SUPERPOWER HOURCHINTAKINDI MALLESHAM

AUTOMATIC TEXTILEWEAVING MACHINEINVENTED :

Chintakindi Mallesham is an Indian inventor born in a small, poor villageof textile weavers in southern India. His mother used to weave textilesmanually, moving individual strings of thread up and down over 9000

times to make one single sari. He saw her struggle and often bruise anddamage her shoulder and elbow joints in the process.

He was deeply concerned for his mother's health and startedusing different metal and wooden parts, motors and otherelectronic devices to try and automate the weaving. In thispursuit to make his mother's life easier, he spent a lot of hismoney on the prototypes and became obsessed with themachine. His family and friends became deeply concernedabout this obsession and repeatedly convinced him to leavethis and take up a steady job.

Though most of the machine worked well, there was oneparticular action where the thread had to loop around apeg one final time and slide into place which did notwork. He lost all his money and then gave up and movedto the city to find work. While there this thoughtconstantly stayed on his mind and he noticed a machinein an industry doing a similar action!

He brought all the pieces of the machine from theprototype he built in the village, learnt how to build thepart by studying many books and speaking to expertsand finally built a working machine! He has helpedthousands of poor weavers and won many awards fromthe Indian government for his work.

SUPERPOWER HOURMARGARET KNIGHT

OVER 26 INVENTIONS!INVENTED :

Margaret Knight is an American inventor born in 1838 in Maine. Fondlyknown as Mattie, even as a child, she made sleds and kites for herfamily. At the young age of 12, she started working at a cotton factory.While there, she observed an accident and came up with an idea toeasily shut machines down to prevent accidents.

After the civil war, she started working at a Massachusettsfactory that made paper bags. She noticed that the paperbags were not flat at the bottom. This made it really hard topack groceries. She wondered if having a flat bottomed paperbag would make it faster and easier to pack. She worked onthis idea and made a machine that automatically folded andglued flat-bottomed paper bags. These bags are still used instores across the world!

A few years later, Charles Annan tried to steal her ideaand get credit by patenting the machine. He claimedthat a woman cannot invent such a machine. Knightfought back and challenged him in court. With theevidence for her invention, she won and received apatent for the machine in 1871.

Observing things around her, looking for ways toimprove the world Knight went on to invent over 26different things ranging from engines and windowframes to sole-cutting and numbering machines. In 2006, she was inducted into the national inventorshall of fame!

SUPERPOWER HOURMADAME CJ WALKER

HAIRCARE PRODUCTSFOR AFRICANAMERICAN WOMEN

INVENTED :

Madame CJ Walker was born into extreme poverty in rural Louisiana in1867. She started working in cotton fields at the age of 7 and wasmarried by the time she turned 14. After her husband's death in 1887,she moved to St.Louis and started working as a laundrywoman.

Around the 1890s she started to suffer from scalp problemsand started losing her hair. She was determined to fix thisproblem and started experimenting with home-made productsthat were made by another entrepreneur called Annie Malone.Seeing great results, she eventually became a sales agent andmoved to Denver.

Sensing the need for such products with AfricanAmerican women, she launched her own business andstarted selling a product called Madame Walker'sWonderful Hair Grower. Focussed on expanding thereach and sales of her product she began going door-to-door selling and speaking with customers.

Knowing the customers and understanding their pain-points helped make her business immensely successful.At one point she had over 3000 individuals, largelyAfrican American women, spread across sales, haircare colleges and licenced distributors. She was known for her entrepreneurial spirit andphilanthropic endeavours.

SUPERPOWER HOURFRANK WANG

UNMANNEDRECREATIONAL DRONESINVENTED :

Frank Wang is a Chinese inventor and billionaire. He was born in 1980and grew up in Hangzhou,China. When he was young he read ahelicopter-themed comic book and got obsessed with the idea ofexploring the sky. His parents got him a remote-controlled helicopterbut it was unstable and crashed. He made up his mind to learn andbuild a stable one by himself!

He didn't get the highest scores in school and was evenrejected by MIT, his dream school. He eventually got acceptedat Hong Kong University of Sciences and Technology. For histhesis he worked on a helicopter flight control system. Thenight before his presentation it didn't work.

After graduating, with encouragement from hisuniversity professor and some funding, Frank and hisfriends launched DJI (Dà-Jiāng Innovations). Theybegan working on their first drone by looking at whatconsumers wanted and what was missing in the Droneindustry.

In 2013, they launched a Drone that made it easy forconsumers to take great photos and videos from theDrone. This kickstarted their success. Frank continuously innovated and grew DJI from adorm-room project to a successful multi-billion dollarcompany.

SUPERPOWER HOURBI SHENG

MOVEABLE TYPEPRINTINGINVENTED :

Bi Sheng was a Chinese inventor. He was born in the year 990 ADin Yinshang county, Hubei. During that time, printing was still donemanually by writing on bamboo slips. This took a lot of time andresources.

From writing, there was a shift to large clay tablets where theentire text would be etched and then used to transfer ink topapers for storing. But for each change, the entire tablet hadto be etched again. Feng saw this as a unique opportunity.

Sheng had an idea. What if you etched individual lettersonto clay and ceramic blocks and could move themaround? This way each time you wrote something newyou just had to rearrange the blocks. This meant thatyou could create the letters once and reuse them manytimes!

This method of imprinting multiple copies of lettersfrom a master type and being able to move themaround is called moveable type printing. This isconsidered one of the four great inventions ofChina. Sheng's worked revolutionised print technologyacross the world. He has a crater on the moonnamed in his honor.