A young man by the name of Louis Braille was only 12 when he began working on a system of reading and writing that relied on raised dots. Thomas Alva Edison was only a teen when he got to work on his telegraphic repeating instrument. And Tharon Trujillo was 10 when he came up with a safety gate that would keep children and pets from going through sliding screen doors, according to The Sacramento Bee.
Now Tharon is 13 years old and his invention, the Lock N Block Safety Gate, will be making its debut in March.
Trujillo was watching television in his living room one day when his baby sister, Daysha, tripped on the rug in front of their open sliding-glass door and tumbled through the screen.
Daysha was fine. Her older brother wasn’t.
“I told my dad there needs to be a safety gate for the sliding-glass door,” said Trujillo.
Father and son headed to the family computer and searched the Internet to see if such a device existed. No other safety gates on the market could fit in a sliding- glass door.
James and Tharon Trujillo went to the garage and built a prototype out of scraps.
Then the boy did something most children wouldn’t have the patience to do: He read a book on patenting and attended a patenting seminar at Sierra College by instructor Bob DeMatteis, inventor extraordinaire and founder of From Patent to Profit, an inventor education group.
“Going through (DeMatteis’) process is very easy,” said Erika Trujillo, Tharon’s mother.
Though the patent is still pending on the Lock N Block Sliding Door Gate — the process usually takes three to four years — the Trujillos formed a partnership through a licensing agreement with Cardinal Gates, a safety-product company based in Atlanta.
“I saw it as a unique product, something not in the market at all, and just saw the benefits of this product,” said Craig Heiser, the company’s president.
The gate will retail for about $80 at retailers still to be determined, and should be for sale soon at www.cardinalgates.com.
Photo by Cardinal Gates