INVENTOR of the MONTH

Tahira Reid: Automatic Double Dutch Turner

Tahira Reid was born on January 2, 1977 in the Bronx, New York. One of her favorite pastimes as a child was to jump double Dutch — that is, with two jump ropes. While in the third grade, she entered a poster competition and won third place for a picture she entitled “Automatic Double Dutch Turner.”

Tahira kept the poster and thought of it ten years later while at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. In a class called “Introduction to Engineering Design,” she was given the assignment to create something that “challenged the limits in sports and recreational activities.” Along with a multidisciplinary team, she developed a prototype of her Automatic Double Dutch Turner.

By the end of the school term, she and her team had won a grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA). In 1988 the invention was exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American history. A year later, the U.S. Patent Office issued a patent to Reid and a member of her team, making them the first RPI undergraduates so honored.

Tahira Reid and her invention have been featured in the New York Times and Essence Magazine, and she was interviewed by Al Roker and Katie Couric on NBC’s Today show and by Lianne Hansen on National Public Radio’s Week End Edition.

Reid graduated from RPI in May 2000 with a degree in mechanical engineering. She is pursuing her Ph.D. in engineering at the University of Michigan.

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