Skip to content

The Woman Who Invented Stuffed Animals

2021-08-31 · explainer · John · 6:12 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities · mode: Personal essay

Arguing that inventions come from broad collaborations rather than lone individuals, John tells the life of Margarete Steiff, a disabled woman who built a stuffed-animal company from felt clothing and magazine patterns, to show that history is shaped both by circumstance and systems and by individual choices.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Inventions come from collaborations, not individuals: no one invented the light bulb

  • ★★★ Important inventions are almost always created by broad collaborations of many people building knowledge and systems, not by individuals: Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb. — 00:00:00

  • ★★★ The fix for wrongly worshipping individuals is not to worship different ones: no one invented the light bulb; it took decades of collaboration and competition among many people. — 00:00:00

    “the solution to wrongly worshipping individuals is not to change which individuals you worship”

00:00:29 — The life of Margarete Steiff: polio, the zither, the sewing machine, felt clothing, the elephant pattern and the stuffed-animal company

  • ★★★ Yet individuals' work and choices still matter; to show how systems and individuals both matter, John introduces Margarete Steiff, who invented the stuffed animal, sort of. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Steiff was born in 1847 in a small town in southern Germany; before age two she contracted polio, which paralyzed her legs and caused profound weakness in her right arm. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Steiff and her two sisters went to school until their teens, quite uncommon then, and then enrolled in sewing school. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ With limited use of her right hand Steiff struggled at sewing; she later wrote that her sisters were capable while she made every possible mistake. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ The zither was becoming very popular in Europe, around the time Johann Strauss II wrote solos for it. — 00:01:27 · Europe
  • ★★ Unable to play violin or piano, Steiff played the zither by bracing her right hand, became accomplished and taught lessons. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ With lesson money she bought her town's first sewing machine and refashioned it for her left hand, so she could sew despite her disability. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ In her mid-twenties she started a tailoring business with her sisters, then sold ready-made clothing, especially felt underskirts; felt had reached Europe via Central Asia. — 00:01:56 · Europe
  • ★★ Her clothing succeeded so well that she opened a factory and branched into felt women's dresses and children's coats. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ In 1879, looking through a pattern magazine, Steiff came across a pattern called Elephant of Cloth. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Steiff wrote that felt was ideal for the toy, filled with the finest lamb's wool; big on quality, she often said only the best is good enough for children. — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ The first felt elephants were small, often used as pin cushions and mostly made for friends and family; she sold only eight in 1880. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Soon she made donkeys, dogs, lions, bears and parrots, but most designs were not hers: they came from pattern publishers. — 00:03:24
  • ★★★ Steiff's insight was that many people lacked the time, resources or expertise to make stuffed animals, so she would do the work, probably better. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ Steiff stuffed animals became popular children's gifts, being relatively cheap and sturdy compared with porcelain dolls. — 00:03:24
  • ★★★ By 1890, 11 years after the first elephant, Steiff's company sold over 5,000 stuffed animals a year. — 00:03:53
  • ★★ After expanding internationally, the company took off just after the turn of the twentieth century with the first Steiff teddy bear. — 00:03:53
  • ★★★ By 1907, when Steiff was 60, her company employed over 2,000 people and made over a million stuffed animals a year. — 00:03:53
  • ★★ Steiff died of pneumonia a couple of years later. — 00:03:53

00:04:22 — Steiff as a product of circumstance and of her own choices; how systems and individuals both drive historical change; sign-off

  • ★ The company survived and, over a hundred years later, still makes some of the cutest, cuddliest stuffed animals. — 00:04:22
  • ★★★ Like all of us, Steiff was a product of circumstance: without her education, the sewing machine, the zither's popularity, felt or the magazine patterns, she would not be remembered as the inventor. — 00:04:22
  • ★★★ In those alternate histories stuffed animals would probably still have been invented around then, just as light bulbs would exist without Edison and Tesla. (hedged) — 00:04:52
  • ★★★ Considering the circumstances and systems behind historical change explains why changes occurred and who ends up positioned to benefit from them. — 00:04:52
  • ★★ Part of what makes stuffed-animal history important is that it was one of the few places a disabled woman in 19th-century Europe could succeed in business. — 00:04:52 · Europe
  • ★★★ We must also make space for individual choices: Steiff saw the potential of ready-made soft toys, made excellent ones and carefully hired extremely talented people. — 00:05:21
  • ★★ Steiff attracted and kept employees partly by treating them much better than most businesses of the time. — 00:05:21
  • ★★ Her focus on quality control made Steiff animals better than competitors', and her self-belief helped her persevere when society and friends doubted her. — 00:05:50
  • ★ John toasts perseverance and stuffed animals, and thanks Margarete Steiff. — 00:05:50

In the description and comments

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Margarete Steiff · Stuffed toy

Also: People: Johann Strauss II · Nikola Tesla · Thomas Edison

Organizations: Steiff

Concepts: Disability · Felt · great man theory · Incandescent light bulb · multiple discovery · pneumonia · polio · Sewing machine · Teddy bear · Zither

Places: Central Asia · Europe · Germany

Only in the description or credits: Four-minute rule · Henry Green · Rosianna Halse Rojas · The Anthropocene Reviewed (podcast)

Later videos replying to this one