Sara Negligible Turnbull was once a power on the earth of fabrics science and industrial design. It’s barricade to mention maximum nation have worn one thing that began existence on her strategy planning stage, however few know her identify. She labored with engineered materials as a specialist for 3M.
As a part of those efforts she designed a molded bra cup that impressed the method of the N95 masks. Then 3M disputed her function in bobbing up with the N95 masks. She additionally labored as a specialist for CorningWare on clear-glass cooktop construction, early microwave cooking merchandise, reserve methods and plenty of alternative merchandise.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Katie Hafner: I’m Katie Hafner, and that is Misplaced Girls of Science: From Our Inbox, a order of petite episodes that includes ladies in science that got here to us from you, our listeners.
On these days’s episode, we pay attention from clothier, Paula Rees, about her educator: Sara Negligible Turnbull. It’s possible you’ll no longer know Sara’s identify, however I’d guess that you simply’ve heard of one among her innovations. Plus… within the technique of reporting this episode, we came upon that Sara’s tale illuminates a topic that we come upon a dozen when taking a look at science historical past…
Manufacturer Johanna Mayer brings us her tale.
Johanna Mayer: I need to inform you about this photograph I got here throughout lately.
It appears adore it was once taken someday within the Nineteen Fifties or Sixties. 4 industry nation are status in a circle. Two of the lads are smoking lengthy cigarettes, a 3rd is in a pinstripe go well with. And so they’re all taking a look ailing.
They’re taking a look at a lady. With a killer beehive hairdo, a immense flower pinned to her sweater, and a obese beaming grin.
Paula Rees:  Sara Negligible Turnbull, and he or she was once slight.
Johanna Mayer: Sara was once about 4’11” – she was once born Sara Finkelstein, however everybody known as her “Little Sara” and he or she made the identify her personal. Sara started to advance professionally through the identify… Sara Negligible.
I’m Johanna Mayer, and that is From Our Inbox, a order from Misplaced Girls of Science. Nowadays, we’re speaking about Sara Negligible Turnbull, and the obese legacy she left at the back of – from pot lids to shoes to a product that many people was all too usual with when the Covid-19 pandemic collision: the N95 masks.
Paula Rees wrote to us about Sara – Paula is the main of an interdisciplinary design company, and Sara was once her educator.
Paula Rees: I knew Sara for 30 years. I will safeguard you that one thing to your existence these days was once both designed or impressed through Sara Negligible.
Johanna Mayer: Sara grew up in Brooklyn within the Nineteen Twenties, in a Russian immigrant people. They had been beggarly, however Sara controlled to search out good looks and magnificent design in sudden parks, like artfully organized greens on the grocer. As a youngster, she received a scholarship to Parsons College of Design, the place she studied promoting design. And upcoming graduating, she labored as decor writer of Space Gorgeous, a pervasive inner adorning novel. On the novel, she promoted concepts that might put together us extra considerate about the way in which we worth territory and devour fabrics. As an example, she wrote articles about some great benefits of residing with a roommate, and organizing little areas.
Paula Rees: She would observe what she preached in that she led a very easy existence with fewer issues, however of better attribute to latter longer.
Johanna Mayer: Sara lived in a 400-square-foot condo. She had only a few garments however had them customized to suit her completely.
Paula Rees: She truly abhorred deliberate obsolescence and subject material squander of sources. Her trust was once that we will have to grant because the moral sense of the firms that rent us. We wish to do the suitable issues.
Johanna Mayer: This was once Sara’s guiding philosophy – doing the suitable factor. And in 1958, she determined in order her concepts to firms, and began her personal design consulting industry. And with that occupation soar, Sara Negligible Turnbull was a key fixture on the earth of implemented science and business design.
Paula Rees: Sara was once an absolute powerhouse and certainly not shy about inquiring for what she wanted.
Johanna Mayer: Mainly, she was once the type of lady who may conserve her personal in a circle of businessmen. Obese firms started to whisk realize. Between the two of them – 3M, a immense corporate that has manufactured the whole lot from overlaying tape to sandpaper to an artificial rubber worn in territory boots. In 1958, they rented Sara. She labored within the Reward Wrap & Cloth Section, however she wasn’t there to wrap presents. She was once there to experiment with a fresh subject material 3M was once operating with: a moldable, non-woven generation.
Paula Rees: Her bright was once in subject material science.
Johanna Mayer: Despite the fact that Sara didn’t have a point in subject material science, she’d labored with a wide variety of fabrics, basically ones that had been comprised of fibers that had been woven in combination, which left those teeny minute gaps between the tales. And when she noticed this fresh high-tech cloth, which was once comprised of polymers that had been melted in combination – subsequently getting rid of the ones minute gaps – she knew it was once stuffed with doable.
Paula Rees: She had a view through figuring out of the science at the back of the issues that she was once imagining and the issues that she sought after to design. And he or she at all times began with the query ‘why?’
Johanna Mayer: Actually, when senior control requested Sara to provide a presentation, that’s what she known as it: “Why?” Within the presentation, Sara dug into that non-woven generation and all its many doable makes use of. She got here up with 100 unedited product concepts, together with one whose results would resound around the globe: the moldable bra cup. Rather of a very inflexible and uncomfortable atmosphere, the moldable cup have compatibility snugly to the breast–and with fewer seam traces at that!
