Ruth Handler - Inventor of the Barbie Doll
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| Audience/Grade: | 5th Grade - Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Engineering Management General Engineering, Engineering Science |
| Special Topic(s): |
History of Technology |
| Learning Resource Type: | Teaching - Case Study |
| Media Type: | WWW |
| Author(s): | Lemelson Program at MIT |
| Description: | MIT's "inventor of the week" on Ruth Handler of the Barbie Doll. "Ruth Handler invented something in 1959 which became so quintessentially American as to be included in the official "America's Time Capsule" buried at the celebration of the Bicentennial in 1976: the Barbie doll. In the early 1950s, Handler saw that her young daughter, Barbara, and her girlfriends enjoyed playing with adult female dolls as much or more than with baby dolls. Handler sensed that it was just as important for girls to imagine what they themselves might grow up to become as it was for them to focus on what caring for children might be like. Because all the adult dolls then available were made of paper or cardboard, Handler decided to create a three-dimensional adult female doll, one lifelike enough to serve as an inspiration for her daughter's dreams of her future. Handler took her idea to the ad executives at Mattel Corp., the company that she and her husband, Elliot, had founded in their garage some years before: the (all-male) committee rejected the idea as too expensive, and with little potential for wide market appeal. Mattel finally agreed to back Handler's efforts; and the Barbie doll debuted at the American Toy Fair in New York City in 1959. Girls clamored for the doll, and Barbie set a new sales record for Mattel its first year on the market (351,000 dolls, at $3 each). Since then, Barbie's popularity has rarely flagged; and today, with over one billion dolls sold, the Barbie product line is the most successful in the history of the toy industry." |
| Rating: |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | Ruther Handler, Barbie Doll, toy design, Mattel |
| Usage Tip | |
| Use of Resource: | Case study of a woman inventor. |
| Difficulty: | Easy |
| Interactivity Level: | Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | 2008 |
| Platform/Format: | WWW |
| Cost: | Free |
| Download URL: | http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/handler.html |
| Metadata: | IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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