Meet the American who invented the crash test dummy, a life-saving innovation
Samuel W. Alderson is the genius who made dummies smart. The California inventor parlayed a knack for tinkering in his old man’s sheet metal shop into a gift for making highways safer here in America and around the world. A prolific producer of cutting-edge military hardware in World War II, Alderson is most famous as the father of the crash test dummy. In scientific circles, these objects are known as anthropomorphic test devices — a more accurate indication of their robust capabilities. "Sam Alderson was driven by a passion to save lives by using crash test dummies that produce data [that] engineers use to design safer vehicles," Chris O’Connor, president and CEO of Humanetics, a company founded by Alderson with headquarters in Farmington Hills, Michigan, told Fox News Digital.