A Father of Invention

Walter Hagedorn started Sensation Products after he had worked as a shipping clerk at a company that makes products for disabled and handicapped people and children in New York City. He came up with some ideas for new products himself and struck out on his own. The company is now based in Brattleboro, Vermont, and makes adapted toys, “capability switches” to operate CD players and other devices using a specially designed switch, materials for creating a sensory wall, a vibrating hairbrush, and much more.

“Hagedorn’s style is very much in line with that old cliche, that necessity is the mother of invention,” an article in today’s Brattleboro Reformer notes:

“After my son was diagnosed with autism,” he said. “I started creating products at home. I look at the need and try to figure out what to make.” He said several of his creations were developed as ways to communicate with his son.

“When you have a non-verbal, non-communicating child, making decisions for that child can be frustrating,” he said.

Meal times, and figuring out what his boy would eat and not eat, proved to be especially challenging he said. One of the first tools he created was a set of refrigerator magnets with frames into which pictures of food can be inserted. “This enables a child to physically select his food choice,” he said.

I am intrigued by how Hagedorn’s creation of many products was motivated by a desire to communicate with his son; the products themselves, like the refrigerator magnets, seem to be rooted in Hagedorn trying to look at the world through his autistic son’s eyes, to think of what his son needs to get his message across. In this case, necessity has inspired a father of invention.