Latino inventors created revolutionary devices that transformed our everyday world and often changed the way we live. These innovations have helped advance the technological, pharmaceutical and environmental products that we use every day. Below is a list of the inventions of Latinos in the United States and those born in Latin America.
1. Color television
Upgrades from black and white television to color television began in the 1960s, thanks to a patent filed in 1940 for a “chromoscopic adapter for television equipment” by Guillermo González Camarena of Mexico. Camarena, an electrical engineer specializing in electronics at the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico, created the first trichromatic field sequential system, a technology that transmits moving images in variations of red, green and blue to achieve a spectrum of colors. Before González Camarena’s invention, televisions only broadcast monochrome images.
2. Earthquake detection technology
Thanks to University of Chile professor Arturo Arias Suárez, scientists have the ability to measure the risk of damage from a possible earthquake in a given location. Arias Suárez was director of the Instituto de Investigación y Ensayos de Materiales (Institute for Materials Research and Testing / IDIEM) in Chile from 1958 to 1965. In 1970 he developed the method “Instrumental Seismic Intensity” or “ Arias Intensity ”(IA), a mathematical formula that evaluates the strength of earthquakes by measuring their seismic waves. With the Arias Intensity formula, building engineers can design buildings better equipped to withstand seismic activity.
3. CAPTCHA
Luis von Ahn from Guatemala developed the CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA cybersecurity system. CAPTCHA (Fully Automated Public Turing Test to Distinguish between Computers and Humans) is a randomly generated challenge-response test designed to help prevent spam bots from accessing computer systems. Von Ahn, co-founder of language learning app Duolingo, created cybersecurity technology as a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University in 2000. He gave the technology free to Yahoo because the company had issues with automated spammers. Today almost all online servers use reCAPTCHA, the updated version of the system.
A CAPTCHA pop-up on a computer screen.
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4. Stent
Interventional vascular radiologist, Argentinian Julio Palmaz, is known for advancing the progress made in angioplasty surgery, the operation that unclogs blood arteries and facilitates blood flow to the heart. Palmaz worked with cardiologist Richard Schatz to invent a balloon expandable stent that keeps the heart arteries open after angioplasty. The Palmaz-Schatz stent has received a patent and with financial backing from the health care company Johnson & Johnson and approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In 2006, Palmaz secured a place in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
5. X-ray reflection microscope
Mexican-American physicist Albert Vinicio Báez co-invented the x-ray reflecting microscope with Stanford physics professor Paul Kirkpatrick in 1948. Báez, who worked and taught for the United Nations Educational Organization, science and culture (UNESCO), is also the father of the famous folk music singer Joan Baez. Báez’s X-ray reflection microscope uses X-rays to produce magnified images of small or distant objects. The device has been used to examine living cells and to study galaxies. Its creation opened the branch of X-ray optics.
6. Contraceptive pill
Chemist Luis Miramontes from Mexico was just 26 years old and a doctoral student working in the laboratory of Carl Djerassi and George Rosenkranzin at Syntex SA in Mexico City when his team synthesized the contraceptive pill in 1951. The key to the invention was the development of norethindrone, a molecule derived from a wild Mexican yam known as the turtle plant (Dioscorea Mexicana).
Norethindrone was the main active ingredient in a first contraceptive pill which was subsequently branded as Norinyl by Syntex Laboratories, Inc. The first contraceptive pill (Enovid-10) approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration in 1960 was developed by a competitor, but the norethindrone version was also quickly approved and became an industry standard.
Contraceptive pills.
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7. Artificial heart
Domingo Santo Liotta, born in Argentina to Italian immigrants in 1924, has become a pioneer in heart surgery. In 1969, Liotta developed the first total artificial heart to be successfully implanted in a human. The device was implanted in a 47 year old patient with severe heart failure. The implant allowed the patient to live for three days until a heart from a human donor was available.
