Born: 15 October 1917, United States
Died: 4 November 1998
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Marion O’Brien
This entry is reprinted in full with permission from the National Women’s History Museum (United States of America). All rights reserved.
Marion Donovan spent a lifetime inventing items to make people’s lives easier. When she was in elementary school, she came up with her first invention – a tooth powder to improve dental hygiene. After graduating from college, she worked for Vogue magazine for a short time before giving up her career to be a housewife and mother. Motherhood, though, allowed Donovan to come up with her most well-known inventions.
In 1946, Donovan was taking care of her newly born second child when she came up with the idea to improve upon the diaper. Both of her children had made a habit of wetting their diapers as soon as Donovan had changed them and laid them down in their cribs. This may not sound like a major inconvenience today but in 1946, it was. Cloth diapers leaked and, when a child wet one in their crib, it required not only changing and washing the baby’s diaper as well as the sheets. There were rubber pants to put over the cloth diaper that prevented leaks, but these were known to cause diaper rash. Donovan took her shower curtain, cut it to the right size, and sewed a reusable cover for her kid’s diapers. She added snaps to close the cover, so there was no need to use safety pins like the ones that fastened cloth diapers. The cloth diapers were inserted into the waterproof covers, which kept the babies and their surroundings dry. She named the covers Boaters because she thought they looked like boats and they helped babies “stay afloat.” As an independent inventor, she manufactured and marketed her product herself until someone was willing to buy it from her, which someone did. Keko Corporation purchased Boaters from Donovan for $1 million in 1949 and began selling them in Saks Fifth Avenue later that year. They became an instant success.
After Donovan received the patent for Boaters in 1951, she set her sights on inventing the disposable paper diaper. Though her design worked, it was not a commercial success like her previous invention. Executives thought her design was an unnecessary convenience. Ten years later, Proctor and Gamble used Donovan’s invention to create Pampers, which continue to be one of the best-selling disposable diaper brands. Donovan’s other inventions include, Zippity-Do, an elastic zipper extension that made it easier for women to zip up their clothes, and Big Hangup a compact clothes hanger. At age 41, she received a degree in architecture from Yale and went on to design her own house in Connecticut.