However in line with Paula, that moldable bra cup would pave the way in which for any other invention – one with a lot farther-reaching results…
Paula Rees: Sara was once approach forward of figuring out what was once coming. She was once so a lot more influential and completed than nation know.
Johanna Mayer: Future she was once operating with 3M, Sara was once additionally caring for 3 unwell people contributors. Each her oldsters and her sister had been loss of life, all on the similar month, which intended that Sara spent a dozen of month in hospitals. And he or she started to note the mask the docs had been dressed in – a flat piece of material, with a secured within the again.
Possibly it was once the boredom of lengthy hours spent in health facility rooms; possibly it was once a racing mind that couldn’t be tamed; possibly it was once a undertaking designed to distract herself from her personal intense sorrow – we will be able to’t say evidently. However Sara had an concept. What if she may whisk that moldable bra that she’d designed… and switch it into a greater scientific masks?
Johanna Mayer: In 1972, 3M produced a masks… and it regarded a complete dozen like a moldable bra cup! 3M would tweak the masks over the then few years, but it surely gave the impression that Sara’s eye–her product born of a real-life weakness–had come to fruition.
When the COVID pandemic collision in 2020, information retailers revealed numerous tales about Sara’s contribution to the masks, spotlighting this improbable lady and her paintings. It appeared that, a long time then, Sara was once in the end getting long-delayed popularity for her life-saving invention.
However this is the place the tale will get difficult: 3M disputes that Sara invented the masks.
We reached out to 3M to invite about this tale. And in line with a spokesperson, the corporate was once operating on a design for a molded, cup-shaped masks comprised of non-woven fabrics as early as 1957 – a day sooner than Sara started operating with them. And in 1959, two scientists at 3M filed a patent utility that incorporated, quote, “porous breath-filtering face masks used by surgeons, physicians, dentists, nurses, and by industrial workers subjected to dusty or contaminated atmospheres.”
In 2022, a spokesperson from the corporate additionally told the Toronto Star that there are notebooks that display that the theory was once already churning sooner 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 construction of the masks.
The tale of Sara and the N-95 masks illustrates a topic that we come upon a dozen in science historical past.
There’s regularly a romantic symbol of a lone bright who has a step forward, and all at once conjures a new invention out of slim wind. That is referred to as the “Great Man Theory” – the concept that bizarre minds and leaders are born, no longer made, and that medical advance is gradual and stable, punctuated through immense leaps ahead through remarkable males. Actually, these types of “aha!” moments are uncommon.
Extra regularly, the method of invention is a dozen much less dramatic–slower, uninteresting virtually. Convoluted. And, crucially, we generally have whole groups of nation to thank for breakthroughs. However “Great Man Theory” rolls off the tongue a complete dozen more uncomplicated than, say, “Hardworking-and-Collaborative-Team-Effort Theory.”
So, without reference to the reality at the back of the discovery of the N95 masks, Sara’s tale displays us that… science is messy every now and then! Disputes over concepts, over credit score… it’s all par for the direction.
However regardless of the extent of Sara Negligible Turnbull’s contribution to the N95, extremely, the masks was once only a footnote in her lengthy occupation.
Paula Rees: Her paintings was once so extremely various. For example, she was once serious about growing fresh foodstuffs like soy-based possible choices. She was once instrumental within the view through glass cooktop construction. She was once at the staff that labored at the early microwave. And he or she beloved reserve device. She’s very, very arranged. And so she advanced a dozen of goods round reserve.
Johanna Mayer: Later a occupation of greater than 70 years, Sara died in 2015, at generation 97. Paula Rees was once a part of a gaggle of pals who cared for Sara in her worn generation.
Pondering again to that picture I described previous – the only with Sara on the middle of the crowd of guys – I marvel what number of alternative ladies like her are available in the market.
Paula Rees: I’ve come to consider she was once a lot too impish to were said totally through the Insane Males of the mid-century. In doing this analysis, I’ve attached with alternative ladies who’ve discovered the similar was once true in their mentors. And yeah, it’s irritating.
Sara’s legacy and her undertaking was once to aid the family perceive design and to understand we had the facility to put together issues thru glorious medical discoveries and generation. However we even have a duty to put together issues simply because we will be able to.
Katie Hafner: Because of Paula Rees for writing to us about Sara Negligible Turnbull. This episode of Misplaced Girls of Science: From Our Inbox was once produced through Johanna Mayer and engineered through Hans Hsu. Truth-checking through Lexi Atiya. Our govt manufacturers are Amy Scharf and myself, Katie Hafner. Lizzy Younan composes our song. We get our investment from the Alfred P. Sloan Bedrock and the Anne Wojcicki Bedrock. PRX distributes us and our publishing spouse is Clinical American.
Right here at Misplaced Girls of Science, it’s our function to rescue feminine scientists from the jaws of obscurity, however we want your aid! If you recognize of a feminine scientist who’s been misplaced to historical past, tell us! You’ll advance to our website online to ship us an e-mail, We’re lostwomenofscience.org. You’ll additionally to find the telephone quantity to our tip order. We like getting yells to the top order.
Thank you for listening!
Episode Visitors
Paula Rees
Host
Johanna Mayer
Manufacturer
Johanna Mayer
Additional studying:
Abdelfatah, Rund, and Ramtin Arablouei. “How One Woman Inspired the Design for the N95 Mask.”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 House Beautiful Editor Inspired the N95 Mask While Designing Bras.
