Meet the American who invented the crash test dummy, a life-saving innovation
foxnews.comSamuel 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.
The inventor’s life intersected with a fascinating sweep of history, from the dawn of the atomic age to modern pop culture. A crash test dummy is displayed during the Geneva Motor Show 2016 on March 2, 2016, in Geneva, Switzerland. (Photo by Harold Cunningham/Getty Images) Alderson studied at the University of California Berkeley under renowned physicist J.
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