Sara Little Turnbull. You may not know Sara’s identify, however I’d wager that you just’ve heard of one in all her innovations. Plus… within the strategy of reporting this episode, we found that Sara’s story illuminates a problem that we encounter loads when science historical past…
Producer Johanna Mayer brings us her story.
Johanna Mayer: I wish to let you know about this {photograph} I got here throughout just lately.
It appears prefer it was taken someday within the Nineteen Fifties or Sixties. 4 enterprise individuals are standing in a circle. Two of the boys are smoking lengthy cigarettes, a 3rd is in a pinstripe swimsuit. They usually’re all trying down.
They’re a girl. With a killer beehive hairdo, an enormous flower pinned to her sweater, and an enormous beaming grin.
Paula Rees:  Sara Little Turnbull, and he or she was little.
Johanna Mayer: Sara was about 4’11” – she was born Sara Finkelstein, however everybody referred to as her “Little Sara” and he or she made the identify her personal. Sara started to go professionally by the identify… Sara Little.
I’m Johanna Mayer, and that is From Our Inbox, a sequence from Misplaced Girls of Science. As we speak, we’re speaking about Sara Little Turnbull, and the massive legacy she left behind – from pot lids to sneakers to a product that many people turned all too conversant in when the Covid-19 pandemic hit: the N95 masks.
Paula Rees wrote to us about Sara – Paula is the principal of an interdisciplinary design agency, and Sara was her mentor.
Paula Rees: I knew Sara for 30 years. I can guarantee you that one thing in your life at present was both designed or impressed by Sara Little.
Johanna Mayer: Sara grew up in Brooklyn within the Twenties, in a Russian immigrant household. They had been poor, however Sara managed to seek out magnificence and chic design in surprising locations, like artfully organized greens on the grocer. As a youngster, she gained a scholarship to Parsons Faculty of Design, the place she studied promoting design. And after graduating, she labored as decor editor of Home Lovely, a well-liked inside adorning journal. On the journal, she promoted concepts that might make us extra considerate about the best way we use house and eat supplies. For instance, she wrote articles about the advantages of dwelling with a roommate, and organizing small areas.
Paula Rees: She would apply what she preached in that she led a quite simple life with fewer issues, however of better high quality to last more.
Johanna Mayer: Sara lived in a 400-square-foot residence. She had only a few garments however had them custom-made to suit her completely.
Paula Rees: She actually abhorred deliberate obsolescence and materials waste of sources. Her perception was that we should always function the conscience of the businesses that rent us. We have to do the precise issues.
Johanna Mayer: This was Sara’s guiding philosophy – doing the precise factor. And in 1958, she determined to carry her concepts to firms, and began her personal design consulting enterprise. And with that profession leap, Sara Little Turnbull turned a key fixture on this planet of utilized science and industrial design.
Paula Rees: Sara was an absolute powerhouse and by no means shy about asking for what she wanted.
Johanna Mayer: Mainly, she was the sort of girl who may maintain her personal in a circle of businessmen. Huge firms started to take discover. Amongst them – 3M, an enormous firm that has manufactured every part from masking tape to sandpaper to an artificial rubber utilized in house boots. In 1958, they employed Sara. She labored within the Reward Wrap & Cloth Division, however she wasn’t there to wrap presents. She was there to experiment with a brand new materials 3M was working with: a moldable, non-woven expertise.
Paula Rees: Her genius was in materials science.
Johanna Mayer: Though Sara didn’t have a level in materials science, she’d labored with every kind of supplies, primarily ones that had been constituted of fibers that had been woven collectively, which left these teeny tiny gaps between the threads. And when she noticed this new high-tech cloth, which was constituted of polymers that had been melted collectively – subsequently eliminating these tiny gaps – she knew it was filled with potential.
Paula Rees: She had a transparent understanding of the science behind the issues that she was imagining and the issues that she wished to design. And he or she all the time began with the query ‘why?’
Johanna Mayer: In truth, when senior administration requested Sara to offer a presentation, that’s what she referred to as it: “Why?” Within the presentation, Sara dug into that non-woven expertise and all its many potential makes use of. She got here up with 100 authentic product concepts, together with one whose results would resound throughout the globe: the moldable bra cup. As a substitute of a very inflexible and uncomfortable form, the moldable cup match snugly to the breast–and with fewer seam strains at that!
However in response to Paula, that moldable bra cup would pave the best way for one more invention – one with a lot farther-reaching results…
Paula Rees: Sara was manner forward of understanding what was coming. She was a lot extra influential and completed than folks know.
Johanna Mayer: Whereas she was working with 3M, Sara was additionally taking good care of three sick relations. Each her dad and mom and her sister had been dying, all on the identical time, which meant that Sara spent loads of time in hospitals. And he or she started to note the masks the docs had been carrying – a flat piece of material, with a tie within the again.
