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Inventors & Innovators: New Ideas Born in Brookline NEW!

There are many legends about fabled Brookline residents such as Amy Lowell, John F. Kennedy, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Saul Bellow. Ken Liss, an intrepid researcher, has uncovered stories about notable Brookline innovators and inventors most of whom are not household names, and will lead a lively discussion about the work and lives of these trailblazers. Among the tales Liss will tell is that of Charles Holtzer, who in 1891 in his factory on Station Street built the first non-experimental electric car in the U.S. that moved at approximately 16 MPH. An early 20th century deaf inventor, William Shaw, in his home laboratory at 12A Linden Street, designed and built a series of ingenious electric devices for the deaf and hard of hearing including telephones, alarm clocks, and even baby monitors. In 1895, King Camp Gillette was shaving one morning in his Brookline home, and came up with the idea for the first safety razor that sold by the millions. In the early ’50s, at the Free Hospital for Women on Pond Street, John Rock, M.D., helped to develop in vitro fertilization, sperm freezing, the birth control pill, and was a groundbreaking infertility specialist.

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