These 9 Inventions That *Literally* Changed The World Were All Created By Latine Inventors (And If You've Ever Enjoyed Color TV, You Should Be Thankful)
It's not often we stop to think about just how all the modern inventions we take for granted came to be, but the stories can be absolutely fascinating.
This Latine Heritage Month, let's take a look at some of the amazing inventions (and their creators) that came from Latin America. Across engineering, medicine, entertainment, and more, these amazing Latine inventors changed our world for the better.
1.Artificial Heart
First up is Dr. Domingo Santo Liotta (1924–2022), an Argentine surgeon credited with the invention of the first total artificial heart. He had developed an early prototype, successfully tested on animals, in Córdoba, Argentina, in 1958 before being recruited by the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas in 1961. Dr. Liotta's colleague Dr. Denton A. Cooley "performed the world’s first total artificial heart implant on April 4, 1969" using Liotta's invention, according to the Texas Heart Institute.
The patient, a 47-year-old man with severe heart failure, woke up and began to recover, living for 64 hours until a donor heart could be implanted. The patient died of a pulmonary infection 32 hours after the second transplant, but the procedures had been monumental in what is called "bridging": allowing time for a donor organ to become available in which doctors can keep a patient alive with something artificial. The Liotta-Cooley Artificial Heart is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
2.Color Television
The first patent in the world for color television was awarded to a Mexican engineer in 1940. Guillermo González Camarena (1917–1965) was just 23 years old when he patented a chromoscopic adapter for the cameras of the day, enabling them to transmit color — even though they could only capture in black and white at the time.
Color TV today is synonymous with entertainment, but González Camarena helped use his invention for the greater good, hand-building camera equipment for Latin America's first television station and promoting tele-education via television for medical students. NASA even used González Camarena's technology to transmit images from Jupiter in 1979.
3.Oral Contraceptive Pill
About 65% of American women aged 15–49 were taking oral contraceptives — or the birth control pill — in 2015–2017, according to the CDC. That makes the Pill the most commonly prescribed form of contraceptive out there, and we have Luis Ernesto Miramontes Cárdenas (1925–2004), a Mexican chemist, to thank.
Miramontes is credited with the first synthesis of an oral contraceptive in 1951 while he was working at a laboratory in Mexico City under Carl Djerassi and George Rosenkranz when he was just 26 years old. The three scientists are all listed as co-inventors on the United States patent for the oral contraceptive, awarded in 1956. The Pill was selected for the US Department of Patents' "Inventors Hall of Fame" in 1964, and Miramontes would go on to win the Mexican National Prize in Chemistry in 1986 and be named a Top Chemical Engineer of All Time by the Institution of Chemical Engineers in 2011.
4.Transdermal Medicine Patch
Another groundbreaking development in birth control (and in the administration of many other medications), the transdermal patch was developed by Uruguayan biochemist and biotech entrepreneur Alejandro Zaffaroni (1923–2014). One of his drug-administering bandages was patented by the FDA in 1981 to provide relief from motion sickness; a medicated patch for angina soon followed.
Since then, there have been over 40 FDA-approved transdermal patches to hit pharmacy shelves to administer birth control, antidepressants, nicotine, and many more. Having come to the US for his PhD, Zaffaroni received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in the Medicine category in 1995 and was inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2012.
5.Balloon-Expandable Stent
Dr. Julio Palmaz (b. 1945) hails from La Plata, outside Buenos Aires, Argentina, and graduated from medical school there in 1971. Palmaz practiced vascular radiology in Argentina before relocating to Texas. At the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio (UTHSCSA), he developed the first commercially successful, patented, balloon-expandable medical stent — reportedly starting with a piece of scrap metal from his garage. He received a patent for the Palmaz Stent in 1988, then FDA approval for peripheral arterial use and coronary use in 1991 and 1994. It revolutionized cardiology and artery repair and even went on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Dr. Palmaz later joined forces with Dr. Richard Schatz to develop the Palmaz-Schatz Stent, which has been used in nearly 100 million patients worldwide as of 2019. Dr. Palmaz is now an honorary Ashbel Smith Professor at UTHSCSA and was inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006. He even created a gravity-operated wine cave, the largest in Napa Valley, at his very own Palmaz Vineyards. A Renaissance man!
6.NanoPro Water Purification System
After María Alexandra Tamayo, a then 24-year-old from Colombia, graduated from college, she participated in a hackathon. There, she met residents from the poorest district in Colombia and sought to solve a major equity problem. Despite being rich with natural resources — it's one of the country's richest in freshwater resources — millions of homes lack access to clean drinking water.
Tamayo created the NanoPro, a filtration device that is "capable of eliminating fungi, viruses, and bacteria in water without affecting its flavor, smell, and color" through nanotechnology, she told the MIT Technology Review, which named her an Innovator Under 35 in 2019. The NanoPro is ideal for rural communities, which suffer disproportionately from a lack of clean water in Colombia because it does not require energy and does not retain bacteria, reducing the need for maintenance. You can read more about Tamayo's work in Amazons Watch Magazine.
7.Earthquake Sensing and Measuring Technology
Chilean engineer Arturo Arias Suárez (1923–2001) has quite the résumé. He directed a laboratory studying nuclear physics (Chile's first one!), cofounded what would later become the University of Chile's Department of Physics, and perhaps most importantly, developed one of the first systems for measuring seismic activity during an earthquake. His formula for Instrumental Seismic Intensity, also called Arias Intensity, was a gold standard at the time of its release by the MIT Press in 1969.
Arias' research was foundational (no pun intended) to the field of earthquake engineering, leading to new anti-seismic building safety standards in Chile that were successfully implemented and tested by the 8.0 Mw Algarrobo earthquake in 1985.
8.Neonatal Artificial Bubble
Another innovator who noticed a problem at home and set out to solve it was Claudio Castillón Lévano (b. 1954). Born in Peru, Castillón Lévano has been the recipient of several patents across the disciplines of medicine, renewable energy, and telecommunication. He is the inventor of the neonatal artificial bubble, a non-invasive device designed to improve outcomes for high-risk newborns.
The device uses a tempered air closed circuit with the neonatal capsule inside, and a continuous ventilation circuit allows "regulated airflow of filtered, oxygenated, tempered and humidified air to the newborn child inside the neonatal capsule," according to the patent abstract. Castillón Lévano's patent was awarded in 2003.
9.Wireless Telecommunication
When you imagine how cell phones came to be, you're not likely to think of a Brazilian priest, but it was indeed one Fr. Roberto Landell de Moura (1861–1928) who made efforts in the 1880s and '90s to develop a system for long-distance, wireless telephone communication. In June 1900, in São Paulo, Landell demonstrated five inventions from his telecommunication system for a crowd, including wireless telephones and transmission equipment. He would go on to receive a patent in Brazil in 1901 (or 1900, depending on the source), then later travel to the United States and work for three years on getting parts of his system patented.
"It is possible to transmit speech through a luminous axis without the intervention of silenium or of a microphone. Nay, even a receiver will not be necessary. All persons within the radius of reception will be able to hear the message with the aid merely of their natural organs," Landell told the New York Herald. "I wish to show to the world that the Catholic Church is not the enemy of science or of human progress."
Latine Heritage Month is here! Join us in celebrating from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 and support our content celebrating la cultura.