Perhaps it was the boredom of lengthy hours spent in hospital rooms; possibly it was a racing mind that couldn’t be tamed; possibly it was a undertaking designed to distract herself from her personal intense grief – we will’t say for certain. However Sara had an thought. What if she may take that moldable bra that she’d designed… and switch it into a greater medical masks?
Johanna Mayer: In 1972, 3M produced a masks… and it seemed a complete lot like a moldable bra cup! 3M would tweak the masks over the subsequent few years, however it appeared that Sara’s imaginative and prescient–her product born of a real-life downside–had come to fruition.
When the COVID pandemic hit in 2020, information retailers printed numerous tales about Sara’s contribution to the masks, spotlighting this unbelievable girl and her work. It appeared that, a long time later, Sara was lastly getting long-delayed recognition for her life-saving invention.
However right here is the place the story will get sophisticated: 3M disputes that Sara invented the masks.
We reached out to 3M to ask about this story. And in response to a spokesperson, the corporate was engaged on a design for a molded, cup-shaped masks constituted of non-woven supplies as early as 1957 – a 12 months earlier than Sara started working with them. And in 1959, two scientists at 3M filed a patent software that included, quote, “porous breath-filtering face masks utilized by surgeons, physicians, dentists, nurses, and by industrial staff subjected to dusty or contaminated atmospheres.”
In 2022, a spokesperson from the corporate additionally informed the Toronto Star that there are notebooks that present that the concept was already churning earlier than Sara arrived.
However Paula says that Sara is lacking credit score the place credit score is due, and that 3M is obscuring her function within the improvement of the masks.
The story of Sara and the N-95 masks illustrates a problem that we encounter loads in science historical past.
There’s typically a romantic picture of a lone genius who has a breakthrough, and instantly conjures a contemporary invention out of skinny air. This is named the “Nice Man Idea” – the concept that extraordinary minds and leaders are born, not made, and that scientific progress is sluggish and regular, punctuated by big leaps ahead by distinctive males. In actuality, these sorts of “aha!” moments are uncommon.
Extra typically, the method of invention is loads much less dramatic–slower, boring nearly. Convoluted. And, crucially, we often have complete groups of individuals to thank for breakthroughs. However “Nice Man Idea” rolls off the tongue a complete lot simpler than, say, “Hardworking-and-Collaborative-Crew-Effort Idea.”
So, whatever the fact behind the invention of the N95 masks, Sara’s story reveals us that… science is messy generally! Disputes over concepts, over credit score… it’s all par for the course.
However regardless of the extent of Sara Little Turnbull’s contribution to the N95, extremely, the masks was only a footnote in her lengthy profession.
Paula Rees: Her work was so extremely various. As an example, she was fascinated with growing new foodstuffs like soy-based alternate options. She was instrumental within the clear glass cooktop improvement. She was on the crew that labored on the early microwave. And he or she beloved storage system. She’s very, very organized. And so she developed numerous merchandise round storage.
Johanna Mayer: After a profession of greater than 70 years, Sara died in 2015, at age 97. Paula Rees was a part of a bunch of buddies who cared for Sara in her previous age.
Pondering again to that photograph I described earlier – the one with Sara on the middle of the group of males – I ponder what number of different ladies like her are on the market.
Paula Rees: I’ve come to consider she was a lot too sensible to have been acknowledged totally by the Mad Males of the mid-century. In doing this analysis, I’ve related with different ladies who’ve discovered the identical was true of their mentors. And yeah, it is irritating.
Sara’s legacy and her mission was to assist the general public perceive design and to understand we had the flexibility to make issues by means of fantastic scientific discoveries and expertise. However we even have an obligation to make issues simply because we will.
Katie Hafner: Because of Paula Rees for writing to us about Sara Little Turnbull. This episode of Misplaced Girls of Science: From Our Inbox was produced by Johanna Mayer and engineered by Hans Hsu. Reality-checking by Lexi Atiya. Our govt producers are Amy Scharf and myself, Katie Hafner. Lizzy Younan composes our music. We get our funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Basis and the Anne Wojcicki Basis. PRX distributes us and our publishing accomplice is Scientific American.
Right here at Misplaced Girls of Science, it’s our objective to rescue feminine scientists from the jaws of obscurity, however we’d like your assist! If you realize of a feminine scientist who’s been misplaced to historical past, tell us! You possibly can go to our web site to ship us an e mail, We’re lostwomenofscience.org. You may additionally discover the telephone quantity to our tip line. We love getting calls to the tip line.
Thanks for listening!
Episode Company
Paula Rees
Host
Johanna Mayer
Producer
Johanna Mayer
Additional studying:
Abdelfatah, Rund, and Ramtin Arablouei. “How One Lady Impressed the Design for the N95 Masks.”NPR, NPR, 21 Might 2020, Rees, Paula, and Larry Eisenbach.
“Ask Why.”Design Museum, 6 Apr. 2020.
“About Sara Little Turnbull.” CENTER FOR DESIGN INSTITUTE.
Corbett, Kelly. True Story: A Former Home Lovely Editor Impressed the N95 Masks Whereas Designing Bras.